Hardy Safe Walk: Safe routes for kids, by kids
Getting to and from school should be easy and safe. But with so much traffic on Glass Street and nearby Dodson Avenue, kids at Hardy Elementary have a lot to negotiate on their commute. Our Hardy Safe Walk team worked with teachers and students to come up with creative ways to mark safe paths for walking, and then brought them to life over two days of field trips and creative student engagement.
Teams of art students hit the street with stencils and wheat paste to mark a safe walking path to and from Hardy. The stencils included Hardy’s Eagle mascot created by a neighborhood artist Jonathan Dean, and were painted on the sidewalk in bright colors. The stencils were applied at the same time as the Crutchfield Asphalt Mural, bringing color to every corner of Glass Street’s sidewalks and gathering spaces.
A big thanks to Hardy’s art teacher Sarah Cross, who shared lessons with her students about murals and stencils in the weeks leading up to the field trips.
Planning By Doing Workshops:
Meet The Teams and The Projects!
Things are moving quickly with the Glass Street Gateway Planning-By-Doing workshops and hopefully, by now you have already seen some of the exciting results installed within a 5-minute walking radius of the new Save A Lot. Two of the teams have already left their marks near the YFD and Hardy Elementary!
Stay Excited! All of the projects from the workshops will be complete between Fall 2020 and Spring of 2021 when we get busy with the next phase of the gateway improvements including an asphalt mural on Crutchfield Street.
MEET THE TEAMS
Team Homebase presented ideas on the beautification of the ‘Homebase’ – the intersection of Dodson and Glass Street. According to a local community leader, Pastor J, paying homage to a baseball diamond, Homebase will be a meeting of corners, “to inspire a sense of home and community.” This temporary installation will include ‘the looking glass’ which is a piece of movable art with different prompts such as words of encouragement, community resources, pieces of advice, or simply something to be admired or viewed while looking through it. “Everyone from different walks of life will come to this area.”… “In order to speak to everyone to reimagine their future no matter what they are going through.”
Hardy Glass Development Team brainstormed on a safer route to and from Hardy Elementary and presented their ideas after hearing feedback from local parents and teachers on the need for safety improvements for pedestrians and children crossing along Roanoke and Glass Street. This includes encouraging safer routes and wayfinding for students and pedestrians. The Hardy Elementary mascot is the eagle so this team plans to create stencils to paint on the sidewalk leading up to the intersection and crosswalk. This team also identified a curve near Hardy where vehicles travel at a fast speed. To draw attention to the school zone the team proposed yarn art and fence art to slow traffic.
The Guardians of Sidewalk Team also presented their ideas on safer commuting to and from Hardy Elementary. Noticing that crosswalk signs malfunction, the team assessed existing infrastructure in order to meet project budget and future cost considerations. Because the north-sidewalks are more appealing due to length, continuity, and minimizing crosswalks, team members discussed the use of colored routes, highlighting bike lanes, and installing a crossing guard replica at the intersection of Glass and Dodson to slow traffic and create awareness for the pedestrian zones.
The members of You’re a STAR Team pitched the idea for the area’s very own Walk of Fame. The installation will be located on the sidewalk from Crutchfield to Daisy in proximity to the YFD. This installation includes a stenciled field pattern designed by local students from Hardy Elementary, spray-painted stars mentioning local community heroes, and an opportunity for expansion through future phases.
The GATHER Team focused on the open spaces around the Save-A-Lot grocery store. With the store being a new anchor for the community, the emphasis was creating a space that includes models for safety, seating, lighting, accessibility, beautification, art, and engagement. Entitled, Create A Recipe – this installation includes large wooden letters that are movable ‘furniture’ that spell LOVE and serve as a functional use for seating and eating.
Glass House Collective has been following this community-informed design process with our neighbors and partners since the organization’s inception. We began focusing on this intersection several years ago through a creative community engagement process, which resulted in more than 300 residents identifying landscaping, safety, and beautification as community priorities in the Glass Street Gateway. You will begin to see these projects pop up from now until the spring to complement the new Asphalt Mural on Crutchfield Street. E-mail info@glasshousecollective.org if you’d like to get involved.
We say thank you to our dream team of partners, friends, neighbors, and GHC staff for making this happen including AIA-Chattanooga, Street Plans, Bloomberg, Lyndhurst Foundation, and the Chattanooga Design Studio.
Download our how-to guide for community fundraising.
The Art Anywhere How-To Guide includes tips and templates to get you started fast!
Earlier this year what seems like a lifetime ago Glass House Collective partnered up for a community fundraiser to benefit the students at Hardy Elementary School. As a result of a successful 10-day campaign, 500 Art Anywhere Kits were purchased and distributed to every single student at Hardy in the middle of May so everyone could continue making art at home with their families this summer.
We are now launching our how-to kit to share our fundraiser’s template for success with anyone who feels a similar urgency to partner up in their community right now to quickly raise money for an identified need or rising cause.
Our kit could be used as a family activity around conversations of equity and social justice. This kit could be deployed by a group of citizens who want to donate money to a cause by asking family, friends, and social media networks to pitch in. Our free downloadable how-to kit was created using our light-hearted and fun social media fundraiser for children’s art supplies as the brand, the ideas inside the kit can easily be adapted for any need or tone. Feel free!
Your support of $7 will provide an Art Anywhere Kit to one family at Hardy.
Just $7.
Please consider making a donation in any amount and Glass House Collective will match every dollar donated by Sunday, April 12. This is why we’re here. With your support, we’re better together.
What’s in the Art Anywhere Kit?
- colored pencils
- markers
- water color paint
- paint brushes
- paper
- scissors
- art gum eraser
- crayons
- ideas
- imagination
- inspiration
Special thanks to Sara Cross, Hardy Art Teacher, and ART120.
]]>“Good things happen when we’re eye to eye, face to face, and able to absorb the passion many of us have for our neighborhood,” said GNN facilitator and neighborhood volunteer, Gail McKeel.
The room was packed and our talking circle was large including representatives from Hope For The Inner City, Hardy Elementary Community PTA, Boyce Station Neighborhood, CALEB, GreenSpaces, Glass Farm Neighborhood Association, Glass Farm Block Leaders, Building Stable Lives, City Farms Grower Coalition (formerly Grow Hope Farms), East Chattanooga food pantry project, alongside members of the Glass House Collective board of directors and staff, and Glass Farm residents and volunteers.
The Good Neighbor Network was launched to be a sounding board for ideas and a way to keep and build momentum for the work all of these groups are doing individually. Today, as more eyes and energies are focused on Glass Farm and East Chattanooga, beginning the year with a re-group to build consensus on the best ways to stay connected, focused and supportive, was important to neighborhood leaders.
“With the help of all interested parties, we’ll be able to structure our meetings and form committees to set goals, share the facilitation of the meetings this year, distribute the duties, and have more productive meetings,” McKeel said.
We appreciate Miss Gail’s leadership pulling this conversation together. It is clear that the collective is getting wider and deeper and that everyone involved believes in the power of partnerships!
GNN’s next meeting is Monday, March 2 at 6:30pm at the GHC HQ.
LINKS:
GNN Facebook page
City Farms Grower Coalition
Change Makers Workshops at Hardy Elementary
East Chattanooga food pantry
Come enjoy the grand finale of the day, where the Glass Farm neighborhood meets the Boyce Station and Avondale neighborhoods, at the intersection of Dodson Avenue and Glass Street! Our neighbors want to see change and improvements there, and together we can test and demonstrate ways to make this busy link between Hardy Elementary School and the East Chatt YFD Center safer and more welcoming for the families using these resources daily!
We will have a community parade, live music, local food vendors (including some of the best BBQ anywhere in Chattanooga!), a pop-up farm stand, dance competitions, and a chance to participate in temporary crosswalk installations that are colorful, safe, and we believe can be as effective in attracting permanent design improvements as these same tactics were when we started work with Better Block at the Chamberlain Ave. and Glass Street intersection 4 years ago! Catch the spirit of Glass Street LIVE by watching last year’s video on our YouTube Channel!
Want to get involved? Please fill out our Online Interest Form!
We’re excited to include lots of community vendors, information booths, and VOLUNTEERS! Food vendors are being carefully curated to prioritize sales for local eateries.
Interested in showcasing your business as an official Glass Street LIVE sponsor? Find details on our website’s Sponsorship Page!
Let friends know about our party by sharing our Facebook Event Page!
See you in October!
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The club has proven very popular with the Hardy kids, which is probably due to a mix of curiosity about the subject matter and affection for Nikki herself, who showers participants with encouragement, humor, enthusiasm, and discipline.
During a racing activity with a group of 2nd graders, Nikki timed each child’s turn as the leader, sending the charge of electrical current down the line, represented by two foam balls the students passed from hand to hand. The only catch: they had to start all over if anyone dropped the ball, breaking the flow of “current.” Competition ran fierce– and when disappointment overflowed into tears or anger, Nikki used the experience to drop in some social lessons as well. “They learn to go with the flow when working together, which is just as important as understanding how to use energy responsibly,” Nikki says. “They are learning that true leaders never put themselves first.”
Because of the Energy Club, it was much easier to collect students to help program the colorful “pucks” that made up Jen Lewin’s “The Pool” art installation during our East Chatt Highlight Festival back in April. That was a rare opportunity for Elementary kids to collaborate with an internationally renowned artist, in preparation for the festival held in their own neighborhood!
It’s overall success has prompted Empower to sponsor the Energy Club next year as well! We’re excited to see more partnership between Hardy Elementary School and our neighborhood partners, and proud to read about continual innovation flowing from inspiring teachers there, like Brittany Harris and Colleen Ryan with The Passage mobile homework help bus, renovated locally by Studio Everything!
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