Presentation
El Corazón • the Heart of Holyoke
Proceedings of the Environmental Design Research Association 50th Conference
(2019)
Abstract
El Corazón • The Heart of Holyoke is a creative place-making project whose primary objective is to develop spaces and places of belonging for the largest per-capita Puerto Rican community in the diaspora. Located in Holyoke, Massachusetts, El Corazón is being developed through a Public Art and Creative Placemaking Master Planning process supported by federal, state, and local funding agencies. This work is proceeding concurrently with the development of the new Puerto Rican Cultural Area, a district that celebrates and makes visible the cultural vitality of the city’s significant Latinx population.
The master planning process has featured broad strategic engagement. The plan proposes public art and infrastructure projects along Main Street that reflect a complex understanding of personal, social and cultural meanings of space in order to create sustainable and equitable urban spaces / places. The creative projects include two decommissioned electrical towers that will be transformed into gateway markers for the district through dramatic lighting and imagery. Along a four-block section where many Puerto Rican organizations and businesses are situated, large-scale artistic building wraps, participatory murals, installations, and a pavilion aim to catalyze artistic, economic, and cultural activities.
The project emphasizes a restorative and social justice framework. All of the proposed work will be developed through residents’ engagement with emerging and established Latinx artists. One guiding strategy will be pairing the creation of art works with hands-on workshops for local residents. In this manner, the project aims to cultivate artistic skill sets and build sustainable public participation. Through these practices, the project challenges typical community design processes by encouraging creative work that moves beyond models of consensus to models of tactical collaboration, reciprocal cooperation and creative conflict that recognize the community’s intrinsic production of its own space.
Keywords
- Community Engagement,
- Public Art,
- Creative Placemaking
Disciplines
Publication Date
May, 2019
Location
Brooklyn, NY
DOI
0454167aa8ff7b8d602d8fe8fc09290f
Citation Information
Caryn Brause and Joseph Krupczynski. "El Corazón • the Heart of Holyoke" Proceedings of the Environmental Design Research Association 50th Conference (2019) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/caryn_brause/20/