South Elm Projects
About
Milagros Collective hashes their signature design on buildings around the neighborhood, 2015
South Elm Projects is a series of site specific activations with artists and neighborhood partners reforming overlooked alleys and green spaces to enhance downtown walkability, community investment, and grassroots creativity. These activations will further encourage naturally occurring development in the neighborhoods adjacent to South Elm.From April through November, artists will work with Elsewhere’s curators, neighbors, small businesses, social agencies, arts and community leaders to design works that address critical issues and encourage smart approaches to ecology, social infrastructure, and urban placemaking in Greensboro.Commissioned artworks will take form as greenscaping, light art, murals, and participatory sculpture and performance that enhances community investment, civic participation, and grassroots creativity.Commissioned artists include: Works Progress, Heather Hart, Buster Simpson, Agustina Woodgate, Carmen Papalia, Camp Little Hope, Tom Russotti, Chloe Bass, Poncili Creación, Milagros Collective, Chat Travieso, Megan Mosholder, Samara Smith, and the Greensboro Permaculture Guild.
Season Overview
Artists selected for South Elm Project commissions will participate in a Site Visit, April 9-12 and work closely with Elsewhere’s curatorial team and neighborhood partners to develop a proposal for new works. Projects will be implemented through residencies at Elsewhere from April through November 2015.Throughout the season Elsewhere will host a program of First Friday opening celebrations and events that connect the artists and the sites and instigate public participation. A digital publication of the project will offer an archive of the process, bringing insight to neighbors, histories, and artists.
Questions / Comments
Patrick McDonnell: South Elm Projects Coordinator. southelm@goelsewhere.org
George Scheer: Director, Elsewhere. wanderingzoo@goelsewhere.org
South Elm Projects is supported in part by ArtPlace America.
Events + Schedule
SEPWEEKEND_Banner
South Elm Weekend - November 6, 7 & 8
Friday, November 6
South Elm Water Bar Opening | 6-10pm, at Elsewhere
This First Friday Works Progress Studio will dedicate the South Elm Water Bar, a new piece of public furniture that explores the South Elm neighborhood's hydrosocial connection to water in the past, present and future. The Water Bar will be open and serving local tap water all night long, staffed by employees and friends of the City of Greensboro's Water Resource Department. It is being produced as a commission for Elsewhere's South Elm Projects curatorial initiative, which seeds the neighborhood with series of site specific activations between artists and neighborhood partners that reform overlooked alleys and green spaces to enhance downtown walkability, community investment, and grassroots creativity.
Saturday, November 7
The Porch Project, Black Lunch Tables Opening | 12– 2pm in the lot at the corner of Bragg Street and Arlington Street
Celebrate the official opening of the Black Lunch Tables pavilion with a free community potluck and an afternoon of performances.
Free and open to all. Bring something to share if you’d like.
Neighborhood Walking Tour with Camp Little Hope | 4pm, Meet at Elsewhere
Join us for a walking tour of Elsewhere's South Elm neighborhood with resident artists, Camp Little Hope and The Chamber of Commons. They will present highlights from a series of field guides they created for the neighborhood that present new ways to see and understand the complex and nuanced histories of this place.Camp Little Hope is a team of artists. With a combined background in fine arts, education, design, economics, engineering, anthropology, and community engagement, they imagine new worlds through public artworks, curatorial interventions, designed artifacts, published information, and catalyzed epiphanies.
This project is part of their South Elm Projects commission with Elsewhere to present new perspectives on the neighborhood and how we understand social change.
You can find their Field Guides at local bookstores, the Chamber of Commerce, Elsewhere and at tourist hubs throughout the city.
South Elm Projects Reception + Happy Hour | 5-7pm, The Yard behind Elsewhere
Reception for Elsewhere's South Elm Projects to celebrate a year of place making and public art in the South Elm neighborhood. Featuring Works Progress "Water Bar" with Guilford College's Cape Fear River Basin Project.
Sunday, November 8
The Black Lunch Table Conversation Series | 11am + 2pm in the lot at the corner of Bragg Street and Arlington Street
11am | Black Lunch Table Event: Recording Our (Art) History
Greensboro artists of African descent are invited to be part of an event to dialog on issues facing our community.Free, refreshments provided. Seating is Limited. Please RSVP to Heather Hart at blacklunchtable@gmail.com for more information and to participate.
The Black Lunch Table, a collaboration between artists Heather Hart and Jina Valentine, takes the lunchroom phenomenon as its starting point to make visible the connections and dialogue that exists between contemporary artists of color. Providing a space to discuss critical issues strengthens the bonds within our nebulous community and validates shared concerns through exchange. BLT events are audio-recorded and transcribed in order to further authenticate both the community and its voices. These recordings will become part of an archive dedicated to gathering the experience and perspective of contemporary artists of color from across the country.
2pm | Black Lunch Table Event: Black Lives Matter
Everyone is invited to be part of this integrated table recording our ideas, sharing our thoughts and forming new connections with fellow community members.Free, refreshments provided. Seating is Limited. Please RSVP to Heather Hart at blacklunchtable@gmail.com for more information and to participate.Using the idea of the lunch table as a discursive site where social connections are made, organizing is planned, social hierarchies revealed, and power dynamics are played out, this session will offer focused conversations on the divisions and connections that exist within our community, while also laying out new productive relationships to continue the movement for dismantling institutional racism.
Schedule
April:
May:
June:
July:
August:
Greensboro Permaculture Guild
Sept:
Megan Mosholder
Oct:
Artists
Not pictured:
Charlie Headington is part of the Greensboro Permaculture Guild and would like to be known for his edible landscapes. Chomp-chomp. At mid-life he discovered nature and set about translating natural ecosystems into a local, useful and nourishing idiom. His gardens and food forests fill or surround homes, school, churches, museums, empty lots and busy streets.
Projects
Sites
Elsewhere is involved in a dynamic process of community-building and cultural visioning, designing site-specific interventions for four areas of our South Elm neighborhood. The art-scaping projects will integrate temporary and permanent creative works to enhance walkability, community investment, civic participation, and grassroots creativity.
Site 1 : 600 Block, South Elm Street, Greensboro, NC
Site 2 : 500 Block, South Elm Street, Greensboro, NC
Site 3 : Arlington Street + LewisStreet, Greensboro, NC
Site 4 : Bragg Street, Greensboro, NC
Partners and Collaborators
A diversity of participating partners and neighbors includes SmART Initiative Team, ArtsGreensboro, Action Greensboro, Downtown Greenway, Curators from Weatherspoon Art Museum, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art; Art Professors from UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Greensboro, and Appalachian State University; Andrew Scott, Assistant City Manager; Gary Brames, Master StreetScape Committee; Nancy Hoffman, Greensboro City Council; AZ Development; Momentum Partners; South Elm Development Group; Nick Browser; Sidney Gray; Milton Kern / Biltmore Hotel; Mosaic Piano; The Forge; Table16; Peculiar People Theater; Beloved Community Center; Community Theater; Ink; Civic Threads; Scuppernong Books; Area; Triad City Beat; HQ Greensboro.