Ground Up Designers » Announcing the CHCA Garden Installation!

Announcing the CHCA Garden Installation!

Filed under: Ground Up Work — Lana @ 8:42 AM 12/30/2011

View From Front of Garden

Kristen and I have been working on this project since September and are finally ready to release it to the world! Here are some renderings (thanks Brian Walbridge for all your modeling and rendering help) and the official press release text. We’ll be submitting the project for competitions and grants over the next month and will be launching to raise money on Kickstarter starting January 16th! Fingers Crossed! Also, check out a short video about the project here.

WHAT THE PROJECT IS ABOUT:

Located in the Crow Hill Community Garden, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, our art installation/fundraising platform focuses on bringing the community together to build something beautiful in memory of last summer’s Labor Day shootings. If launched, the installation will help raise awareness and funding for organizations in Brooklyn that are working to stop gun violence through the use of art and education programs for the youth.

We believe that the key to reducing gun violence in Brooklyn isn’t a more extreme police force (as we often see as a response to shootings), but is better art and education programs for the youth. In light of this, we’ve designed a canopy for the community garden made of disposable handcuffs — each cuff will be individually sponsored by a participating member of the community, showing that they would like to see more art programs available for the youth as a means of getting kids off the streets and preventing gun violence, not more arrests.

We decided to use the handcuffs as a symbol of both the youth violence and the overbearing police presence, that our neighborhood is continually confronted with. Using the handcuffs as a part of the art installation is not meant to trivialize these sensitive topics — in fact we hope that they will keep the conversation geared toward these important issues as we come up with creative ways to tackle them.

View From Back of Garden

HOW THE PROJECT WORKS:

We are submitting our project to a number of international design competitions, launching a Kickstarter campaign, and applying for the New Yorkers for Better Neighborhoods grant. With the money raised through these initiatives, we will purchase the materials we need for the project. Once purchased, the cuffs will then be made available for donation at participating businesses throughout Crown Heights. When someone sponsors a cuff, they will be given a packet of information to take home, as well as a cuff to personalize with a message and then leave in a collection box for pick up. Once a week, Ground Up Designers will collect the sponsored cuffs and add them to the installation.

Each cuff donated to the project will stand as a symbol of it’s donor’s support for positive community growth in Crown Heights — as more and more people donate their personal cuff to the project, a mesh will begin to grow in a lace like pattern. This mesh of cuffs, created of our neighbors’ joint community spirit, will become the canopy of the installation and a place for people of meet and organize throughout the summer. Architecturally, this canopy will be supported by a framework of fanned supporting legs that connect with hinges to a base. Just as the canopy is supported by the legs, the legs are completely dependent upon the canopy. This design was chosen to represent the relationships between the community organizations that support the community, and the individual members that support the organizations — one would not exist without the other.

WHAT IT BOILS DOWN TO:

The completed design uses over one-thousand cuffs to create the canopy of the installation. If each cuff is sponsored at the suggested $3 – $5 donation, we will have raised between $3,000 and $5,000 when the installation is complete!

A portion of the money raised will be used to fund free art classes which can be held under the canopy throughout the summer. The remaining money will be donated to community organizations that are working toward better education programs for the youth and against gun violence.

DESIGN AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS:

‘Art Not Arrests’, was awarded 3rd Place in the Black Spectacles Un-Competition Project, an international design competition focusing on self initiated/community oriented design projects.

‘Art Not Arrests’ was exhibited at “Build On” the follow up event to The Un-Competition Project: A box of cuffs is being provided to the event for fundraising: January 19th at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

‘Art Not Arrests’ will be Exhibited at “Slap Dash” a monthly series that brings together different art forms for a semi-cohesive mixed-media event: June 2012 at LaunchPad