:: Avondale ::
It is clear that DesignAlabama believes that design affects every aspect of our daily lives; everything in our world is designed to look and function in a particular way. A City of Neighborhoods workshop works to bring this idea to light for a community, its educators and its K-12 school aged children.
The City of Neighborhoods workshop, A Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum program, brings together a variety of community members and educators to work together to extend the K-12 classroom in to the community and apply design education to a neighborhood context. This workshop uses primary resources, both resources of the natural and built environment and educational strategies to study a neighborhood’s past, explore its present and create a plan for its future. When these strategies are brought to the classroom, they help to foster community awareness and encourage young people to work to change their community.
DesignAlabama, the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, Main Street Birmingham, the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham and the Alabama Alliance for Arts Education brought this workshop to Avondale, June 15 — 17, 2006.
The partnership groups chose to explore Avondale, one of the 99 neighborhoods of the state’s most populated city, Birmingham. Each of the 99 neighborhoods has its own elected representatives who then work on behalf of that neighborhood with the city government. Recently, the Avondale area was selected as one of nine targeted areas by Main Street Birmingham and the Beacon Program, an initiative of Birmingham Mayor Bernard Kincaid and the Birmingham City Council. The Beacon program which stands for Business, Enterprise And Commercial Opportunities for Neighborhoods is working to strengthen economic and neighborhood development through the Main Street four point approach which encompasses as its four points, design, organization, economic restructuring, and promotion. The Avondale neighborhood is already working on achieving these four points, recently having worked on several projects to revitalize their community. Among these projects are:
- Organization of a merchant’s association,
- Creation of a Series of banners, approved by the City of Birmingham’s Design Review Committee that will hang along 41st Street from light poles promoting their community with the theme of “Shop, Live, Work and Play in Avondale”
- Renovation of the Historic Pavilion located in Avondale Park which is a partnership between the City of Birmingham and the community group, Friends of Avondale Park
- The annual Art in Avondale Park Event
The Beacon Program and its design component fit well with the mission of DesignAlabama, and it is clear that the Avondale community is ready to work to revitalize their neighborhood. Additionally, because the City of Neighborhoods workshop works to bring design into the K-12 classroom, along with community revitalization; the Alabama Alliance for Arts Education will also be a partner for this project, working to advertise the event to teachers and youth across Jefferson county and surrounding areas. The Alabama Alliance for Arts Education is dedicated to supporting policies, practices, and partnerships that ensure the arts are woven into the very fabric of the lives of Alabama's children. It was a goal of this project, that teachers, the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, the Alliance for Arts Education and DesignAlabama work together to create a design curriculum guide based on this workshop for students and teachers across Alabama. Working with community members and leaders is both one of the key components and key goals of this program. Beginning with a community resource meeting on March 27 2006, DesignAlabama and its partners worked with community leaders to develop strategies for implementing a successful City of Neighborhoods workshop.
In the end, the event was very successful and the neighborhood of Avondale is moving in the right directions.