03 . 19 . 18

Growing a neighborhood: The Flower Power Club Model

Posted in Blog, Go Green, Green Roof Culture House, Paducah

Rayela Art > Blog > Blog > Growing a neighborhood: The Flower Power Club Model

In October of 2017, I started thinking about what I could offer locally and two of my passions evolved into ideas for the Green Roof Culture House and an Eco Village for Paducah.  These ideas have expanded into a vision of creating a sustainable community focused on creativity, culture, and eco-practices. Several connections have pulled me to the Uppertown neighborhood of Paducah. This lies directly adjacent to Paducah’s downtown and has been a traditionally African American area, although it has become mixed racially (black and white) and economically in the last few years. If you have not read the posts on Green Roof and the Eco-Village, please do take a look as this one builds on those ideas.

Uppertown is a contained neighborhood that is bordered by the Tennessee River and some uninhabitable creeks on two sides. If you look at the map below, you will see that it is not a large area. The yellow area highlights our initial target where we would start programs that would hopefully expand outwards.

Some Context

There are a lot of empty lots, run down houses, boarded up buildings along with new construction and some rehabbed homes that are lovely.  If you would like to explore the neighborhood on Google Maps, click here.  I was attracted to this neighborhood many years ago by an old house, marked on the map as 821 Tennessee St.  Every now and then, I would just drive by on purpose and imagine all the good things that could happen there…  artists, exchange program, events…   When I had started looking at properties back in October, I pulled the filed info on ownership and found that this house was owned by an Aron Duca up in one of Chicago’s suburbs. I assumed that this would be a slum landlord who would just make waste of these beautiful bones…

 

 

I was wrong. So wrong.  One day I drove by and there was a man standing outside, talking to someone in a car. I stopped and asked him if he knew the owner. “Sure! He is in town and a block away!” He called, Aron came and a delightful exchange took place. He showed me the inside and it is as wonderful as I imagined. But, it’s like a haunted house (with good ghosts). The bones are intact but all of the walls are peeling. Bird poop. Aron has replaced the roof, but it will cost at least $200K to fix this and take about two years. Bummer.

“Come see my other house!”, Aron said. We walked a block and he said I could live there.

 

It’s a nice house and Aron has done a ton of work on it. Everything is new. But, it’s not what I had in my head and I didn’t think it would work. It’s a duplex, so I could host the exchange program on one side and live on the other, but it just wasn’t the picture I was seeing in my head. The yard is small, it butts right up to the sidewalk so there is no privacy (I have never lived without a fence) and it just feels exposed. Hmmmm….

Aron loved my ideas and our exchanges are wonderful. I say something, he adds to it, it changes my idea in a new way and it’s all been great fun because he SEES the vision. He has twinkly eyes and is a man of deep faith with a great sense of humor. NOT a slum landlord. Aron comes and goes and works on this house and then will work on the big one. Over time, he has met neighbors and has a deep affection for this community. His big calling is how to help people with the run down houses improve them. We have become friends and meeting Aron has become a core part of how these ideas are taking shape. He is an engineer with a great deal of experience in rehabbing homes.

 

Racial Unity and Black History

UpperTown already has efforts happening that fit in well with the Green Roof Culture’s goals.

Race Unity Group

This group meets every Thursday at the Washington Street Baptist Church. Visit the website.

Mission:  Our mission is to build real and lasting friendships among people of different races in western Kentucky and abroad. Through our weekly meetings, community events, education and outreach, we seek to deconstruct barriers that have kept racial groups apart and to construct bridges of respect, understanding, and collaboration. It is no small task, but it is a profoundly joyful one. Come and see for yourselves. All are welcome!

The group started in 2014 after a showing of “Racial Taboo”. See the trailer below. I have been attending since February (2018) and am enjoying it a great deal!

 

Hotel Metropolitan

If you scroll back up to that map, you will see that the Hotel Metropolitan is just a couple of blocks away from Aron’s big house. Read the full story about the hotel on IList Paducah.  BB King, Louis Armstrong and Tina Turner were just a few of the Black talent who stayed here. They were not allowed in the mainstream hotels. Betty Dobson got some people together, formed a non-profit, raised money and saved this historic site from ruin. She is a performer and story teller, the keeper of oral history. Betty is absolutely lovely and I look forward to being her neighbor. She has other notable structures in the neighborhood that she would like to save and loves the ideas behind the Green Roof Culture Hub and the Flower Power Club.

 

StarBright

Just next to the Washington Street Baptist Church, we have a new language school, StarBright. Valerie Hendley is originally from Morocco and speaks a bunch of languages. Methodology:

 

We substitute textbooks and grammar sheets with project-based activities: playing, hearing and using the language in a real life environment.  We will introduce learners to another language through learning centers using games, songs, stories, and drama. We believe that learning is based in daily reality and that children will learn if they are familiar with the content and the approach is user-friendly. Engaging the senses is an essential component of our method.   Website

I met Valerie briefly, on my first visit to the Race Unity Group. She’s another neighbor I will enjoy getting to know!  Fits right in with our cultural goals.

Housing Authority of Paducah

Real estate prices are cheap in UpperTown. This is what often happens: Artists come first, looking for affordable housing and studio space. Then, some fun businesses take hold. People start coming and enjoy the vibe. Wealthy people start moving in. Property prices go up. Big chains move in. Artists and original residents get kicked out. A lot of low income people have been displaced in two of Paducah’s neighborhood development projects, LowerTown and MidTown. Retaining diversity and helping low income residents improve their living conditions are the core of this vision.

Fortunately, UpperTown already has a history in this neighborhood of providing affordable housing. The Housing Authority of Paducah has built very nice homes there and will hopefully continue to invest in the neighborhood.  Their Mission:

The mission of the Housing Authority of Paducah is to assist qualified, responsible families and individuals, with safe, decent, and affordable housing opportunities as they strive to achieve or maintain self-sufficiency and improve the quality of their lives while treating the residents with dignity and respect. The Housing Authority of Paducah is committed to operating in an efficient, ethical and professional manner. In its operations, the Housing Authority of Paducah is committed to revitalizing and maintaining neighborhoods and a strong urban core. The Housing Authority of Paducah will create, and maintain partnerships with its clients and appropriate community agencies to accomplish this mission.

 

McCracken County Library

I love our Library!! It is also very close to this neighborhood and has a wonderful, diverse staff. Their programming is exceptional and I hope that we can collaborate in some way. They have an excellent selection of books, movies and audio books that have cultural themes or foreign authors and will be a huge resource.  I know I will support them in any way I can!  Website

Bringing Art to UpperTown

 

I run two artist orgs online and want to give them a physical presence here in Paducah with shows and a boutique.

See TAFA: The Textile and Fiber Art List and Artizan Made.  All of it is handmade and includes handmade supplies (hand dyed yarns, fabrics, woven yardage, etc.).  We work with many fair trade groups around the world and with studio artists who are creating high end works that cost thousands of dollars.

 

 

 

UpperTown, and even Paducah as a whole, would not be able to support enough sales to really make a difference to our members. This is a dilemma we often face in the handmade community. We cannot compete with mass produced crap coming in from China and other sweat shop places. Our prices are higher because we are reflecting the costs that go into paying people fairly, using high quality materials, and supporting skills that take years to mature or which have been handed down for generations. So, we depend on the internet to find those audiences. And, we hope to work with interior designers to encourage including handmade in the mix of modern decor options.

This whole vision started out with my desire to give TAFA and Artizan a physical home here in Paducah. I’ve gone over some of these reasons in the Green Roof post. Now I want to also produce products through the Flower Power Club. We’ll call this Flower Power Stuff for now.  🙂  We will make stuff from garbage: lawn ornaments, whirly gigs, musical instruments, mosaics, and all kinds of stuff. These will be sold on site and through Artizan Made’s Market.

Garbage is our collective nightmare. We MUST do something about the insane destruction of our planet! It is also a resource and using it, saves money that might be used to buy supplies.  It only takes a bit of creativity to make a difference and to offer new opportunities through art. Get inspired by these musical children in one of the poorest places in South America, the landfills outside of Asuncion, Paraguay:

 

 

TAFA and Artizan Made will inspire our projects. I will write more about this later, but it excites me to think of the connections that will happen as we develop this idea.

 

Attracting an Audience

 

In order to really make a difference, we need to bring people into the neighborhood. We will have events and all kinds of stuff going on, but we also need to people to buy our stuff. How do we do this?  Well, we would have to come up with an attraction that would draw people in. Aron loved the idea of the Eco-Village and told me about a mini town for children in Naperville, Illinois, built to teach children about safety issues: Naperville Safety Town

 

 

He suggested that we could build a small eco-village like this, not for habitation, but as a tourist draw. This way, we could also experiment with different building techniques and learn along the way. Fantastic!

But, it’s not enough…  The creative juices were flowing and I saw that the neighborhood could become a beacon for creative green living. We could make this into a fun, happy space with bright colors, a Caribbean flavor, and help people fix their properties in the process. A couple of videos inspired me.

The cheapest and fastest way to change an environment is through paint.  Check out how two Dutch guys made a big difference in a Brazilian favela (shanty town) in Rio.

 

 

 

Then there is JR, an artist who is transforming communities with photos plastered to walls, roofs, and other surfaces…

 

The point with both is that they engaged local communities into transformative projects.  We have an artist neighborhood in Paducah, which is wonderful, LowerTown.  But, it has been shackled by ordinances and is financially prohibitive by starving artist types like me who may have great ideas but no money.  One gallery erected a giraffe that peeked into the 2nd floor and the historic committee had a hissy fit about it. That gallery is long gone, along with the giraffe.

 

 

I moved to Paducah in 2005, when the Artist Relocation Program in LowerTown was still very new. I was given the tour by the founder (also long gone) and he told me flat out that I was not their target market. They wanted people who had money, who could fix the old buildings in the neighborhood and drive up the real estate prices.  Almost every artist living in LowerTown has a tale of horror of how they were treated by local contractors and how they were forced to spend $200-$400K to fix these places up. The City’s goal was a success. Real estate prices there are high. But, many artists who live there have been left stranded and survive either by doing shows elsewhere or selling online. There is very little City support anymore to bring tourists to the neighborhood. It is also difficult because the studios and galleries are mixed in with residential houses, everybody keeps their own schedule and the area is too big to walk around comfortably. They do have a great community and support each other a great deal.

Years have passed since LowerTown was “imagined” and we have new leadership and a lot of great things are happening around town. We want to attract tech, we want to find ways of employing people so that our youth will stay. We are a UNESCO designated creative city, we are Quilt City USA.  We can use that to also become a GREEN city!

 

 

Can you see it?

 

Flower Power Club

We start with paint and decoration. Everybody likes flowers, right? That’s our theme. We plant them, paint them, make sculptures of them. We create corridors for bees and butterflies, and attract birds. Yeah…  Squirrels are welcome, too.

Mission

To brand the UpperTown neighborhood as a lively creative space dedicated to healthy environmental practices, income generation, and affordable housing. To create a neighborhood that celebrates diversity and is a safe haven for all people, welcoming all races, religions, income levels and sexual orientations. We are a village that reflects the beauty of the world.

Membership

Any home in Paducah can join, but UpperTown is the hub.

Membership is free, but in exchange, members commit to:

• Giving 10 hours of work for the community a month. Everybody can do something!
• Creating a flower theme on their property. This can mean planting flowers in the yard, painting flowers on the house itself, having floral curtains, having flower themed lawn ornaments, or coming up with any creative floral expression. Each home expresses their own personal taste, but the louder and bolder, the better (in our opinion).
• Participating in a local recycling program.  The City of Paducah’s Recycling Program costs $5 month for twice a month pick-up.  There are a couple of other local programs. Low income households who cannot afford the cost will be covered by the Flower Power Club.
• Agreeing to go organic, no pesticides in Flower Power Club homes!
• Attending six Club meetings a year. There will be one group meeting a month.

Benefits:

• Flower Power Club members will be eligible for help in decorating their homes with the flower theme. This includes repairing and painting the siding and visible structures.
• Members working more than 10 hours a month will have access to repair services for the insides of their homes.
• Members will be considered first for employment opportunities generated through the Flower Power Club. This includes rehab and production of products for sale that we will create.
• Members have free passes or discounts to the Green Roof Cultural House programs.

 

UpperTown Hub

Aron’s houses are not ready or appropriate to house a gallery and meeting place at this time. Well…  Wouldn’t you know? There is a small church for sale just a block away from the Big House! They want about $70K for it, but I just happen to know the owners and we can get it for less. Click here to see the images from the listing.

 

Owners? My friends! Last summer I rescued a cat who had just given birth in a garage that I was cleaning out. Leslie and Michele are two sisters who live together and had a feral cat drop a bunch of newborns on their lawn and take off. They brought their kittens to Charlie, my Momma cat, who adopted them. They visited and we became friends.

We have loads to talk about, similar lifestyle and spiritual interests and a love for animals. Leslie has two adopted children from Brazil, so of course, another link in common.

They had told me about their small church that was dwindling but when I saw the listing, I had no idea that it was the one they had talked about. Their church had been organized as a safe place for the LGBT community, but has since become less of a need as mainstream churches have become more welcoming to them. With only 15 people left on Sundays, it is no longer feasible for them to maintain the space.

There are just too many connections happening around UpperTown! The Church will serve as the gallery, production and meeting space for both the Green Roof Culture Hub and the Flower Power Club.

Those grey outside walls will be covered with murals and mosaics. I would love turf on the roof, but I think it’s illegal…  Maybe we can get a special dispensation. Can you see it?

 

 

I know we can’t have real goats on the roof, but maybe we can make some metal ones…

 

The sanctuary is good for the gallery and there is a large room at the back that is perfect for meetings and a production space. We’ll have outdoor sculptures and lawn art all over the place.

There are a lot of empty lots we could purchase in UpperTown…  The Flower Power Club could employ people in so many ways…  As a hub, we could attract other green businesses into the neighborhood, all bringing services that would benefit everyone. Some ideas:

 

• Community Gardens and Greenhouse- have fresh food for the neighborhood all year long.
• A Green Grocer (There is no market to service the community.  Note to self: Does Kroger have any community programs? Could their Simple Green brand have an outlet here?)
• Bamboo Grove: As a supply for our products
• Dye Garden:  Indigo could grow here, along with other dye plants. Use them, package them, sell them.
• Worm Composting (See how to create Black Gold)
• Mini solar farm. Power our neighborhood.

There are so many ideas and it will take many others to make this happen. Solar energy is of special interest to me. Paducah Power, our local electric company, is supposedly a cooperative, owned by the people. They made a bad, bad decision awhile back which has made them THE most expensive electric company in the state of Kentucky. Story is here.  It pretty much feels like highway robbery.  Paducah’s streets are pretty dark, but UpperTown feels especially dark at night. A special-ed teacher friend said that many of her kids live in that neighborhood and they pretty much don’t turn lights on at night to keep their power bills down. People live in cold houses in the winter because they can’t afford the rates. The idea of a child not being able to do homework or read at night just boils me…  Yet, Kentucky is a coal state and we don’t have solar energy initiatives that are happening in other states. My sister benefited from a New Jersey initiative and her house is now solar. Here’s an example of what is happening in a low income neighborhood in Washington State:

 

 

We need to research this and find out how we can give our communities light!

 

How it’s all coming together

 

Even I am getting confused about all of these names and ideas I am throwing out. I see a big picture for a neighborhood based on ideas that I have seen take place elsewhere. None of this is really my idea. I’m just applying what others have done to something that might work here and my hope is that it can be replicated anywhere else where there is a similar desire to improve our quality of life. My basic intuition tells me that people who work together, stay together. Find the skills, give some guidance, listen to their ideas and see where it goes. But, here is the outline in my head:

 

Green Roof Culture Hub

It’s the center of operations, where things come together. Focus is on art, education, culture. It partners with other efforts in the community and promotes them on its website.

TAFA: The Textile and Fiber Art List and Artizan Made: Housed under the Green Roof. Exhibits and boutique. Cultural Exchange program starts with these members.

Flower Power Club:  Neighborhood revitalization program using flowers as a theme.

Flower Power Stuff:  Products we make.  Represented through Artizan Made.

Eco Village: Building from trash and sustainable materials.

 

There will be a website for the Green Roof Culture Hub that will serve as a place to highlight these and other partners who come on board.

Structure: I don’t know yet. It makes sense to create a non-profit, but we need more time to research and see who is interested in this.

Next Steps

• Find out if the neighborhood likes this idea. I want to do a survey and go around our core area, knock on doors and see who might be interested. Find out what THEY want. What do they wish for this neighborhood? If I get 10 homes to sign on to the Flower Power Club, we have a green light.
• Create a think tank of professionals.  We need people who know about stuff. Carpenters, electricians, plumbers, artists, gardeners and anyone interested in this. I don’t know how to weld metal, install solar panels, or fix a leaky pipe. How can we make the whole city go green? The Flower Power Club could go citywide…  We need to network with other people doing cool stuff. This all takes time, relationship building and investigation.
• Partner with others. How can we work with who is already doing something that fits into our vision?  Are there any new people who would love to bring their own ideas into the mix?
• Figure out how to make this work financially.  Are there any City initiatives we can plug into? Grant monies? Donations?
• Buy the church and empty lots. The more we can buy up, the more we can play with.  Maybe we can get some properties donated…
• Move into the neighborhood.  Yep, time for me to get on down there. That will take money, too.

 

On Flowers and Kids

I want to say something about our featured image. The fence is from my friend’s yard, Boisali Biswas. She painted both the fence and the tile in her back yard. She is a weaver from India who lives in Michigan, a huge support and inspiration, a TAFA member.  We had the joy of meeting in person a few years back. Follow her on Facebook.

 

 

Anyone can personalize their space like she did. We do not have to live in department store fantasies…

Then, the children in the featured image are from the neighborhood. I met them when I went down to look at the church. Their grandfather lives next door and the wind had blown down his metal shed. They were helping him fix it up. I didn’t get their names, but they were delightful! She likes to sing, dance and use power tools. He likes to draw birds and flowers.  !!!!  I told them a bit about what I wanted to do and their eyes sparkled. I worked a lot with kids when I was younger and it made me feel so good to think about what might happen down there! I want to keep our projects inter-generational as I think it’s important to have all ages, the whole tribe, participate, but these kids are the future and I want to invest in them!

 

 

 

Help make this happen

Any project takes time and money. I have been under a great deal of financial stress as I’ve worked on these ideas and things are not humming happily along here at home in terms of my bills. Can you pitch in?  I need to keep things running, pay bills and hiring an assistant would be a great help. A Godsend, really…

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Embroidery: Yarndance- hands by India Tresselt

Give A Hand Fundraiser

Become a part of our project by giving us a hand! Send in artwork with your hand which will be installed permanently. Each spot is $100. Learn more here:  Give A Hand Guidelines

Many thanks for any support given, both financially and through any level of involvement! I am super excited about this and am so curious about how it will all pan out. Something good is in the air!

 

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