Public Art St. Paul has big plans for 2016.
Pop Up Meeting, the city’s ambitious drive to “increase diversity and participation in St. Paul’s urban planning process,” is leading the way.
Pop Up Meeting’s specially retrofitted, immediately recognizable red van hit the streets in 2015. Drivers Amanda Lovelee, a St. Paul City Artist, and intern Abby Kapler hold meetings during which they solicit survey responses, verbal opinions and other feedback, then “visibly and comprehensibly share” those ideas with others.
Pop Up Meeting had a great inaugural season. According to Lovelee, 70 percent of the initiative’s participants had never before engaged with the city planning process. “We think that’s a great measure of success,” she says.
This year, Pop Up Meeting aims to reach St. Paul’s most underrepresented citizens, particularly those with limited or nonexistent English fluency. Lovelee plans to use tablets to present questions and solicit feedback from respondents in their native tongues, rather than rely on ad hoc translators.
“[Non-English speakers] tend to be more disengaged from the planning process,” says Lovelee, “so we’re really doubling down on our efforts to reach them.”
No matter what language they speak, Pop Up Meeting participants get a free, locally made popsicle — courtesy of
St. Pops — for their troubles. Lovelee tapped St. Pops to design a healthy, organic popsicle that “captures the flavor of St. Paul,” says Lovelee. They settled on mint lemonade, “which tastes like a super-delicious mojito, without the alcohol.”
“I lost count of how many popsicles I had last summer,” she adds. “Seriously, they’re amazing.”
Lovelee is putting together Pop Up Meeting’s official 2016 schedule this month, but the broad strokes are already clear. She’s devoting plenty of bandwidth to Mayor Chris Coleman’s
8 to 80 Vitality Fund, whose component projects include the
River Balcony and elevated downtown bikeway loop. Lovelee also plans to spent lots of time in Highland Park, soliciting residents’ thoughts and visions for the Ford site redevelopment, which
isn’t projected to begin until 2018 at the earliest.
“The city planning process is partly about getting out in front of big, multi-year projects and setting expectations that conform to residents’ needs and desires,” says Lovelee.
Besides Pop Up Meeting, Lovelee and Public Art St. Paul have some other big projects on tap.
Public Art St. Paul recently received a Knight Foundation grant to deploy pollinator-friendly streetscapes around the city. This ear a prototype will be constructed in a single St. Paul neighborhood “to make sure the plants survive the winter,” says Lovelee. Also this year, a mobile seed cart slated to distribute seeds to local residents will be launched.
At the corner of 10th & Robert, work just wrapped on the first biodiversity study of Public Art St. Paul’s Urban Flower Garden. The study’s findings will inform future work on that site through the 2016 growing season and beyond.
All in all, it’s shaping up to be a banner year for Public Art St. Paul. “Start dreaming of warm weather and popsicles,” advises Lovelee. “We’ll be out on the streets again before you know it.”