Art Intersects Urban Planning
Go Explore Memphis Soul (GEMS) art-based community engaging strategy for City of Memphis Comprehensive Plan.
Art and design met urban planning evolving into an art-based community engagement strategy which allowed us to uncover a rich data field that was used by the urban planners to inform the comprehensive city plan. Through combined efforts involving whimsical maps, communication tools in multiple modes and languages, immersive community surveys, an art mobile, and other creatively branded tools, we facilitated meaningful and fruitful community collaboration with thousands of Memphis residents.
Related Press
Alex Greene, Yancy Villa Calvo, and Neili Jones at the Urban Art Commission offices. (Houston Cofield)
The intersection of art and urban planning makes Memphis 3.0 a multimedia strategy
(Aisling Maki, High Ground News) – “Memphis 3.0, the city’s master plan in progress, is using art to engage the community in the planning process by embedding local artists in disinvested areas…”
(We Are Memphis)
Issues and Innovators: City Planning
(Caleb Fowler, We Are Memphis) - “…Yancy Villa-Calvo, has engaged with Memphians through her project GEMS (Go Explore Memphis Soul). In this project, she has created a map of Memphis gems and has used it to ask city residents to share which parts of their communities they would consider gems and then to place tiny gems on her illustrated map over the spot that they treasure. Through this project, Villa-Calvo has sought not only to gather data points on people’s feelings towards their communities but to capture the stories that Memphians have regarding their city and their neighborhoods. Her care for the stories of regular Memphians has become a valuable asset in designing the Memphis of the future for these residents and for countless others.”