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Place Making
For people to walk  they need places to walk to and something to do when they get there. They also need safe, comfortable streets and sidewalks to walk on. This project will identify ten locations along the Lamar corridor for murals or sculpture which point out significant people, events, or locations in the history of the area. Some of the locations are shown here.
These "places" will serve to connect different locations in the neighborhood and to create an identity recognizable to residents and visitors.
Place-making involves identifying local points of interest and providing a means of identifying these locations as historically or artistically significant. That is we recognize them and remember them.
We plan to use student work from Rozelle Elementary School in some of the locations as well as having local artists do some of the more professional murals or sculptures.
These are meant to unify different places in the area as a recognizable community with which residents and visitors can identify.








High school students from the Life Church summer program pitched in on June 26, 2014 to work with us for a day. They helped us again June 3, 2017. And here is what they did!
In addition to completely clearing brush away from the side of the building, preparing it for a mural, other worker bees scraped and prepared the metal fence along the front of the property for painting.  A third group cleared overgrown grass from the back of the parking area and cleaned the lot.
Many thanks to these wonderful young folks who did a great job for the community. Kinda restores my hope for the future.
For more information about the Life Church and it's programs, go to www.thelifechurch.com
Below are some of our ideas for murals for the future. What would you like to see us include?
It was a long day for the artist, Kyle Taylor, but he stayed with it into the late hours finishing the job. 

We had many residents and passersby stop to comment and ask about the work. More that 25 or 30 people expressed their excitement about the mural and it's effect on the street and neighborhood.

That's just what we wanted!
Stay tuned. There's more to come.
Why do we use urban art such as murals? 
How do people react to them?

​"Oh, wow. That's in our neighborhood."

Everybody has a neighborhood, and they are all different. And they are all going on at the same time in the same place. It may just be my street or your street or a shared street - a main street. 

So, how do we bring these streets together to make a single neighborhood, make neighbors out of strangers?  

By making places which we all recognize, share and relate to.

Our neighborhoods are defined by what we see and experience and what we remember: urban art - a theater marquee, a storefront, an old sign, a painting, a mural, a sculpture. or some activity.

..... pedestrian, professional, or personal, it connects us to a place.

Our project involves making those "places" using murals, sculpture, and activities to achieve that "oh wow" effect. Our first mural is on the old store building on Lamar at Willett. It focuses on five Memphis music legends. We have other locations identified and will be doing a variety of murals with different themes which relate to the history of the Pigeon Roost corridor and the neighborhoods. 

This project is not just about murals. It is about people, about bringing those people together to be together, work together, to build a better environment for our children to grow up in and for a better quality of life.

So, we started:

 "Man, that's wild."
"That makes the whole street better."
" I love it. Are you gonna' do more?"

We are. And our next one will be even better.


The scene above serves as a model for one wall on a building along Lamar. Since we are reflecting the history of Pigeon Roost Road we will use pigeons flying over a model of Rozelle School.
The Lamar Murals Project will include murals depicting the history of Pigeon Roost Road and the history of the neighborhoods surrounding it. 
What else are we doing? 

We work with other groups of like mind to rebuild historic neighborhoods and preserve their history.