FORWARD: Issue #6: Climate
Floods
Wingo-WHAT? rain-activated sidewalk poetry demonstration. The rain-activated community poems and project info remain etched in sidewalks in flood-prone areas around Germantown; video courtesy Philadelphia Water Department staff.
Wingo-WHAT? rain-activated community poems and project info remain etched in sidewalks in flood-prone areas around Germantown. Photo by Philadelphia Water Department staff, Grace Maiorano.
Water is at the forefront of many of the crises created by climate change. Rising oceans, droughts, unprecedented floods, and lethal surges from ocean storms threaten civilization.
One specific challenge created by climate change that impacts where and how people live is flooding. The devastation of dramatic and sudden flooding has been experienced by communities from Appalachia to Libya. Major flooding can rapidly displace entire communities, and ongoing, smaller floods pose a myriad of challenges, from infrastructure failure to dangerous mold. Furthermore, low-lying areas globally, which are predominantly inhabited by low-income communities and those of color, are at more risk of catastrophic flooding than other geographies. Flooding has impacted communities disproportionately and will continue to do so.
We’re highlighting three projects in which artists help communities meet the challenges of flooding in different contexts, from urban rivers to the Atlantic Ocean.
An ingenious musical instrument and public artwork informs people in flood-prone Denver neighborhoods about flood risks and how to reduce them. In a Philadelphia neighborhood also imperiled by high river water, a poet led workshops where community members wrote verses about their earliest memories of water and their experiences during floods. And in New Orleans’s Gentilly neighborhood, devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and still at risk, multiple artists have created public artworks and imaginative architecture designed to reflect residents’ relationship with water and imagine what it could be in the future.
Read on for examples of three different creative approaches to flooding challenges.
Floodline Chime Pavilion
After decades of data collection, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) turned to art to communicate findings about local flood risks to residents.
Location: FEMA Region 8, Denver, Colorado
Artist Role: Communicating complex data | A pair of artists fashioned a mobile musical sculpture aimed at educating residents about flood risks and mitigation.
Artists: Nathan Hall, Drew Austin.
Partners + Partner Organizations: FEMA ArtWorks, RedLine Contemporary Art Center.
Community members explore Floodline Chime Pavilion, at Levitt Pavilion in Denver's Ruby Hill Park. Photo by Lares Feliciano.
How can citizens living in the South Platte River floodplain, particularly in the flood-prone Denver neighborhoods of Overland Park, Rosedale, and Ruby Hill, reduce the risk high water poses to life and property? How might they return home more quickly, with less damage and less expense, after the next flood?
How can citizens. . . reduce the risk high water poses to life and property? How might they return home more quickly, with less damage and less expense, after the next flood?
The pavilion is activated with short performances for singers and chimes, composed by Nathan Hall. These compositions capture the poetic, tragic, and hopeful journeys that water-related natural disasters can lead to, using specific FEMA language woven into the lyrics. Photo by Lares Feliciano.
After decades of developing and sharing data on the risks of floods, FEMA Region 8, covering six western states including Colorado, decided to harness the power of the arts to educate communities about flood risk. Created in 2019, FEMA ArtWorks collaborates with local artists and arts organizations to raise risk awareness and initiate dialogues about how people and communities can better protect themselves from floods. The goal is to develop projects that educate and resonate.
The goal is to develop projects that educate and resonate.
In summer 2023, local artists Nathan Hall and Drew Austin debuted FEMA ArtWorks’ second project, Floodline Chime Pavilion. Created under a public-private partnership with Denver’s RedLine Contemporary Art Center, and with fabrication assistance by Elmendorf Geurts Public Art Studio in the city, Floodline Chime Pavilion is a mobile, participatory public art project.
Hall and Austin designed an array of chimes that outlines the floodplain’s contours. Participants play the varied-pitch chimes using strikers made of wood washed in by floodwaters. While creating music, they listen to short songs that illuminate flood risks and describe ways to become more aware of these dangers. By interacting with the work, Hall and Austin say, residents come to terms physically with the flood risks in their neighborhoods. The chimes can also be relocated for events, and used in performances of short, flood-mitigation-themed compositions for choir and chimes.
The partners in FEMA ArtWorks, says its website, “share the goal of communicating the importance of [flood] mitigation to reduce risk by using information people can relate to in a personal way.” More specifically, an ArtWorks video on the site recommends “interactive, sensory, and experiential” public art as an excellent way to “tell the story of risk mitigation and connect with people on an emotional level.”
Floodline Chime Pavilion at Ruby Hill Park in Denver. The pavilion is a temporary, modular, interactive sculpture created for public activation during community events. Photo by Drew Austin.
This steel pavilion suspends aluminum chimes, many laser-etched, that map the floodplain levels of specific Denver neighborhoods. Photo by Drew Austin.
Public art [is] an excellent way to “tell the story of risk mitigation and connect with people on an emotional level.”
— FEMA ArtWorks
Using handheld, etched strikers made of wood collected from Platte River floods, participants are encouraged to enter the pavilion and gently strike the chimes to allow their tones to ring out throughout the surrounding public space. Photo courtesy the artists.
The length of the selected chimes—the longer chimes, the higher the risk—and the deepness of their tones correspond to the areas’ flood history and potential risk along the designated floodway. Photo courtesy the artists.
Wingo-WHAT?
Philadelphia’s poet laureate unlocked residents’ water memories through workshops that resulted in flood-risk reminders in the form of rain-activated sidewalk art.
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Artist Role: Facilitating community-led solutions | A poet guided residents in crafting sidewalk poetry that informs and delights.
Artists: Poet Trapeta B. Mayson, artist Julia Terry.
Partners + Partner Organizations: US Water Alliance.
Rain-activated community poems and project info remain etched in sidewalks in flood-prone areas around Germantown. Photos by Philadelphia Water Department staff, Grace Maiorano.
Wingohocking Creek in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood was one of several free-flowing waterways captured in concrete sewer pipes. During heavy rainstorms, which are becoming more common due to climate change, the sewers empty into the streets, a type of flooding classified as infrastructure flooding or urban flash flooding.
“Flooding and the devastation that comes with it hold real trauma for individuals and families,” says US Water Alliance Chief Strategy Officer Renée Willette. “When utilities approach this trauma with purely technical or engineering solutions, they risk missing the real experiences of impacted residents.”
Flooding and the devastation that comes with it hold real trauma for individuals and families. When utilities approach this trauma with purely technical or engineering solutions, they risk missing the real experiences of impacted residents.
— US Water Alliance Chief Strategy Officer Renée Willette
On the other hand, Willette says, “artists can facilitate deeper connections between individuals, families, communities, and water. They can make water and our inherent connection to it felt on a much more personal and emotional level, enrolling people into water stewardship rather than keeping it as an out-of-sight, out-of-mind transactional service.”
Philadelphia Water Department staff and community members at the Wingo-WHAT?! culminating event in 2022, where the team revealed sidewalk decals and rain-activated art featuring community members’ poems on an afternoon full of poetry readings, live music, and flooding resources.
Artists can facilitate deeper connections between individuals, families, communities, and water. They can make water and our inherent connection to it felt on a much more personal and emotional level, enrolling people into water stewardship rather than keeping it as an out-of-sight, out-of-mind transactional service.”
— US Water Alliance Chief Strategy Officer Renée Willette
To make these connections, the US Water Alliance funded a series of community-based poetry workshops called Wingo-WHAT? (Wingo refers to Wingohocking Creek; WHAT stands for Water, History, Arts Activation, Transformation). Philadelphia’s 2020–21 poet laureate, Trapeta B. Mayson, led participants around Germantown as they composed verses about their first memories of water and their experiences with flooding and community transformation.
Those verses were then woven into a larger project. With the aid of artist Julia Terry, workshop poems were stenciled onto sidewalks in flood-prone locations using water-activated paint so the words appear when it rains.
“The poetry process Trapeta created unlocked the power of storytelling and listening for everyone involved,” Willette says, “creating a new sense of connection between participants, water, and place that traditional forms of engagement can't reach. The artistic intervention equipped local residents with flooding preparedness knowledge—all through shared experiences and collective storytelling.”
The artistic intervention equipped local residents with flooding preparedness knowledge—all through shared experiences and collective storytelling.”
— US Water Alliance Chief Strategy Officer Renée Willette
Wingohocking
— Trapeta B. Mayson 2020-2021 Philadelphia Poet Laureate
1. Beneath this ground Deep into the sod Under the concrete and hum of our great city Is a creek that holds our past and flows into a turbulent present Reminding us to take tender care To steward, to protect this place Lenape land, sacred— crooked water Wingohocking Favorite place for planting ourselves Until it tires of holding our debris and residue Then overflows And announces itself in our lives
2. Under the suck of urban sprawl and splendor Is a stream that joins another to meet another To empty itself into the Delaware Wingohocking Captured and covered water Locked into this town’s history Germantown’s tributary We know your might 50 years of constructing to shield you From the city’s bustling scape And you seep back into our lives A quiet flow or rushing uprising You and us now reckoning
3. In our town you’ve made yourself known Wingohocking Your arteries of pipes and engineering underground conduit Carrying off leavings and waste Crooked water Still or rising Flooding or hushed Indelible marker on our lives Photos and memories and precious things Taken and carried in your rushing flow Upended and uprooted And we still stand And we two—still here
Resilience Planning
A placemaking project brought artists and neighbors together to create public art that informs and inspires.
Location: Gentilly, New Orleans, Louisiana
Artist Role: Communicating complex data | Artists created opportunities for citizens to engage and interpret local environmental changes.
Artists: Multiple.
Partners + Partner Organizations: Arts Council of New Orleans, Prospect New Orleans, the Water Leaders Institute, and local students.
Cost: HUD and Rockefeller Foundation grant-funded. From $141 million of funding for the Resilience District, roughly $100,000 is allocated to public art.
In process, the Gatto Park portrait sculpture, Woven Together, by Brendon Palmer-Angell. Photos courtesy Arts New Orleans.
During Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge, the diverse Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans was almost entirely flooded, with most homes requiring gutting and major repair work before they could be reoccupied; today, fewer than half of the neighborhood’s pre-Katrina residents and businesses have returned, and the area continues to flood due to poor infrastructure.
With approximately $100,000 allocated for public art through a grant in the National Disaster Resilience Competition organized by HUD and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Gentilly Resilience District trained local artists in water management infrastructure and issues, and supported the artists’ creation of public art along London Avenue Canal and other Gentilly water features to enhance public understanding of water—often with community input.
Langston Allston’s murals on playground fences address water futures by juxtaposing views of neighborhoods today with imaginative images of what they might look like in the coming years. The Living with Water sculpture, which was unveiled at its temporary home, The NET Charter High School: Gentilly, is a tall arch rich in water imagery, and is a collaboration linking art teacher and artist Kenneth Scott, Jr., the nonprofit Arts New Orleans (ANO), and ANO’s youth-focused division, Young Artist Movement. Courtney Egan invited community members to contribute to her design for a footbridge over a bioswale—a landscape element that collects polluted stormwater runoff, soaks it into the ground, and filters out pollution—in Gentilly. Brendon Palmer-Angell led a discussion with community members about their relationship to water and how they’d like to see themselves reflected in his new sculpture for the neighborhood’s Gatto Playground.
Among the collaborating organizations were the Arts Council of New Orleans, Prospect New Orleans (a triennial public art show), and the Water Leaders Institute. Students at The NET, an alternative high school, also participated.
The Living with Water sculpture, which was unveiled at its temporary home, The NET Charter High School: Gentilly, is a tall arch rich in water imagery.
I think the role of artists, the role of art, is that of creating opportunities for citizens to engage and interpret these changes to their environment.”
— Aron Chang, urban design consultant and a cofounder of the Water Leaders Institute
Concept sketch for Footbridge Over the Bioswale, by Courtney Egan. The footbridge is described by Arts New Orleans as functional artwork "that will cross over a 15-foot wide bioswale encircling Filmore Park. Cut and painted metal relief panels mounted to the sides of the footbridge will show images and text that bring attention to the park’s new features of water management. Neighborhood residents will be co-producers in the design process, participating in the creation of a visual narrative that builds deeper understanding about living with water." Courtesy Arts New Orleans and the artist.
The Gatto Park portrait sculpture Woven Together, by Brendon Palmer-Angell, depicts portraits of a child and an adult. According to Arts New Orleans, "Each holds a vessel, a metaphor for the ways in which our current decisions impact future conditions. We can choose whether the vessel overflows and is something to dread, or whether it is balanced and manageable." Depending on the direction from which they are viewed, the portraits shift and intertwine, "representing the interdependency of younger and older generations in environmental stewardship." Courtesy Arts New Orleans and the artist.
“I think the role of artists, the role of art, is that of creating opportunities for citizens to engage and interpret these changes to their environment,” Aron Chang, urban design consultant and a cofounder of the Water Leaders Institute, told the urbanist news organization Next City. “Having beautiful objects in neighborhoods,” he says, “means that people will feel a sense of ownership, which is the starting point for thinking about stewardship and maintenance.” The lasting, innovative public artwork inspires curiosity and creativity in the Gentilly Resilience District. Creating a sense of place and community investment in the neighborhood, the art builds a shared understanding among residents about the neighborhood’s ecological resilience, and results in waterways and public spaces unique to Gentilly while connecting residents to the broader ecology of the Mississippi Delta.
The “Living with Water” sculpture is a collaboration linking art teacher and artist Kenneth Scott, Jr., the nonprofit Arts New Orleans (ANO), and ANO’s youth-focused division, Young Artist Movement.
Harmony by Carl Joe Williams of the Young Artist Movement.
The Gentilly Art Parade was held in June 2022, hosted by Arts New Orleans’ Civic Arts Fellows, a group of artists and community members who have worked to create public art for the Gentilly Resilience District. Behind the parade is Unity, located at the site of the London Avenue Canal levee breach. "It commemorates the residents who experienced devastating loss due to Hurricane Katrina, and who continue to face stormwater risk and other environmental challenges," says Arts New Orleans.
According to Arts New Orleans, "The pandemic required the artists to think creatively about community input: they collected feedback through surveys, virtual community dialogues, and interactive creative packets mailed to all neighbors. The sculptures are etched with text inspired by charrettes, research on the history of the site, Gentilly residents’ input, and creative collaboration between Young Artist Movement and lead artist Carl Joe Williams. In addition to participating in the research and design of the sculptures, the youth artists met for several weeks at a professional metal fabrication studio where they learned how to cast aluminum out of wax molds."
FORWARD: Issue #6
Climate
© COPYRIGHT 2023 - FORECAST PUBLIC ART ISSN 2768-4113