A group of more than two dozen people filled a downstairs conference room at the Vigo County Public Library Thursday afternoon for an updated look at revitalization plans for a neglected area of downtown.
Art Spaces Inc., a local non-profit specializing in imaginative interpretations of public spaces with works of art, hosted the event and shared an update on its Turn to the River initiative aimed at beautifying the area around the courthouse and city hall.
Mary Kramer, Art Spaces’ executive director, was excited to share the news of a $75,000 Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that will assist in the revitalization of the city-county government campus.
“It’s really great as an organization when you can bring in outside funding,” Kramer said. “We’re all out there looking for funds and going to everyone we know ,and going to every organization in the area.
“It’s really super when you can actually bring in some money. It’s really exciting.”
According to the NEA’s website, the Our Town grant program supports creative place-making projects that help transform communities into lively, beautiful and resilient places by incorporating art, culture and design.
The NEA offers the grant in two categories, with Art Spaces’ grant falling under the, “Arts Engagement, Cultural Planning, and Design Projects,” category. The category requires a partnership between a non-profit organization and a local government entity that plans a project to represent the distinct character and quality of the community.
Kramer hopes that with the grant and monies raised by the organization, Art Space can create a plan to revitalize old downtown, the current city-county government campus, and carry the design through to the Wabash River where she hopes to have an outlook over the water.
Kramer said incorporating the river into the design will begin to reintegrate the river into Terre Haute’s culture and identity, but wants the public’s input on how they envision doing so.
“[Public input] is how this whole project was built,” Kramer said. “This is not Art Spaces’ doing. We’re kind of leading the charge, but all these ideas came from members of the community.
“To me that’s the beauty of it. It’s not just coming from outside Terre Haute but from within Terre Haute.”
Kramer said the project will now go into the design and development stage where an artist or firm will be contracted by Art Spaces to begin conceptualizing a design to be implemented.