Blowing Bubbles

There is an image of a beautiful woman blowing bubbles between Little Man Ice Cream and Olinger’s. She wears a colorful outfit highlighted by a butterfly wing tutu and carries colorful, abstract hair behind her. This image should be a joyful one, as it is filled with symbols of color and hope, but the woman doesn’t look happy. The look on her face screams bored, dull and disenchanted. It’s as if she has lost her grasp on the beauty surrounding her.

 

I’m not sure what the artist had in mind when she or he made this masterful street art, but it reminds me of North Denver in many ways. There is still so much beauty in North Denver: from the children that visit the 32^nd Avenue Jubilee Center after school program and fill North Denver schools to the oldest generations that have kept businesses, cultures and lineages alive throughout the years.

However, I have also noticed the changes that have been made over the past decade. The culture of North Denver is being lost in the influx of modern homes and businesses that have brought in a completely new people and lifestyle to the neighborhood. People and businesses are being pushed out of North Denver so that a younger and wealthier generation can move in. Of course this is a great financial move for the city, one of the driving forces behind this change, but it has taken some of the magic away. The beauty of North Denver is still there, but I can’t help but be disenchanted with the way things are headed.

As frustrating as this is, I am excited by the possibilities of my work with the 32^nd Avenue Jubilee Center and hopeful for all the things North Denver still has to offer. There is great work to be done in North Denver, whether it’s as individual as tutoring children or as large as tackling a project such as the Assessment Based Community Development program headed by Aspen Matthews. Generations of families still have so much to give to North Denver, and it’s exciting that for the next year I can watch and be a part of that. My journey has just begun, and I can’t wait to see the ways 32^nd Avenue Jubilee Center can partner with the community to do great things.

- John Putnam, The 32^nd Avenue Jubilee Center Episcopal Service Corps Intern

Back-to-School Carnival, August 19!

The 32nd Avenue Jubilee Center is the only nonprofit that is part of the LoHi Merchants Group. The group was originally formed as a support and resource system for businesses that were starting in Northwest Denver. In this thriving area the group promotes events around the neighborhood, introduces new business owners, and connects professionals in the community. It has helped the Jubilee Center become more connected. It is an association the Jubilee Center belongs to. And we get to bring a unique gift. As the only nonprofit, we were called to help with GIVE LoHi, the August month of the five month long "LoHi Series" which highlights different businesses each month. Last month was Feel Good LoHi, showcasing the health and wellness companies in the neighborhood.

For this event, we are teaming up with Little Man Ice Cream and Menchie's Yogurt to host a Back-to-School Carnival for Denver Public Schools students on Tuesday, August 19 from 1-5pm. Planning this event has been a crucial part of our ABCD work as we try to meet more residents and employers in this area as well as connect people that might never have met otherwise. We have collected donations of school supplies for the event and will be making a monetary donation to a school after the carnival. Most importantly, it will help bring everyone from the community together before another school year begins.

Please join us on Tuesday for this exciting event!

Rooftop Porch: The new front porch?

In our past newsletter, we discussed the idea of urban planning and how we use our public spaces for socializing, recreation, and work. This blog posting adds the influence of the new home private contractors and developers in their building around North Denver. Along Quivas Street in particular, there is one startling design element that has not been present previously in any Denver architecture: rooftop porches. These were right next door to the more traditional and ubiquitous front porch. In LoDo, rooftops are easily accessible by walking across the bridge. In the new restaurants along Tejon and 16^th Street, rooftop porches on bars and restaurants are coveted spaces, perfect for enjoying Colorado summer. Some folks have decided to bring the feeling of looking out over the city to their own homes by creating rooftop patios and ridding themselves of traditional front porches.

rooftop patio and living space

rooftop patio and living space

rooftop patio and living space

During a one-on-one with a community member, he brought up an observant description of how we use our homes. He said, “We drive home, park in our garage, go in through our garage door, and never have to speak to our neighbors. Then we repeat this process to leave our houses.” Where a front porch might help create a space where residents could sit and watch the neighborhood, now some are opting for the rooftop because of its undoubtedly cool look, and trendy location for entertaining or relaxing.

front porch on same street

But how does this influence how we interact with our neighbors? Even outgoing residents may feel odd to call to a neighbor on a rooftop three stories up from the street. And side-by-side rooftops don’t lend themselves to easy mobility from one to the other. It resembles a type of castle fortress, with the owners calling down to potential guests that need keys or passwords or codes to get to it. We may be bold in saying this, but it’s exclusive. It does not open the opportunity to meet your neighbors.

What are your thoughts? Do you think a rooftop porch is hindering our ability to befriend our neighbors? Are trendy and neighborly mutually exclusive? Does your dream home contribute to community development?

Where are our Third Places?

Much of the ABCD work we have been doing looks at the places and spaces that we use in our daily life. How do we use our parks? Where can we walk from point A to point B? How do the businesses in our neighborhood affect our routines? We all spend a considerable amount of time at work and at home, but where is that other space we go to meet friends, our significant other, or family that is comfortable and familiar? Ray Oldenburg, a professor at the University of West Florida calls this extra place beyond home and work the “third place.”

We have watched our favorite characters on weekly sitcoms go to their third place. On the show “Cheers”, it’s the bar. In “Friends”, it’s Central Perk. And on “How I Met Your Mother” it’s MacClaren’s Pub. One of the goals as we learn about and spend time in our North Denver community is to find the third place that we have here and what third places mean to community life.

We tried our local coffee shops – Laughing Latte, Black Eye Coffee, and Common Grounds. While there are some small groups just talking, mostly these shops are filled with people working on their laptops with headphones in, and only stopping to talk to the barista or ask to plug their computer charger in. In the bars it seems that as the neighborhood is branded more and more as trendy and “Top of the Town” that people that do not live or work here are coming to see what the cool, new scene is and not make lasting roots.

So what allows these social spaces to hold that welcoming, vibrant status as a third place? Is it one with more couches and less tables for laptops? Is it a smaller bar that not so many people think is trendy? In your lifetime have you known that you have had a third place? Where do you enjoy spending your time with friends and family that is not school or work? Do you have a third place in North Denver? We want to hear about yours!

Sharing Successes

The Next Step: Bringing Together Groups with Common Interests

Last week we began the next step in this continual process of community engagement and asset mapping work. This next step for us was a community conversation. It included bringing together members of the community with similar interests to simply meet each other and to discuss the findings we have compiled through one-on-one conversations so far. We chose to invite people based on the interests of folks we had already met and through email introductions. This conversation focused on youth, schools, and partnerships with local businesses in the community. In this conversation we shared the asset map we have created so far and anonymous quotes from people that spoke about education and youth during their one-on-ones. This helped create positive dialogue about the programs North Denver schools are currently implementing: both with in-school curriculum and after-school extracurricular activities.

The conversation was highly positive in a number of ways (many that we were not expecting!):

• We were able to introduce people that ordinarily may not have met each other, but are passionate about the same things;
• New assets were added to the map that we had not heard before;
• A way to explain the boundaries of Northwest Denver, including a color coordinated map;
• Follow-up task items created by attendees, including goals for school-business partnerships, collaboration between our local food bank and after-school programs, and ways to create future connections; and
• It provided a way to share the stories of the Jubilee Center, folks in the community, and what is happening in our local schools.

The follow up from this conversation is to check in with the attendees before school begins at the end of August and continue to share contacts that are passionate about the youth in our community.

Asset Mapping

40 interviews, 7 themes, countless individual gifts, associations, and institutions.

Yesterday we began the process of mapping, which was a big step we have been putting off, partly because we didn’t know how and partly because we didn’t feel we had enough information. After completing more than 40 interviews, taking our own walks and drives around the neighborhood, and hours of online research, we have put together a first edition map of the assets of North Denver.

We began by printing rereading all our interview transcripts up and finding themes that were mentioned by multiple people. Using this method, we discovered seven key themes that resonated with people in the community. These themes were:

- gentrification

- youth and education,

- language,

- neighborhood identity/history,

- leisure, 

- entrepreneurial background, and

- participation in city government.

Once we learned what was on our community’s collective mind, we began mapping the assets. Leaders in the ABCD sector have devised ways to break up the assets in a community into three main categories: (1) individuals gifts, (2) associations, and (3) institutions. We added a fourth category that we called economy and land that captures the flow of goods within the neighborhood and the space available. Some examples of the assets we found are:

• Individual gifts: tech-savviness, pastoral counseling, appreciation of arts and food, and culinary gifts.
• Associations: Coffee groups, North High School alumni, neighborhood associations, #WeAreNorthDenver, and business associations.
• Institutions: RTD, local restaurants, churches, Woodbury Library

With this inventory, we will begin by getting small groups together with common interests to talk about what they would like to accomplish together in the neighborhood and how  to use the strengths of the community toward these shared ends.  

A Lemonade Stand

Last week, we tried something new in our ABCD journey: opening a lemonade stand! What else says summertime in the neighborhood like getting an ice cold cup of lemonade while strolling the sidewalk? While most lemonade stands support the financial goals of a kid on the block, we made our lemonade free of charge so that we might meet as many people as we could. Our table on the corner of 32^nd and Wyandot offered a rare perspective on each walk of life in the neighborhood: four teenagers just finishing the school year at North High, a few mothers with strollers, a realtor meeting the owners of a new juice bar down the street, and everyone in between. As we poured each customer a cup, they told us a little about their day and their connection to the place. An older man was walking his dog around the streets where he grew up. He lives in LA now, and was only visiting, but he stopped by and told us some stories of being a young man in the North Side in the 1970s. Some who visited our table ran into passing friends, or struck up conversations with strangers. Life offers few spaces for these kinds of interactions: a chance to take out our headphones, pause our busy walk down the pavement, and be with the people with whom we share that pavement. We enjoyed the chance to share that space, and look forward to the next step in the journey!

Questions for community:

-          When was the last time young people on your block put up a lemonade stand?

-          Have you said hi to a neighbor today?

-          Have you heard a good story today?