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?

Oh hey there Spiderman

Today, where returning from an interview we spotted this Spiderman! What will happen in North Denver next? :)

We are North Denver!

by Guest Blogger Lelanda Lee

In the first week of May, North Denver residents were confronted by at least 20 signs posted on white paper on utility posts that spewed racist messages against Hispanics. [See ABC 7 news story here.] The neighborhood quickly responded with a Twitter campaign (#WeAreNorthDenver and #SomosNorthDenver) that also appeared in other social media such as Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/wearenorthdenver), Instagram, and a new Website (wearenorthdenver.com).

What is heartening is how residents, workers, and business owners in North Denver are standing up for our diverse neighborhood and counting the many blessings of our diversity. Our Hispanic, Italian, and other cultural roots go deep, and North Denver is an exciting, interesting, and caring place in which to live and work, because we reflect acceptance, shared community values, and innovation.

Here at the Jubilee Center, our mission is to break the cycle of poverty for those who have been marginalized by the changing demographics and economic face of North Denver. Change is always hardest on those at the bottom of the economic ladder, who are one paycheck or one illness away from food insecurity, a shortage of funds to pay their rent or mortgage, and homelessness. The 2006-2009 recession is one from which many families have not recovered. Our new North Denver businesses are adding some jobs, but we don’t know how many other jobs have been priced out of the neighborhood by rising rents and real estate prices.

If you walk around the neighborhood these days, you will notice many signs of the changing face of North Denver. I spent an afternoon this week on Central Street near the 20th Street pedestrian bridge, drinking coffee in the breezy sunlit afternoon, listening to the white noise of the I-25 traffic below my view and gazing at the downtown high rise Denver skyline behind the nearer LoDo lofts and businesses on the south side of the interstate. I was surrounded on every side by new apartment and loft dwellings, with amenities like lanais and small landscaped areas for residents to be outdoors. The age ranges of most of the people I saw were mid-twenties to late-forties with a few outliers, many with dogs and toddlers in strollers.

I had many questions, which I didn’t have a chance to ask, like asking the employees of the cafes and restaurants if they lived in the area and if they could afford to live in the area. The parking signs typically allow a 2-hour parking period during the hours that stretch from 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM, and I wondered about where the residents parked their vehicles. I saw several city buses pass by, and I wondered if they offer enough convenience to wean residents and workers away from their vehicles. Being “on-the-ground,” so to speak, in the neighborhood, made me want to learn more from the local residents and workers about their individual stories, because #WeAreNorthDenver definitely has a story to tell. I think the Jubilee Center, and especially our ABCD (asset-based community development) project, can be part of that storytelling.

Guest blogger Lelanda Lee serves on the board of directors of the 32nd Avenue Jubilee Center and blogs at whatacupoftea.blogspot.com.

Unexpected Places

A couple of weeks ago, as we were driving around the Northwest Denver area, we noticed a very large, Victorian style home. Unsure of what it was, we got out one of our fancy, folded-with-love flyers and walked up to the home. Colorado is warming up for the summer, giving us beautiful, sunny days that are just perfect for sitting on a porch. When we walked up to the home, a few older gentlemen were sitting outside and told us that it was a home for veterans, called Heather Grove.

This home was an exciting find as we work to capture the entire picture of NW Denver and the people who make this place home. This past Thursday we got another gorgeous spring day that's just perfect for some front porch sitting and we went to talk to the gentlemen that reside in this beautiful home. We brought donuts to share and spent the afternoon listening to gossip, things the men enjoy doing, and little snapshots of their lives.