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Faces of Old South – Community portraits are the focus of a new installation

A Day of Service event Monday at Expressway Park helped introduce Baton Rougeans to a neighborhood project that partners residents of Old South Baton Rouge with the Arts Council, Center for Planning Excellence, BREC and others.

Dubbed “Community Dreaming: Identity through the Arts,” the project included an installation of about 70 black-and-white vinyl photos of local kids along the fenceline of a playground on South Boulevard underneath the I-10/I-110 split. The kids are all students at Polk Elementary, McKinley Middle and McKinley High School. They were photographed by professional photographers, by their teachers and by their peers for the project.

With funding from groups like the Kresge Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Arts Council and CPEX have been meeting with stakeholders in the neighborhood to come up with a plan that uses the arts and culture as a catalyst for much-needed improvements and revitalization.

“One thing that everybody said when we were meeting with the community was that [besides long-term revitalization], they wanted to see something happening soon,” says Tara Titone, project coordinator for CPEX.

The photography installation—the first in a series of creative placemaking projects in the area—was a way to celebrate the young people in the neighborhood and engage residents, Titone says. It’s also a “promise to the people of what’s to come.”

A group of student volunteers from LSU’s Office of Multicultural Affairs helped install the photos at the park as part of their Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service project.

In the next few months, construction is set to begin on the Downtown Greenway, which will wind its way through Expressway Park, connecting City Park to downtown through Old South. The path will likely cut through the playground—BREC has plans to redesign Expressway Park with additional amenities and to make it a focal point of the Greenway.

We’ve written before about the Greenway project and its potential affect on Old South. Read that story here.

See video from the event below: