Neighborhood. Community.
What do those words even mean?
Is there anything of value to be gained from trading experiences with those-familiar and unfamiliar-who live with and near us, with whom we share a place, an identity, deliberative power and decision-making processes, an infrastructure (streets, services, public spaces)? Given an opportunity to tell a story about ourselves to a listening audience of our neighbors, what do we choose to talk about, and why? Which stories- and whose stories- tend to be told, heard, and granted importance? Which and whose stories tend to remain unspoken and unheard? What do we, ourselves, tend to leave unsaid? For whom might it matter most to have an opportunity to tell a personal story and to have that story heard? For whom might it matter least? What's your story? What's mine? What's ours?
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Our Stories, Our Neighborhood, Our Lives You came to the United States from Colombia, South America. You built a successful business, teaching Spanish, and you like living in Lowry. You watched them build your house from the ground up, excited and anxious. You run arts and crafts workshops for children and adults and sell scrapbooking materials in a friendly, cozy shop in the center of Lowry's designed village. You remember driving East from Denver and coming to the forbidding expanse of fences and airfields, a civilian, stopped in your tracks from proceeding. Now, you walk your dog through Lowry in the morning and your neighbors see you and know you. Your heart is here. Your heart once failed you, its failure frightening you. You are heartsick that a man set a fire inside the B-52 on display outside the Air and Space Museum, destroying the cockpit, which used to be open to the public. You are heartbroken about a more incomprehensible loss: the sudden, violent loss of a loved one. You're a young artist, and you're happy here. You run an institution of learning that provides universal access to classes that range from real estate to fitness and from German to theatre. You used to work right down the street and around the corner, back when Lowry was an Air Force base, and it surprises and delights you that today, you reside here, in a lovely home. You are apprehensive about the high-density development that is transforming your new neighborhood into something you may dislike. You feel misled, and you dread the consequences: more traffic, more people. You love the overlay of history and present in the architecture and landscapes that surround you here. You no longer say that you live in Denver, but tend to say, rather, that you live at Lowry.
A couple of weeks ago, on a Thursday evening, you came together with your neighbors at one of Lowry's gem features: the John Hand Theatre at the Colorado Free University. The structure of the event was simple: you told a story onstage, and afterwards, you conversed with your neighbors. The room was filled with artists of many disciplines who had two days to create a piece of art or a performance in response to what they heard. On Sunday, you came back and saw what the artists had taken in, and what they'd made of their impressions. You talked about it. There were things you noticed that you'd never thought much about. Some of these insights, you shared. Others, you kept to yourself.
DIALOGUE AT LOWRY
Now, join your neighbors on Monday, August 18 at 6:30 p.m. at the Eisenhower Church for an evening of open dialogue, facilitated by Malia Crouse of the Institute on the Common Good (in partnership with Five Two Eight O). You need not have attended the prior events! Please, come and enjoy more stories and conversation, and talk about creative ways that your neighborhood can come together through stories, arts and dialogue.
(The Eisenhower Chapel is located at 293 Roslyn St, Denver, 80230.)
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Five Two Eight O has been funded
by the Case Foundation and will be working in four Denver neighborhoods
this summer. The work also is supported by the Institute for the Common
Good, housed at Regis University.
Please visit the website or contact us:
Call: 303.731.3104
Email: info@FiveTwoEightO.org |
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Coming up!
LOWRY DIALOGUE
Monday, August 18
6:30 p.m.
Eisenhower Chapel
293 Roslyn St.
SANTA FE DIALOGUE
Monday, September 8, 6:30 p.m.
Location TBA
FIVE POINTS STORIES
Thursday, September 4, 7 p.m.
Crossroads Theatre on the Rail
2590 Washington St,
Call for Entries!!
Potential artistic contributors and volunteers should call Artistic Director
Janna Goodwin
at 303.912.5935
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