NOTE: Comment on Facebook in the space below to tell us what site-specific guerilla art project you'd like to see in the city! Soapboxes on Fountain Square? Train car seats surrounding Union Terminal? Get creative and you'll have a chance to be featured in an upcoming Soapbox story.
We’ve seen shipping containers used as temporary art installations and pigs decorated in city hotspots. We’ve enjoyed pianos in public and colorful yarn bombs en plein air as well.
Now you’re invited to propose your own do-it-yourself urban art project as part of a first-of-its-kind competition sponsored by the Architectural Foundation of Cincinnati and the University of Cincinnati Niehoff Urban Studio. The
DIY Urbanism in Cincinnati Competition grew out of a fall forum focused on grassroots, collaborative and innovative “guerilla projects” that can change the way we view and use the urban spaces around us.
In his presentation last November, Niehoff Studio Director and UC professor Frank Russell quoted David Harvey, author of “Right to the City,” as an inspiration for discussion about how to create opportunities for artists, architects, planners and members of the local design community, including students, to reinvision the city. “The Freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights,” according to Harvey.
Submit your ideas for a temporary exhibition for the public good and you will be eligible for cash prizes and to have your work exhibited at the Architectural Foundation of Cincinnati. Entering costs just $10 and the top prize is $500. Find complete competition guidelines by visiting the
Niehoff Studio online.
By Elissa Yancey
Follow Elissa on Twitter.
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