ABSTRACT
In 2015, Cornell University’s Rust to Green (R2G) Capstone Studio joined forces with Utica, New York’s Oneida Square neighborhood to co-create the first One World Flower Festival. Over a four-month period, R2G university–community partners conceived and produced the festival geography, elements, and programming with the aim of remaking Oneida Square into a safe, inclusive, and welcoming public place. As an act of creative placemaking the festival foregrounded the role arts and culture can play in the neighborhood’s revitalization and in strengthening its sense of place. Above all, it emphasized co-creation and collective “making” to strengthen and build social capital and catalyze ongoing community-driven change. For university seniors the service-learning studio offered an opportunity to apply and practice knowledge learned in the landscape architecture major. More importantly, it enabled them to learn R2G’s placemaking praxis and to collaborate with others, across differences, to undertake a placemaking project with lasting community impact and benefit.
