COUNTY COLLABORATES ON INTERACTIVE ART PIECES
Installations capture community’s journey through the COVID-19 pandemic
Boulder County Public Health is working with community partners to create a series of interactive art installations across the county that reflect community members’ experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to a project website, the exhibits feature “oral histories of hope and loss” from the pandemic. They were developed with guidance from residents and leaders in each municipality in the county.
All of the installations together form the Story Collective project, which is intended to capture the community’s journey through this time by expressing the “fears of the unknown woven with poignant memories, disconnects between the actions we take for ourselves and how they affect the community, and the not-so-subtle push and pull of constant, crucial, conflicting information leaving us feeling disjointed, pulled apart by violent ambivalence,” the website stated.
“The campaign centers around real voices from our communities and is the result of focus groups with residents from across Boulder County,” Indira Gujral, deputy director of Boulder County Public Health, stated in a release. “This led to the creation of a design team that included local government representatives and a diverse mix of residents consisting of, among others, a University of Colorado Boulder professor, a bluegrass musician, an opera singer and an immigration activist who worked collaboratively to shape the project.”
There will be a total of six art installations, with several already installed at the Firehouse Art Center at 667 Fourth Ave. in Longmont, the Fairy Garden between the intersection of East Street and East Second Street and the western shore of Barker Reservoir in Nederland, and at 186-189 N. Public Road in Lafayette. Others are slated to be added in Lyons and Boulder in the coming months.
More information about the project is available at storycollective.co.