A local initiative is finally ready to move beyond the design stages and into actualizing its goal — but it needs community support first.
The All Along Project, a collaboration between the local grassroots group Neighborhood Women and Lea Architecture, aims to correct the lack of historic and public spaces commemorating women, by utilizing available greenspaces. According to the project’s Kickstarter, only 1.9% of parks and monuments in New York City are named after women.
While the team originally hoped to create an entirely new park, they quickly realized that the problem of representation could have a more widespread and diverse solution. By utilizing pre-existing green space, the team came up with a way to embed women’s history without the burden of starting entirely from scratch.
In each of the city’s 59 community board districts, QR codes will adorn sidewalk pavers, railing plaques, and free-standing signs. Scanning a code leads the user to an app, where they can learn more about important women, past and present, that represent the best of their community.
The team hopes to raise $50,000 for the project and different tiers of donors can earn rewards such as tote bags, stickers, and postcards.
“We’ve spent the last year working with neighborhood organizers, archivists, community boards, designers, landscape architects, developers, and elected representatives to think of a way to change that,” said the team. “We have put in countless hours of work and have reached a point where we need some support to get this project off the ground. With your help, we can bring our project one step closer to reality!”
To learn more about the project, read our interview with one of the brains behind All Along, Greenpoint resident Jane Pool.