CREATE Common Ground students implement design project in Ripley

Posted on by carlsmalltowncenter

Photo, left to right: CSTC community planner Thomas Gregory, student Rayce Belton, Mayor Chris Marsalis, student Shelby Jaco, assistant professor Silvina Lopez Barrera. Not pictured: student Nada Aziz.

RIPLEY, Miss.—Each year, a community in Northeast Mississippi is selected from a pool of applicants to participate with the Carl Small Town Center’s CREATE Common Ground class. CREATE Common Ground is the result of a partnership between the Carl Small Town Center (CSTC) at Mississippi State University and the CREATE Foundation, which began in 1998.

The course seeks to engage both students and municipal leaders in the community design process to begin thinking about design issues and opportunities. This year, assistant professor Silvina Lopez Barrerra and CSTC community planner Thomas Gregory served as instructors for the course.

Ripley, Mississippi was chosen as the 2018 CREATE Common Ground project as a result of an ongoing partnership between the Carl Small Town Center and the Ripley community. Students met with Ripley mayor Chris Marsalis and Ripley Main Street director Elizabeth Behm to identify opportunities for design interventions around the Tippah County Courthouse square.

Architecture students Nada Aziz, Rayce Belton, and Shelby Jaco developed schematic designs in early spring, which were presented to Mayor Marsalis and Ms. Behm during a community review in March.

Working with these local leaders, the team selected a narrow alley connecting a public parking lot to South Commerce Street as the site where the design intervention would be implemented. The students then combined their ideas and developed a singular design for the alley improvements.

On April 19, the students and instructors traveled to Ripley and spent the day installing handcrafted overhead light fixtures, which provide much needed light in the dark space. The students also painted a unique design on the freshly washed concrete surface to create interest.

Finally, wayfinding signage was made and sent to the City of Ripley to be affixed to the walls leading into the alley to let pedestrians know how to access the parking lot and courthouse square.

The CREATE Ripley project serves as a great example of how the design process can be used to help solve small town problems by combining creativity, hard work, and a little bit of money.

Kemp leads tour of CSTC’s Marking the Mule interpretive trail

Posted on by carlsmalltowncenter

MARKS, Miss.—As part of its weeklong celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Poor People’s Campaign, Carl Small Town Center Director Leah Kemp was invited to the community of Marks, Mississippi, to tour Martin Luther King III through the Marking the Mule interpretive trail.

Designed by the Carl Small Town Center (CSTC), the multi-modal Marking the Mule interpretive trail highlights the Marks Mule Train Civil Rights campaign, a vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s.

In July 2015, the CSTC was awarded a $25,000 Our Town grant by the National Endowment for the Arts to work with the community to vision a way to commemorate the historic civil rights campaign.

The yearlong public outreach campaign project engaged local residents, historians, architects and planners. The CSTC developed interpretive pedestrian and vehicle trails along with corresponding signage highlighting Civil Rights-related sites in Marks. The project also included a master plan for the designated Trailhead Park and the construction of a welcome sign showing interactive maps for new trails.

The CSTC recently received two statewide awards for its Marking the Mule project, which focused on advancing citizen engagement in the Marks community – a 2017 Public Outreach Award from the Mississippi Chapter of the American Planning Association and an AIA Design Award from the Mississippi Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

You can learn more about the Marking the Mule project on our projects page.