Middlesboro Competing to Host Live Music Downtown in 2015

Levitt Pavilions has existing venues in Westport, CT; Bethlehem, PA; Memphis, TN; Arlington, TX; Pasadena, CA; and Los Angeles, CA. Credit: Levitt Pavilions. 

Middlesboro is the only community in Kentucky and one of 26 cities nationally competing for the honor to host 10 live outdoor music events in 2015. Levitt Pavilions is a national organization behind the largest free concert series in America. Through their Levitt AMP [Your City] contest they are now expanding their network from six permanent venues to 10 additional cities with populations of less than 400,000 people.

Levitt AMP [Your City] contest graphic. Credit: Levitt Pavilions.

Now through November 30 people have an opportunity to vote to make Middlesboro, Kentucky a Levitt AMP [Your City] venue. The top 20 vote getters in the contest will then advance in the competition and ten winners will be selected by Levitt Pavilions.

A special focus of the Levitt Pavilions organization as well as other arts organizations nationally is on a concept called "creative placemaking." This process at its essence involves working with artists and arts organizations to enrich places and make them a more enjoyable place to live. In formulating the AMP [Your City] contest, Levitt especially sought out neglected public spaces with a potential to be transformed.

Discover Downtown Middlesboro President Jay Shoffner said of Middlesboro's entry: "We could not imagine a better fit for our organization. For over a year now since our first Better Block event in October 2013, Downtown Middlesboro has won statewide and national attention for our creative placemaking work. What better place than in the town where Ragtime music was invented, to host 10 live music events with major acts. It just doesn't get any better than that."

Ben Harney, Father of Ragtime.
Credit: DDM.

Benjamin Harney, a Louisville native and called by many the "Father of Ragtime" lived in Middlesborough (as the town was named then, later the spelling was changed) for a brief time from 1890 to 1893. This was just after the town was founded and the population boomed from a few thousand people to over 7,000. He learned the syncopated rhythms that later became Ragtime by combining African America folk tunes with the staccato piano playing technique that became a worldwide sensation. Harney was the first to publish Ragtime music for commercial sale. His success catapulted him to shows in New York City and touring all over the world.

Today leaders in Middlesboro realize the important role that arts and culture have to play in creating a livable city with a great quality of life. Low-cost interventions that fall under the category of "tactical urbanism" have been used to enhance underutilized spaces downtown. Vacant lots have been transformed in to pop-up parks. Pop-up shops have gone in vacant storefronts. And parklets, sharrows, and guerilla way-finding signs are transforming how people interact with the streets and sidewalks in town. Taken together all of these efforts will also be a major help in the bid of Middlesboro to be named a "Kentucky Trail Town."

Another major initiative presently underway is to build a world class trail system. Daniel Boone and a quarter million settlers passed through this area between 1775 and around 1812. Work is underway to recreate portions of the former "Boone Trace" as it was called as part of a trail that connects the downtown with the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park less than two miles away.

Levitt AMP Middlesboro venue photos, before and after. Credit: DDM.

Then there is the lot where the performances would occur. One of the first initiatives that Discover Downtown Middlesboro undertook was establishing a farmers' market after the organization was founded in 2006. For a variety of reasons a market was started though never took off. Today this vacant lot at a prime spot in the heart of our downtown is vacant and forelorn. Utilizing plans generated by the Department of Landscape Architecture from the University of Kentucky, we hope to transform this lot in to a venue for live music and events.

Perhaps DDM Executive Director Isaac Kremer best described the potential of the concert series for our area, "Winning the designation of a Levitt AMP city by the Levitt Pavilions organization would give a major boost to our city and region at a time we need this most. Job loss we've experienced through the coal industry means that we need to work harder and smarter than ever before to attract people and dollars downtown. That, and there is nothing better than free live music to bring people together and strengthen the already strong social fabric of our Appalachian region."

The public is invited to vote between now and November 30. Instructions for how to vote are on the Discover Downtown Middlesboro website and Facebook page. You can also find directions on the Levitt AMP [Your City] contest page. If anyone has any questions they are welcome to contact DDM at (606) 248-6155 or visit www.downtownmiddlesboro.org.

Image Credits:

• Levitt Map - https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqOpLJyFJ3uEGkflzg1m5v9Z6w8KiOaCehAa66wTcsFAaT4zc9XqgS92pIo_IAXOj_3dR1ivi3qwQGUUv5qNXGQIG2DT7lPuZ6CCs42ELzR_mASq0XWKhdFe5sbIERSyFJlxpuqdR7Dos/s1600/levitt+map+copy.png
• Ben Harney - https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcM19KUEf_Ak6ns5un0eVD1yoTdtnSBekUTgAjXYkOePYVKzvggl-RDJtxfjK-47V3oFU-Sn_bFp0_rB3ucJ-IKh5eEhT4miSWHcybeBcaWrhLA1x7Dn7DDTiKv2VZkSP5JgXcVcNpOJo/s1600/BEN+HARNEY.jpg
• Farmers Market Before Picture - https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtbupobIsWpIgFCAolTVEr4zqRzUUIQgyI5Ga_Ew0fvovJ-PfiLtPq1szUBw0F66S2K4SMhwtT4DTSP0T7Oux9YmoUbh2oL4ThFVeAhh0-7a3EkouAjqlCsNDN94U5tnt25R3rapt1zS0/s1600/Discover+Downtown+Middlesboro_Public+Space.png
• Levitt AMP Middlesboro Pop-up Park After Picture - https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHrYv8f_3uyXQ_e5zIbUiXbAyUWNYhHLXDG4MIT8ek_ZR72rK6n20IsZspawKFBS3p0T5HvBUWOdU-TmZVbJD_6b2rq940UPfJjWk6Px4g96l-W2n7jqM6mfqloH9sheWBLzWye-xxqmo/s1600/Discover+Downtown+Middlesboro_AMP+Image.png 

Knitting the Hat, Building the Chair, Making the Place

Residents involved in creative placemaking during our Better Block event in May 2014.

We had the unique opportunity to participate in the "Beyond the Building: Performing Arts and Transforming Place" webinar hosted by the National Endowment of the Arts and several leading national performing arts organizations. Now, before we go much further, we know you're going to ask what is a Main Street® organization doing participating in a national discussion like this? The answer is quite simple. While arts organizations are beginning to realize the power that comes from being rooted in a particular place, Main Street folks have been doing this work for over 35 years restoring historic downtown areas all over the country.

The Four-Point Approach emphasizes grassroots community action in four areas: Organization, Promotion, Design, and Economic Restructuring. These just happen to correspond with the four elements of real estate value: Civic, Social, Physical, and Economic. Participation of volunteers is a critical ingredient to the success of a well functioning Main Street organization.

Arts organizations have increasingly come to recognize the importance of serving their community. They would be well advised to look in to the success of the nearly 1600 Main Street programs all over the country. As Donovan Rypkema so presciently observed, "There is no more cost effective economic development program anywhere than Main Street." Long before creative placemaking came in to vogue, Main Street leaders were on the leading edge to bring new life and vitality to their communities. Today there appears to be an unprecedented opportunity for Main Street programs and arts organizations to collaborate.

That has been our experience the past few years in Middlesboro, Kentucky. We've put creative placemaking at the center of our restoration efforts. Tactical urbanism is a strategy we've employed to empower citizens to make short-term changes that lead to long-term improvement. Hundreds of volunteers have assisted in making pop-up parks, pop-up shops, and parklets. For more about this work read here and here.

Art classes are  new addition to the Makers Market.

Most recently our Makers Market has converted a vacant storefront in to a place where local artists, crafters, and food producers are able to gather and show their work. With nearly three dozen makers now represented, this market has become an important center for the civic, economic, and social life of our downtown.

For every Middlesboro there are plenty of other examples too. One of our favorites is Greensboro, Alabama. There the Pie+Lab started with the audacious plan of selling pie. Since 2006 they have generated over $15 million of profits that they've reinvested in to the community. They have also diversified and now make bikes out of bamboo, crafts and fashion pieces that are distributed to national retailers, and even gotten in to child care.

Where these creative placemaking or Main Street movements have taken off, they have had a salutary effect on their community and enhanced civic pride. Providing an invitation for local people to participate in celebrating, enhancing, and making their place better is some of the most important work being done anywhere today. Period.

Which brings us back to our headline. Stephen Sondheim in Sunday in the Park with George described the artistic process in some of the most touching and simple terms.

Finishing the hat--how you have to finish the hat.

How you watch the rest of the world from a window

while you finish the hat....
And when the woman that you wanted goes,
You can say to yourself, "Well, I give what I give."
But the woman who won't wait for you know
That however you live,
There's a part of you always standing by,
Mapping out the sky,
Finishing a hat...
Starting on a hat...
Finishing a hat...
Look I made a hat...
Where there never was a hat.

- Stephen Sondheim, "Finishing the Hat," Sunday in the Park with George

In a way this is not unlike what folks in Main Street do every day. Much like an artist we "watch the rest of the world from a window" and have a creative separation or distance from the place that we serve. In the Main Street world our product is not a painting, a composition, or a hat; rather, it is transformation of the downtown that some might consider a three dimensional art object. In order to bring meaningful change about it is necessary to understand the creative process, the necessity of overcoming an often decades-long sense of loss, and to provide a new narrative that will help to bring renewed life and vitality downtown. While Main Street leaders may not be making hats like the title character George Seurat , we understand what it means to care about something intensely and how to act in a way that makes something new. Extending Sondheim's metaphor, you could view a downtown as simply being a very large hat. Or, to put it a slightly different way, restoring a downtown is like making a hat.

Building a Chair

While the webinar was ongoing, we set about a creative placemaking process right here at our Makers Market. We made a chair out of shipping pallets. This is far more than just a chair. It is something we can place on the sidewalk (also called "chair bombing"). When people sit on that chair it builds community. When painted bright colors it creates a sense of visual delight. Perhaps the clincher though is the use of salvaged materials we divert waste from landfills. Involving local folks in the making of the chair demonstrates their ability to bring change about and gives them a sense of ownership in the results.

The process begins by ripping pallets off by making a cut along the inside of a the rail. They can then be pried off and the nails removed.

From here the wood is cut to dimension.

Sanding the chair and getting ready to paint.

The finished chair.

Making the Place
Somehow we need to bridge these worlds of arts, community development, and Main Street. That is exactly what we're trying to do in Middlesboro, Kentucky. While our tactical urbanism and Makers Market are good steps in this direction, that's only the beginning. Here is what we have coming up:

• November 18, 6:30pm-8pm, Tri-State Messiah Sing Along Dress Rehearsal, First Baptist Church, 2300 Cumberland Ave. In preparation for Handel's Messiah, we'll have a dress rehearsal at First Baptist. This is your chance to get familiar with the music and be ready for the big event. Cookies and light refreshments will be provided.
• December 6, 3pm, Middlesborough Christmas Parade, along Cumberland Ave in downtown Middlesborough. The Middlesboro High School Band, marching groups, youth groups, churches, and fire companies will ring in the Christmas season. You can easily register online any time before November 25. No late registrations will be accepted.
• December 6, 7pm-8:30pm, Tri-State Messiah Sing Along, First Baptist Church, 2300 Cumberland Ave. We will ring in the Christmas season with selections from Handel’s most well-known work...featuring live musicians and local talent. The best part? The choir is comprised of... YOU! If you love to sing along, or even if you’d like to sit back and listen, we invite you and yours to join us for an evening of Hallelujah’s.

In 2015 our plans are even greater. We will seek to expand and grow our relationship with the Kentucky Arts Council through applying for a competitive grant in February 2015. This will most likely be focused on expanding our Makers Market. We're seeking to make this in to a venue for job training and entrepreneurship. Providing our makers with opportunities to bring their work to market will help to generate wealth.

The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks Home that our organization owns holds great potential. Repurposing this in to a place for artists and creative placemaking will also be high on our agenda.

Then there is our participation in the Levitt AMP [Your City] contest. Middlesboro is one of 26 communities nationally competing to hold 10 live performance events in 2015. Online voting for the competition continues through November 30. Of the top 20 vote getters, 10 will be selected by Levitt Pavilions to host concerts. Please vote to help us win this contest today!

To close, creative placemaking holds great potential to strengthen places all over. Arts and performance have a central role in creating better places since at least Ancient Greece, if not back to the paintings of Lascaux. If you want to find the cutting edge of where this work is being done, however, you'll just have to visit us in Middlesboro, Kentucky.

Vote to Make Middlesboro, Kentucky a Live Music Destination in 2015!

Middlesboro, Kentucky is one of 26 cities nationally competing in the Levitt AMP [Your City] contest. We need your help to win. Voting is underway from now through November 30. Go and cast your vote to help us bring 10 free live concerts downtown in 2015.

The Levitt AMP [Your City] Grant Awards is an exciting new matching grant program made possible by Levitt Pavilions, a national nonprofit dedicated to strengthening the social fabric of America through the power of free, live music. With Levitt AMP, the joy of free, live music will be brought to small and mid-sized cities across the country.


While Levitt’s signature creative placemaking program of 50+ free concerts annually at each Levitt venue is tailored to large cities with metro populations of over 400,000 (due to financial sustainability and audience development considerations), the Levitt AMP [Your City] Grant Awards are specifically designed to meet the needs and capacity of small and mid-sized cities.

Here are your step by step directions for how to vote and help Middlesboro win.

1. Go "Sign Up" at Levitt AMP and fill out the form. Direct link: http://amp.levittpavilions.org/voter-registration-page/

2. A confirmation message will be sent to your e-mail Inbox. Find that email and confirm that your address is active.

3. Then go to the Levitt AMP page again and log in. Direct link: http://amp.levittpavilions.org/

4. Find the Middlesboro entry in the contest. Direct link: http://amp.levittpavilions.org/single/event_id/294/?action=view

5. Scroll to the bottom and select "Vote."