DAYTON, OH (June 20, 2024)—Culture Works, Dayton’s local arts agency and united arts fund, dedicated a mosaic mural during the Greater Edgemont Community Coalition’s Annual Community Festival on Saturday, June 22, 2024 at the Edgemont Solar Garden Outdoor Classroom and Performance Space, located at 919 Miami Chapel Road in Dayton.  The mosaic is part of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Creative Placemaking grant project: Our Town Dayton: The Art of Business, which included a year-long program educating area artists about the business of the arts. The mosaic was designed with input from the Edgemont community as well as helping place tiles during the creation of the permanent art piece for the Solar Garden.

“Culture Works is grateful to bring programs like the NEA’s Our Town Creative Placemaking grant to our region,” says Lisa Hanson, President and CEO of Culture Works. “The beautiful outdoor classroom space with the community-inspired mosaic mural demonstrates how art builds partnerships, expresses our identity, unites the community, and makes our lives more vibrant. I can’t wait to see how this project impacts our community in the future.  It took an artist team to bring this beautiful project to life, and it also took community partnerships.”  “Parallax Advanced Research provided an online curriculum module for artist training and Sinclair Community College provided college credit to participants who submitted a portfolio to review.  Messer Construction built the wall and its supports and erected the sun sails and Ernst Concrete donated the cement. The Greater Edgemont Community Coalition hosted the project by hosting community outreach sessions and even moving dirt!”

The mosaic is the culmination of Culture Works-sponsored Our Town Dayton: The Art of Business, project funded by the NEA’s Creative Placement Grant with matching support from the Montgomery Arts and Cultural District and CenterPoint Energy. The project aimed to educate local artists in marketing by learning how to approach themselves and their art as a business. Seven area artists served as mentors to participating artists who learned skills such as how to promote themselves and their art, identify a target audience, financial planning and budgeting, and community engagement and outreach, to name a few, using the NEA-developed curriculum, “Spring Board for the Arts.”

“The Culture Works Our Town Dayton Creative Placemaking Project is truly an exciting nexus of artist, neighbors, and organizations aimed at enriching community centered spaces,” says City of Dayton Mayor, Jeffery Mims.  “I look forward to the positive impact this project will have on the Edgemont Solar Garden and all who call the neighborhood home.” The artists’ focus was on Dayton’s Edgemont’s Solar Garden, a project that was not just about art, but about community engagement. They asked the community for design input through open discussion, surveys, and ideation sessions. The artists worked hand in hand with the community, helping to articulate their ideas and bring them to life. The result was a beautiful mosaic, symbolizing the community’s united commitment to growing their food, represented by adinkra symbols and icons symbolizing water as a preservative for plants and all life.  In May, Edgemont’s Five Rivers Health Center opened its doors and invited artists and members of the community to assist in placing the tiles on the mosaic, further strengthening the bond between the project and the community.

“Culture Works Our Town Dayton is an excellent example of collaboration and art innovation to elevate cultural awareness within the Edgemont neighborhood,” said Montgomery County Commissioner Debbie Lieberman.

The Adinkra symbols include:

• Icons symbolizing water as a preservative for plants and all life.
• Brown hands reaching toward the sky.
• Sunlight represents hope for the future.

The words “Love poured into dreams. Home, Heart and Soil restored” from a poem written by one of the program’s trainees, are interwoven throughout the mural mosaic.

For more information about the Edgemont Solar Garden visit, GreaterEdgemont.com/Solar-Garden.

About the Edgemont Solar Garden

Edgemont Solar Garden was founded in 1978 through a partnership with City Commissioner Dean Lovelace, Brother Ed Zamierowski from the University of Dayton, and Mattie Davis, an Edgemont resident leader. Their combined efforts transformed a razed factory site on Miami Chapel Road into a neighborhood garden and community center. In recent years, the Edgemont Solar Garden partnered with Ohio State Extension and Homefull to renovate the greenhouse on the property. The renovation was funded by a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG). Repairs to the hoop house, construction of raised beds, and an update to the electric system were also completed with CDBG funds. A Dayton Mini-Grant was awarded to the solar garden to upgrade the water line in 2018. Partnerships with Central State Dayton and Extension, Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association (OEFFA), West Dayton Food Access Collective, Mt. Olive Baptist Church, Dunbar High School, and the University of Dayton Fitz Center Civic Scholars are underway.