Creatively engaging communities to inspire dialogue about important local and global issues.
Floraffiti® is a public art, place making project serving as a positive catalyst for individual, socio-cultural, and environmental well-being in the community. Place making initiatives such as Floraffiti aid in creating a sustainable visitor destination, reflecting a town actively invested in the welfare of all ages of the community and values its cultural identity by cultivating a stimulating mea
ns of strategic economic development. It allows community members who have had fewer opportunities to express what is important to them in a positive, self-affirming atmosphere. It combines two art forms in a distinctive way to present and digest information, responding to the local climate and embodying local stories.
05/08/2024
It’s National Bike Month! Join and on your bike for a ride tomorrow evening, Thursday, May 9th for a fun, informative ride. Meet at the Carrboro Town Hall at 6pm. Cyclists will visit Floraffiti sites, listen to the poetry and chat with the workshop leaders, Liza Wollf-Francis and Cortland Gilliam and some of the workshop participants. Get an in-depth view of the discussions that took place in the workshops about the local environmental justice issues and how the climate crisis affects them. Map for the bike ride: https://bit.ly/FloraffitiMap
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This project is sponsored by:
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Creatively engaging communities to inspire dialogue about important local and global issues.
04/19/2024
Thanks to Delphine Liu of The Daily Tarheel for the article on Floraffiti! 🌱
Excerpt in comments - Link in comments for full article
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This project is proudly sponsored by:
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03/31/2024
Floraffiti was interviewed with Randy Voller’s “On the Porch”. Catch the broadcast on WCHL and Chapelboro.com today at 4:07pm and 7:07pm!
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This project is proudly sponsored by:
Visit Chapel Hill & Orange County, NC
Town of Carrboro, NC
Downtown Chapel Hill
Strowd Roses, Inc. Foundation & Gene Strowd Community Rose Garden
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This Week: Liza Wolff-Francis (she/her) is the 8th Poet Laureate of Carrboro, North Carolina and she has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Carter Hubbard (she/her) is the founder and director of Floraffiti®, an award-winning, multifaceted placemaking, community engagement, and soc...
03/27/2024
Take yourself, family, and friends on a treasure hunt! The words are growing and the signs are up in Chapel Hill & Carrboro. Link to the map 👉 bit.ly/FloraffitiMap
More info in comments!
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The following organizations have helped to spread the growth, love, and support of Floraffiti:
Visit Chapel Hill & Orange County, NC
Town of Carrboro,
Downtown Chapel Hill
Strowd Roses, Inc. Foundation & Gene Strowd Community Rose Garden
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03/04/2024
What wonderful weather for planting! We had a fantastic turnout of Floragardener volunteers from as far as Raleigh! Lots of people stopping along our planting route to find out what was going on and others excited for the return of the project. More fun stories, a map, sprouting words, and a special event upcoming!
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This project is proudly sponsored by:
02/25/2024
On Saturday, participants in Cortland Gilliam’s poetry workshop, “White Green Futures,” addressed the fact that for some people, the negative effects of climate change loom somewhere in the distant future, while for others, particularly people of color, they are very much in their present. The participants then wrote poems inspired by their group discussion, which will be accessible at Floraffiti plantings in Chapel Hill and Carrboro this spring.
Help plant the poetic words of this year’s Floraffiti!
🌱 Carrboro Planting Day: Sat. March 2nd, 1-4 pm
🌱 Chapel Hill Planting Day: Sun. March 3rd, 1-4 pm
Sign up here: https://bit.ly/3O4icHH
This project is proudly sponsored by: Visit Chapel Hill & Orange County, NC Town of Carrboro, NC Strowd Roses, Inc. Foundation & Gene Strowd Community Rose Garden Downtown Chapel Hill
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Orange County Arts Commission & Eno Arts Mill Chapel Hill Arts North Carolina Arts Council INDY Week Chapel Hill Magazine The Scout Guide, Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill Explore the 919 Triangle Blog Blog Activate Good The ArtsCenter NC Culture
02/22/2024
Thanks for the shout out, Chapel Hill Magazine!
Cortland’s workshop is full, but we have lots of spots remaining to plant Floraffiti words on March 2nd & 3rd! For specific details and required registration, sign up here: https://bit.ly/3O4icHH
We’ve taken the time to collate all the worthy weekend events and entertainment in Orange County for your perusing pleasure.
02/22/2024
Floraffiti needs help planting words for this year’s project! Planting dates are March 2nd in Carrboro and March 3rd in Chapel Hill, 1-4 pm each day. Let’s have fun planting these first signs of bright green spring that will carry important messages. Sign up here: https://bit.ly/3O4icHH
More details at the sign-up site!
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This project is proudly sponsored by:
Town of Carrboro, NC
Visit Chapel Hill & Orange County, NC
Downtown Chapel Hill
Strowd Roses, Inc. Foundation & Gene Strowd Community Rose Garden
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Orange County Arts Commission & Eno Arts Mill The ArtsCenter Chapel Hill Magazine
02/18/2024
“White, Green Futures,” an environmental-justice-education and poetry-writing workshop with Cortland Gilliam. Free, open to teens and adults, Sat. Feb 24, 2-4 PM, Chapel Hill Public Library. Register at: https://bit.ly/47Bi6hK
Chapel Hill Poet Laureate Cortland Gilliam is a poet, educator, cultural organizer, and doctoral candidate in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In his academic work, he studies cultures of school discipline and histories of Black youth contributions to liberation movements of the late twentieth century. Within the community, Cortland serves as co-chair of the board of directors at the Marian Cheek Jackson Center, a nonprofit dedicated to making and preserving local history in Chapel Hill and Carrboro's Black neighborhoods. Relatedly, his creative work explores the hues and textures of racialized experiences, identities, and histories. His poetry has been published in Walter Magazine, Gulfstream Magazine, and the Triangle Poetry Twenty-Twenty-One anthology.
Poems created in the workshop will be audio-recorded and available via QR code at Floraffiti planting sites in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.
🌱🌱🌱 Plant with Floraffiti in March! Volunteer to help plant the seeds that will grow into inspirational living words in our communities this spring. 👉 More info & sign-up: https://bit.ly/PlantWithFloraffiti2024
This project is proudly sponsored by: Visit Chapel Hill & Orange County, NC l Town of Carrboro, NC Strowd Roses, Inc. Foundation & Gene Strowd Community Rose Garden Downtown Chapel Hill
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Orange County Arts Commission & Eno Arts Mill North Carolina Arts Council The ArtsCenter
02/13/2024
Thanks to participants in Liza Wolff Francis's poetry workshop on Saturday, Floraffiti has its first poems audio-recorded and its first words that will be planted in March!
There is one more poetry workshop to create words for Floraffiti…
On Saturday, Feb 24 from 2:00-4:00 PM, join Chapel Hill Poet Laureate Cortland Gilliam for an environmental justice education and poetry-writing workshop titled “White, Green Futures.” Poems written in the workshop will be audio-recorded and available via QR code at Floraffiti plantings in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. More info and registration at https://bit.ly/47Bi6hK.
It’s not too late to get involved with Floraffiti planting this March!
🌱🌱🌱 Volunteer to help plant the seeds that will grow into inspirational living words in our communities this spring. More info and registration at https://bit.ly/PlantWithFloraffiti2024.
This project is proudly sponsored by: Visit Chapel Hill & Orange County, NC Town of Carrboro, NC Downtown Chapel Hill Strowd Roses, Inc. Foundation & Gene Strowd Community Rose Garden
Visit Chapel Hill & Orange County, NC Orange County Arts Commission & Eno Arts Mill The ArtsCenter
This spring, words will again sprout from the ground in Carrboro and Chapel Hill, to grow into powerful, living extensions of local community voices! Floraffiti has returned! This year the project is focused on environmental justice, a movement that has widened our lens of environmental concern and activism. 🌱🌱🌱 Learn more here: https://bit.ly/Floraffiti
In the first phase of Floraffiti, poetry workshops will examine and respond to socio-political challenges and inequities that exist in the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro that are exacerbated by the climate crisis. Workshop participants will write creatively about their personal experiences, concerns, needs, and hopes for change. Each written piece will be read by its author and recorded. It will then correspond to a word to be planted in the form of seeds in a highly trafficked local area—the project’s second phase.
Floraffiti’s selected words and expressions will reach people who walk, bike, drive, and take the bus. Each poetry recording will be accessible at the planting site of its respective word or phrase via a QR code available 24/7 for as long as the plantings last.
This project is proudly sponsored by: Visit Chapel Hill & Orange County, NC Town of Carrboro, NC Strowd Roses, Inc. Foundation & Gene Strowd Community Rose Garden
Downtown Chapel Hill
Orange County Arts Commission & Eno Arts Mill The ArtsCenter
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Floraffiti®: Bringing Words to Life and Life to Words
Award winning Floraffiti®, in its 8th year, is a flexible project that can exist as a stand alone creative placemaking initiative with community engagement sessions to source words that are distinctive to its citizens and where they live.
Floraffiti® can deepen with a blend with social activism, visual, literary and performing arts. This combination provides a distinctive way to present and digest information, responding to the local climate and embodying these stories. This flexible project can provide support for:
· local municipal economic development
· literacy programming in various settings,
· schools and groups working in collaborative learning,
· communities in need of facilitation, equity, and inclusion, and
· aligning group and business teamwork.
Partnering with national and local poets, educators, and storytellers, through creative writing and poetry sessions, community members express what is important to them in a positive, self-affirming atmosphere. Whether it be planting words of inspiration or working together to create solo and group pieces, each participant will plant one word integral to his/her/their piece with artist, Carter Hubbard, becoming official FloraGardeners. Digging in the dirt and planting their words deeply ingrains the metaphorical process in which they are taking part. It is the green plants, like that of their voice, rising from a quiet place and brilliantly exposing to passerby’s the beauty and strength that exists within. The project culminates in a public event with the participants performing their poetry around the words in their height of growth.
Ready start a conversation about how Floraffiti® will fit into your city, community center, or school? Perhaps you have thought of flexible facet to utilize this project that we have not considered. Let’s collaborate!
