Office for Socially Engaged Practice awards new grants

The Sam Fox School’s Office for Socially Engaged Practice is awarding six grants for courses, community exchange projects, and research this spring. The grants are positioned to connect students and faculty to communities in St. Louis to collaborate on meaningful work in art, architecture, and design.

Professor Patty Heyda will lead a course called Centering Change, which tasks students with thinking through personal and community healing related to the design of the proposed community center in honor of Michael Brown, Jr. The studio will work directly with the nonprofit Chosen for Change to imagine architectural possibilities of reparative transformation.

Assistant Professor Petra Kempf will teach Grounds for Play, bringing fourth graders at Lift for Life Academy together with architecture students to ideate, design, and build an obstacle course.

Lecturer Alexandra Mei will lead a landscape architecture studio in partnership with nonprofit 4theVille. Students will create design proposals for public spaces associated with the future MLK Cultural Boulevard, a network of public infrastructure enhancements to the Dr. Martin Luther King Drive corridor.

Other courses supported by the Office for Socially Engaged Practice promote student connection with St. Louis through site explorations. Professor Jack Risley’s #STL course will take 15 students on a weekly field trip to St. Louis’ many arts institutions, exploring the rich cultural and artistic resources the city offers. Art students in Lecturer Anika Todd’s Site as Origin: Sculpture and Expanded Media will explore the St. Louis riverfront and floodplain — including the Gateway Arch grounds, National Building Arts Center, and National Great Rivers Education Center — to examine histories of urban clearance, preservation, and how architectural materials persist after demolition.

Finally, student organization ArchEngage will collaborate with the Green City Coalition to construct and install benches in Peace Park in St. Louis’ College Hill neighborhood. Students spent the fall semester designing the benches and hope they will serve as a symbol of the school’s ongoing connection to the park, as well as an opportunity for students and community members to gather together.