Front Yard Placemaking Toolkit

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The Musicant Group is excited to announce that it has been awarded a Knight Cities Challenge Grant in partnership with the Friendly Streets Initiative! 

This coming summer, we will create a platform of knowledge, action, and mutual support that will catalyze the transformation of large swaths of our cities into places full of community, connection, and opportunity.

We will do this by creating a data-driven placemaking toolkit to guide everyday citizens on the value of and process of transforming the most ubiquitous and underutilized space in our country: the American front lawn.

Front Yard Placemaking Toolkit: a platform for large-scale change will provide a step-by-step placemaking process that will enable citizens, first within St. Paul, then beyond, to turn their empty expanses of grass into places that they and their neighbors want to be.

The Front Yard Placemaking Toolkit will inspire and guide residents of all income levels and cultural backgrounds to turn their lawns into places where:

• Residents serendipitously meet their neighbors
• Children play
• Food is grown, prepared and eaten
• Social capital is built
• Civic issues are debated 
• Attachment to place is made

Our Data-driven Process
The toolkit will be developed, implemented, and disseminated in four phases in order to maximize its impact.

• First we will develop a draft toolkit based on The Musicant Group’s placemaking methodology.
• Second, our partner the Friendly Streets Initiative will then recruit 10-20 residents of the diverse Hamlin-Midway neighborhood of St. Paul to participate in a pilot project using the draft toolkit in the summer of 2016.
• Third, we will release the same draft toolkit to anyone interested in trying it out in their own lawns, with the commitment that they will provide us with feedback on how the process impacted their lives and how it could be improved.

We’ll then incorporate what we learned via the pilot project, and corresponding data, into a final Front Yard Placemaking Toolkit that would be released to the public free of charge in the Spring of 2017.​

Sign up to be the first to test our front lawn placemaking toolkit!

Transform your lawn into a center of community, connection, and invitation this summer! Help us test and refine our Front Lawn Placemaking Toolkit by signing up to receive a copy here.

Participation is not limited to any particular geography or type of dwelling unit. Renters and those in larger buildings are welcome and encouraged to participate. 

To learn more about the Front Yard Placemaking Toolkit, details of the project, and featured press, go here.