It’s a quiet afternoon at the Bobolink Trailhead. Boulder resident Matthew Nesselrodt frequents this area to take a breather from life, either reading or playing his guitar. Today, he’s here to make a recommendation to city leaders – but not how you might expect.
He carefully steps down from the trail and hops across the rocks in the South Boulder Creek. He grabs his phone and starts recording the rushing water. He’s trying to capture what safety looks like for him in Boulder.
“To me, it’s having places that are open to the public that are some sort of home,” he said. “It means a place that I can reliably return to and to feel welcome and okay in that space.”
Safety is one of the main categories in the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan Update. It guides how city leaders use the land, from bus routes to grocery stores to parks. His recording will end up on an interactive map called Voicing Boulder – where people can share what they like or want to see change.
This type of civic engagement is new for Nesselrodt. He votes regularly and looks up candidate information, but hasn’t attended any city council meetings or events before. He’s a graduate student who works full-time to make ends meet.
“It can be very hard for people to make time or space to be civically minded or publicly engaged with their local cities,” he said. “(This project) encourages a civic filter all the time. So you can participate just by going about your life while you're at work, while you're at school, while you're walking on the trail.”
That’s why city leaders pursued a project like Voicing Boulder. This is one of five innovative approaches the city is pursuing to inform its plan update – with the goal of making it more accessible and fun.
“Traditionally, planners would ask community members, ‘Do you want L13 residential or LU whatever, in this area?’” Boulder’s Planning Engagement Strategist Vivan Castro-Wooldridge said. “Instead, we're trying to get at the base of what people want, and then we take that information and do the hard work behind the scenes to figure out, like, what are the steps needed to make that hope and dream happen?”
She said it’s a new way of collaborating, but they’re eager to bring more people to the table. To do that, they turned to artists to help them.
“This is about seeing the city differently,” Chris Carruth, artist and creator of the Voicing Boulder project, said. “I don't think many people, myself included, are walking around thinking about, ‘Well, what are the safety issues with the city?’ Or, ‘What is an inclusive local economy?’”
He pitched the project to city leaders and got the green light. Then he talked with nonprofits and community organizations, trying to get the word out. He also worked with the city to select 15 people with diverse backgrounds to continually post.
“That little shift of perspective, I think can open up new ways of looking at things,” Carruth said.
The website launched in July and has received over 100 photos, text and audio submissions. Each focuses on categories within the comprehensive plan. Like, for food access, cooking a turkey taco meal with what’s available through SNAP, or, for Multicultural and Multigenerational Community, the sound of kids enjoying street music. Traffic and climate change have been the most prominent themes, Carruth said.
University of Colorado Boulder student Divyanshu Singh has regularly submitted posts for the project. One featured the sound of him getting on the bus in the morning, and the sound of him saying goodbye to the bus driver at night.
“Before I made friends in my department, something that I really cherished was having connection with bus drivers,” he said. “I've seen the same faces for three years consecutively, same time every morning. That was really what brought a sense of safety and belongingness to the city.”
He also recorded the ambient sound outside his apartment in the morning and at night as well. This time, he was emphasizing the construction noise that lingered in the background behind the crickets.
“In three years, I've noticed the sound of the city running has just gone up and up and up, and there's no quiet time,” he said. “Coming from a person who lived in a very big city, it is nice, but also now it’s hindering how I go about my day.”
Some local governments across the nation have dabbled in this community engagement strategy, which researchers call PhotoVoice. In Massachusetts, residents were asked to take photos of how they’re keeping cool during the summer. Or, in a different project, community members took photos of what food access looked like and the issues surrounding it.
But it’s still a new concept outside of the research realm, said Chidinma Ibe with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. That’s often because city governments don’t have the time or money to invest in a new planning strategy, and some leaders may think art and city planning don’t mix.
Yet Ibe is excited Boulder is pursuing it, and said this method prevents those in power from jumping to conclusions.
“It's research in the hands of people who might not typically be regarded as researchers,” she said. “You're generating community organizing and leadership around that topic, (and) you're placing these things within a really specific, localized context.”
She said it also illuminates inequities. For one of her studies, a participant shared a photo of a dead rodent in the grocery store. They said this wouldn’t happen in a more affluent neighborhood.
“There’s just some things that only pictures can show and some things that can only be told by the people who are living through them,” she said.
But this power is conditional, Ibe said. City leaders need to be present and engaged when considering the recommendations, and residents from all backgrounds need to see how their posts directly correlate to policy change.
“If, for example, they're sharing it with an audience that is not fully receptive to what is being depicted, then it will necessarily not lead to as much change as one would hope,” she said.
Nesselrodt has some similar critiques of the project. He wishes those without phones, like unhoused people, could have shared their thoughts. He’s skeptical if his posts will be heard or lead to city action.
“I feel fairly disillusioned and pessimistic about how effective government is,” he said. “I'm cautiously optimistic that a project like this will be given actual credence in a governing body or structure.”
But Nesselrodt’s happy the city wants to hear from its residents.
“It was very cool that the city was willing to engage and valued art as something beyond entertainment, but valued art as a form of data that can actually be implemented or used to consider what we'd like the city to be,” he said.
There’s still discussion around how the photos, audio and text will be used. Project leaders plan to extract common themes and use specific posts in a report for policymakers, as well as conduct some exit interviews. There will also be an exhibition of all the art projects next spring.
Voicing Boulder is taking submissions through the end of September.
