North Hill Silent Disco Dustup
In 2018, Art x Love partnered with First Serve to produce more than 30 volunteer initiatives in Akron’s North Hill and Summit Lake neighborhoods as part of our @PLAY Akron project. Art x Love was awarded a Knight Cities grant in 2017-2018 to explore every street in Akron’s 24 neighborhoods and work with residents on interactive art challenges that would bring diverse people together and encourage deeper community connections. Akron is a sanctuary city, and the North Hill neighborhood is one of several that has become home to immigrants and refugees from around the world. Our team conducted hundreds of interviews with North Hill residents, attended numerous community meetings, and identified more than a dozen initiatives to improve quality of life across the neighborhood.
The North Hill Silent Disco Dustup was born from the observation that some legacy residents were blaming the immigrants for litter in the neighborhood. It had been our team’s observation that no single population was responsible for this litter, and that much of it was spreading through the neighborhood due to environmental factors (i.e. wind, rain) and nearby dumping. Our team wanted to combat the stigmas forming from the spread of litter with a massive neighborhood cleanup in North Hill’s residential corridors.
We developed a 2-mile route for volunteers to dance and clean their way through the neighborhood. Tropical storm fallout weather led to the cancellation and rescheduling of our neighborhood cleanup for another date in the early fall. Keep Akron Beautiful donated litter grabbers and bags for volunteers to use, and Art x Love project leaders shuttled tools and supplies to minimize the number of participants in the street. Everyone had a great time.
Since 2018, North Hill leaders and representatives have since made collaborative community cleanups a signature part of their civic engagement and annual calendar of events.
