Danitra Jones: Sharing the Value of Green Tech Station

Meet Danitra. Danitra Jones is one of three community organizers with Northwest Side Community Development Corporation (NWSCDC), the nonprofit organization that spearheaded the creation of Green Tech Station.

With support of Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD), City of Milwaukee Redevelopment Authority, the nonprofit Reflo, and other partners, NWSCDC is proud of the opportunity Green Tech Station represents for the surrounding neighborhoods.

She credits NWSCDC’s Planning & Community Development Manager Sarah Bregant with carrying out the vision to make Green Tech Station a welcoming reality on what was previously a contaminated no-man’s land abandoned by industry. The new community gathering and educational space uses green infrastructure to show what kind of transformation is possible when dedicated partners come together, even in the harshest urban landscape.

“One thing I’m hopeful for is the continuation of building up our community on the north side, but with positive things that actually will improve individuals’ quality of life. But then involve the community in it. Not just put things here,” Danitra says. “But actually sit down with the residents and say, hey, what would you need to improve the quality of life? So that you can feel comfortable in your community and that you can feel you are being a part of something, not just someone putting something in your area.”

Green Tech Station provides a quality gathering space the community was hungry for, according to NWSCDC. “This is a perfect opportunity for residents and different organizations to come about and teach the community what their organization is and how you connect people to resources,” she says.

At the same time the novel research and demonstration site showcases Milwaukee’s leadership in green infrastructure technologies that are improving quality of life to neighborhoods throughout the city. Bioswales and cisterns like those on display at Green Tech Station help manage stormwater at schoolyards and other sites across Milwaukee, for example, and vacant parcels replanted as urban farms or community gardens are served by rainwater harvesting. Native plants in residential rain gardens and street trees and porous pavers in public right-of-ways look better than naked asphalt, but also soak up stormwater. All together, green infrastructure features add up to help reduce flood risk and protect Lake Michigan. Visitors can get a better sense of how those features work together to make a difference at Green Tech Station.

To arrange a site tour. organize a community meeting, or schedule a field trip of Green Tech Station, contact NWSCDC.

Camille Nitsch: A Lab Chemist Engineering Stormwater Solutions

Meet Camille. Camille Nitsch is a student at Marquette University specializing in environmental engineering.

She and fellow Marquette student Joe Branca visit Green Tech Station as a field site for an ongoing experiment considering how the media in bioswales can be optimized to remove dissolved phosphorus and nitrogen from urban stormwater. This work is important because excess nutrients, which runs off the land from various sources including lawn fertilizer, can contribute to harmful algal blooms or other ecologically harmful effects in receiving waters. For us in Milwaukee, managing nutrients like phosphorus ultimately means a healthier Lake Michigan.

Marquette has built an array of “mesocosms” in sealed white plastic barrels containing mixtures of soil, sand, and compost—plus special amendments that retain moisture to increase microbial nitrogen update and coal slag to react with dissolved phosphorus. These barrels are housed at Green Tech Station next to the test plaza, where they are exposed to controlled amounts of “synthetic stormwater.” The barrels have sampling devices attached that allow the Marquette team to measure how well different mixtures perform.

The object of the experiment is to quantify the performance of the various mesocosms in order to inform the best designs for larger-scale systems like urban bioswales or other green infrastructure.

If a certain mixture is best at capturing and removing phosphorus from stormwater, for example, this would be good to know for engineers designing systems to meet water-quality goals like those in agreements known as TMDLs (water nerd jargon for total maximum daily loads). There is a TMDL for the Milwaukee River Basin that sets a limit for total phosphorus in the water. We know bioswales should help manage nutrient pollution, but Marquette’s research is important because it promises to quantify how a specific combination of factors makes a measurable difference with a contaminant of concern. The knowledge gained can help define different tools in the portfolio of strategies to meet water quality goals under the TMDL.

Camille works mainly in the lab. She prepares the synthetic stormwater applied to the mesocosms by mixing tap water with a solution of potassium chloride. She also studies the water chemistry of control systems smaller than the mesocosms so the Marquette team has an idea of what to expect in the field.

Camille attended an engineering magnet high school and is a highly motivated undergraduate passionate about doing scientific work. Helping to make a difference one environment at a time is the kind of work she wants to pursue. “I'm driven because there are not a lot of women in STEM,” she says. “I wanted to show that anything is possible.”

Joe Branca: Researching Bioretention Devices to Improve Water Quality

Meet Joe. Joe Branca is a student at Marquette University studying environmental engineering.

He and fellow Marquette student Camille Nitsche visit Green Tech Station as a field site for an ongoing experiment considering how the media in bioswales can be optimized to remove dissolved phosphorus and nitrogen from urban stormwater. This work is important because excess nutrients, which runs off the land from various sources including lawn fertilizer, can contribute to harmful algal blooms or other ecologically harmful effects in receiving waters. For us in Milwaukee, managing nutrients like phosphorus ultimately means a healthier Lake Michigan.

Marquette has built an array of “mesocosms” in sealed white plastic barrels containing mixtures of soil, sand, and compost—plus special amendments that retain moisture to increase microbial nitrogen update and coal slag to react with dissolved phosphorus. These barrels are housed at Green Tech Station next to the test plaza, where they are exposed to controlled amounts of “synthetic stormwater.” The barrels have sampling devices attached that allow the Marquette team to measure how well different mixtures perform.

The object of the experiment is to quantify the performance of the various mesocosms in order to inform the best designs for larger-scale systems like urban bioswales or other green infrastructure.

If a certain mixture is best at capturing and removing phosphorus from stormwater, for example, this would be good to know for engineers designing systems to meet water-quality goals like those in agreements known as TMDLs (water nerd jargon for total maximum daily loads). There is a TMDL for the Milwaukee River Basin that sets a limit for total phosphorus in the water. We know bioswales should help manage nutrient pollution, but Marquette’s research is important because it promises to quantify how a specific combination of factors makes a measurable difference with a contaminant of concern. The knowledge gained can help define different tools in the portfolio of strategies to meet water quality goals under the TMDL.

Joe has found the collaborative research at Green Tech Station inspiring and exciting. “I was thinking about doing urban planning or environmental engineering for my master’s,” Joe says. “This has further made me interested in this work and makes me want to create sites similar to this in the future and work with green infrastructure.”

Ashanti Weeks: ArtWorks Educating Neighbors Through Murals & Art

Meet Ashanti. Ashanti Weeks is a sophomore at Bryant & Stratton College pursuing her bachelor’s in business and human resources with an ambition to open her own restaurant.

A longtime resident of Milwaukee’s Garden Homes neighborhood, Ashanti has been involved with the nonprofit ArtWorks for Milwaukee for four years. She started as a high school intern and in 2021 served as a lead artist assistant. Ashanti supported the high school interns painting water-themed benches at Green Tech Station as well as the bottlecap mural containing 12,000 plastic bottlecaps (In addition to spelling out the site’s name in multiple colors, the bottlecaps are collaged to show the flowing of Lincoln Creek into the Milwaukee River and Lake Michigan).

Ashanti also co-led a virtual walking tour of the Garden Home neighborhood in 2021. She described various murals ArtWorks has installed in Garden Homes that show both the storied and troubled past of the neighborhood as well as aspirations by youth for its future.

She’s learned that art can be connected to anything and this fact used to make positive community change. “Art is you. It’s your way of speaking—expressing how you feel and what changes you would like to make in the world. [To a young person] I would say, Voice your opinion through art. Get involved. Live for your community. If you want something to change, you gotta make the change.”

Chris Pack: Crew Chief at the Front Lines of Climate Change

Meet Chris. Chris Pack has worked with Cream City Conservation Corps (also known as “C4”) since March 2021 as a crew leader running a pilot program that trains new workers in green infrastructure maintenance.

Supported by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD), the workforce program is called Fresh Coast, Fresh Start. Funded for three years into 2024, it’s designed for adult “opportunity candidates,” described by MMSD as “including reentering citizens, unemployed, underemployed, and career-changing adults.” Pack and his crew work at Milwaukee County Parks and other sites—including Green Tech Station—to go in and maintain green infrastructure features. This involves significant outdoor manual labor, the ability to identify and remove invasive plant species, and working knowledge of how different green infrastructure features are designed to function so they can be remedied if there’s a problem.

The skills and experience involved are intended to grow the workforce of skilled laborers among racial and demographic groups underrepresented in this kind of work—important to build a more inclusive economy and a more equitable society in a truly “water-centric city.” That’s in addition to the critical importance of properly maintaining green infrastructure itself, which is important to slow the flow of urban stormwater in the face of the more extreme storms experienced and expected with climate change.

“A lot of what we do is invasives removal from these features to keep them functioning properly,” Chris says. “They're learning a lot about stormwater management throughout this process with the end result of hopefully getting some job skills and getting them hired on with some Milwaukee County Parks and some expertise that might be missing within the parks system for managing the green infrastructure features.”

Dontae Luttrell: Reflo Internship Introduced Him to Green Infrastructure

Meet Dontae. Dontae Luttrell is a senior at North Division High School who worked as an environmental intern for the nonprofit Reflo in support of Green Tech Station.

His math and art teachers recommended Dontae for the internship. Dontae says in the interview with the team, they liked his spirit. On his first day, he didn’t know what to expect but it ended up being two hours of shoveling gravel to uncover the corner of the Green Tech Station underground cistern. There was something puzzling going on with the cistern’s water level, and the engineers needed the interns to dig it up in order to investigate.

While manual labor is a big part of being a Reflo high school intern, it’s not the only aspect. Dontae also helped lead public tours of Green Tech Station during Doors Open Milwaukee, served as an ambassador for the green schoolyard redevelopment at North Division High School, helped weed and pick up trash at various green infrastructure sites that Reflo supports throughout Milwaukee, and helped table at public outreach events. As one of two North Division student ambassadors, Dontae also served as a key voice interviewed at a press conference where he conducted tours of the refurbished grounds. (He actually helped build another underground cistern at his school. It’s beneath a porous pavement promenade that collects water from the school’s tennis courts.)

Through his work at Green Tech Station, Dontae learned what a bioswale was. He learned how green infrastructure helps keep water from overwhelming the sewer system. But most of all Dontae credits his internship with opening doors for pursuing what he wants out of life. He worked closely with Reflo’s Justin Hegarty, Wilniesha Smith, and Kareem Benson-White during different phases of the internship. He says he appreciates their mentorship. “Now, I think I look at it at a different perspective,” he reflects. “Everything is not going to be given to you. You gotta go get it. Reflo has given me the chance to go get what I want.”

After graduation, Dontae hopes to attend MATC and study music production and wants to save up to attend the LA Film School. For now, you might hear him mixing his own beats and producing his own music from his Chromebook.

Find Dontae (handle: FSO Tae) on Sound Cloud or YouTube. FSO, he says, is short for “Fun Size Only.”

Kayla Hooper: Connecting Us to Our Five Great Lakes

Meet Kayla. Kayla Hooper, who attends Pius XI High School, is an artist who painted several benches at Green Tech Station for her internship with ArtWorks for Milwaukee.

For her bench design, she created swirling cloud-like forms of white on a background of pale blue. Look closely, though, and you may notice that hidden among those watery forms are the shapes of the five Laurentian Great Lakes. You may remember them from schoolwork by the mnemonic “HOMES”—standing for Lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. Collectively, the Great Lakes contain about 20% of Earth’s surface freshwater.

Kayla hid her Great Lakes in plain sight in order to support the educational mission of Green Tech Station. She hopes visiting students will spy the familiar shapes and recognize where they belong on maps. Kayla also hopes this increases young people’s connection to the nearest Great Lake—Lake Michigan. After all, Milwaukee exists right on its coast!

“The most interesting thing I learned [about Lake Michigan] is just how big it is,” Kayla says. “I knew it was big. I didn't know it was one of the bigger Lakes… Of course, Lake Superior is bigger.”

She hopes people show they care for themselves and the world by not putting trash into the Lakes and working to clean them up.

Kayla says her favorite part of her ArtWorks internship was painting the benches. She got done with her own so quickly that she also helped others finish theirs. Each was rendered in a completely different style Kayla emulated to serve each artist’s vision.

Pointing to a comic-like bright pink-and-green design featuring grapefruit-like lily pads on the seat and the eyes of a watchful frog on the back, Kayla says, “This is the one I feel most proudest about helping with because I think I made it to what it could fully be.”

She also helped lead artist Jenni Reinke complete her darker bench depicting a scene from a water well and a seemingly Seuss-inspired blue bench featuring tiny cartoon fish.

Emily Thao: Young Artist Raising Awareness About Water Pollution

Meet Emily. Emily Thao, a student at Hmong American Peace Academy, is an artist who designed and pained one of the benches at Green Tech Station.

Inspired by cleanups of nearby Lincoln Creek where the ArtWorks interns pulled plastic trash and other debris from our local waterways, Emily painted the theme of pollution on her bench.

At first, she thought to paint a beach with blue water, but then decided her bench could help tell a story about the process of pollution—on the left of her bench, the scene is clear with blue and green, but on the right the water color is murky where cans and bottles mar the scene.

Emily, whose native tongue is Hmong, was also impressed with a bench painted by another ArtWorks artist. On that bench, the word for water is depicted in several different languages, including Hmong: dej.

Nazareth Casillas-Reyes: Sounding the Alarm on Ocean Acidification

Meet Nazareth. Nazareth Casillas-Reyes, a student at Escuela Verde High School, loves art and the environment. She is an artist who designed and painted one of the benches at Green Tech Station.

Her design is inspired by coral reefs—a beautiful vibrant design that belies the sad reality that ocean acidification is destroying reefs around the world. The oceans naturally absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide, but over the past two hundred years human activities have added so much carbon dioxide that the water is becoming more acidic. This contributes to damaging coral reefs, which Nazareth learned are actually living structures that also provide unique habitat for fish and other creatures.

Just 17 years old, in between working three summer jobs Nazareth says she enjoyed being her ArtWorks for Milwaukee project at Green Tech Station. “It was just really relaxing to come and paint. It was really soothing. With everyone together, it made me feel really good.”

Even though reefs grow in saltwater oceans and not our freshwater Great Lakes, Nazareth appreciates the interconnectedness of all life on Earth. Nazareth hopes her bench design inspires people to think about the bigger connections between human behavior and the planet. “I just really love doing art and painting and things like that,” Nazareth says. “And also I’m really into environmentalism—just taking care of our planet, because it's the only one we have.”

Wilniesha Smith: A Guide To Understanding the Value of Green Spaces

Meet Niesha. Wilniesha Smith coordinates the environmental intern program for the Milwaukee nonprofit Reflo as well as supporting community engagement around various placemaking projects involving green infrastructure.

Niesha supports different aspects of three transformative green infrastructure projects in the 30th Street Corridor: Benjamin Franklin’s schoolyard redevelopment, the creation of Melvina Park, and Green Tech Station. In summer 2021 she shared her expertise by co-leading a (virtual) WaterMarks walk with artist Brad Anthony Bernard and ArtWorks for Milwaukee intern Will Plautz.

“Ben Franklin is a schoolyard redevelopment. So, reimagining their play space. Introducing more green space. Because the thing that's kind of evident as you look at Ben Franklin there isn't a ton of green space. They're in the middle of a neighborhood,” Niesha says. “It's kind of tight. All the houses are really close together. So, having access to a green space that's play space as well that's also imagined as a play space is needed for Ben Franklin.”

From doing historical research Niesha learned there has actually been a school on the site of Ben Franklin going all the way back to shortly after it was farmland. The Franklin Heights neighborhood was predominantly German before the 1960s, she also learned.

Just a few blocks west downhill from Ben Franklin and across 27th Street is Melvina Park, a city-owned property being upgraded with green infrastructure and play features. When A.O. Smith’s industrial campus sprawled west of Hopkins, the site was used as a parking lot. Now there is an effort to calm traffic on 27th Street and Hopkins to enhance the safety, appearance, and function of this public space along the edge of Franklin Heights opposite the Century City business park.

Just a few blocks north of Melvina Park across Capitol Drive is Green Tech Station, an education destination demonstrating different kinds of green infrastructure. Niesha envisions teachers and students from Ben Franklin walking on field trips to both Melvina Park and Green Tech Station.

She sees all three spaces reinforcing their value to the local neighborhoods, students, and people moving through the Corridor. “All are within walking distance of each other,” Niesha says. “They can be a turning point for the city to point out all of those and say this is how you can imagine your space in the neighborhood.”

Pam Ritger: Clean Wisconsin Dedicated to Helping Reduce Flood Risk

Meet Pam. Pam Ritger is Milwaukee program director and staff attorney with Clean Wisconsin, a statewide environmental organization that installs rain barrels and rain gardens across Milwaukee’s northwest side in neighborhoods hit especially hard by flooding after intense storms in 2010.

“A lot of our work here in Milwaukee, especially on the northwest side, has been around promoting green stormwater infrastructure as a way to complement other flood mitigation efforts and build communities that are more resilient to climate change,” she says.

Pam used to work in immigration law, but the urgency of climate change captured her attention. (In Milwaukee, climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of storms, which can cause flooding and degrade water quality when stormwater overwhelms heavily paved urban areas.) In grad and law school at UW-Madison, Pam focused on energy and the environment before returning to serve her hometown Milwaukee where she raises three young daughters. For the past eight years, Pam has put her knowledge to work planning, promoting, and supporting green stormwater infrastructure—in ways that also ensure it equitably benefits underserved Milwaukeeans.

Since 2014, Clean Wisconsin has worked with Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) to help install residents install hundreds of rain barrels and rain gardens across Milwaukee’s northwest side. Although each manages just a small amount of rain, cumulatively all these practices make a difference—capable of intercepting over 40,000 gallons of water.

“That's what's exciting about green infrastructure work in general. Everybody can play a part in it. I think that's what excites communities,” Pam says. “Everybody can have a rain barrel, a rain garden, on their property. They can talk with their neighbors about it. They can better improve their understanding of how these practices can improve water quality for our rivers, for Lake Michigan and really actively be a part of that.”

Rain barrels also provide residents with water for gardens, and the native plants in rain gardens both soak up water and beautify neighborhoods—destressing both people and native pollinators. “The pollinators really love having the milkweed and the Black-Eyed Susan, all of those important native plants that in a lot places that are wiped off the landscape but our pollinators need.”

Through her work on the northwest side, Pam has witnessed dramatic change over the past decade as people unite around what green infrastructure can mean not just for managing water but also restoring communities—providing work, pride, and purpose for young people.

“I really love how our younger generations—Millennials, Gen Z—they really are stepping up,” Pam says. “They want to become part of the solution. They know that they can. They know that they have a voice and that they can be part of the solutions and their community around them.”

Green Tech Station is a rallying point that helps focus attention on the many examples of green infrastructure distributed throughout Milwaukee’s northwest side beyond even residential rain barrels and rain gardens. Nearby, the City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works has installed “green alleys” where water infiltrates through porous pavers instead of rushing straight to sewers. In the surrounding area, MMSD has built two large vegetated stormwater basins (and is planning a third) to manage excess stormwater during heavy rains to reduce the risk of flooding in a heavily paved area that historically was home to streams and wetlands. Milwaukee Public Schools have installed cisterns and bioswales at schoolyards including North Division High School in 2021, with Ben Franklin in 2022.

Lauren Lepold-Schiro: Nurturing Youth With Compassion for Nature

Meet Laruen. Lauren Lepold-Schiro teaches special needs children at Nathaniel Hawthorne, a Milwaukee Public School. Her school is undergoing a green schoolyard transformation, adding green infrastructure like bioswales, rain gardens, and native plants that help absorb stormwater and provide a safe and vital outdoor space to learn and play.

A passionate—and compassionate—teacher in her seventh year in 2021, Lauren is excited about learning how to maintain the new green spaces at her school by visiting Green Tech Station, where bioswales teem with native plants like Black Eyed Susans. Green Tech Station contains several kinds of green infrastructure.

“I’m excited to turn our sea of concrete into a beautiful space for kids to learn and play,” Lauren says.

A “bioswale” is a fancy word for a ditch with plants in it—designed at a subtle pitch so that water drains into and flows through it. Along the way, plants’ roots take up some of that water and filter out contaminants. There are twin bioswales at Green Tech Station, each accepting the same volume of stormwater flowing from the adjacent street. Water that flows through the bioswale media enters a perforated pipe running underneath the length of each bioswale that conveys the water to a cistern underneath the Green Infrastructure Test Plaza. Here the water is stored before slow release into the sewer system—or can be pumped via solar power to irrigate plants elsewhere on the site.

Learn more about how the Green Tech Station bioswales serve this unique demonstration site here.

Will Plautz: Young Leader Educating High Schoolers Through ArtWorks

Meet Will. Will Plautz has worked as lead artist assistant with ArtWorks for Milwaukee for two years through the ArtsECO program at UW-Milwaukee, where he is studying visual art (painting and drawing) and exploring his interest in community art.

Through ArtWorks, Will worked under the direction of lead artist Jenni Reinke with high school interns to paint water-themed benches and create an ambitious bottlecap mural for Green Tech Station. Through co-leading a WaterMarks walk (virtual) through Franklin Heights, Will also teamed with artist Brad Anthony Bernard to conceptualize a sidewalk stenciling project for a walking path between Ben Franklin School and Melvina Park.

“One thing I really learned about though this project is I learned a lot about A.O. Smith, and the closure of A.O. Smith, which—I didn't even know A.O. Smith existed. And I just learned a lot about how generations of people just kind of were denied stable work after the closure of the factory.”

Learning about the industrial history of the 30th Street Corridor informed Will’s designs for the walk icons. In addition to single-color stencil art featuring native pollinators and native flowers, he also sketched welding guns, oil cans, and a glass water heater to hark back to how industry provided family-supporting jobs that moved away when A.O. Smith and other industries relocated from the corridor.

These stencil icons are intended as “breadcrumbs” that add a sense of playful connection to place. The icons are intended to help draw attention to and create conversation around native plants, native pollinators, and the value of green stormwater infrastructure planned for both schoolyard and park. They will be “decoded” in a sign to be installed at Melvina Park.

Will has always felt connected to water and curious about what’s living beneath the surface. He grew up in Oconomowoc, Wis. near Lac la Belle, and fondly remembers fishing with his dad. He and his sister would catch minnows with a net for bait. He still remembers catching a baby perch.

In recent years Will’s passion for the water saw him volunteer at Milwaukee Riverkeeper river cleanups and even dress up as a crane on a boat parade float. Recently he’s taken to “magnet fishing” where he tosses a heavy-duty magnet into the river to pull out metallic debris. “I found a piece of machinery in the Milwaukee River—no idea what it was.”

Will enjoyed both researching and painting his water-themed bench at Green Tech Station. It features the aquatic food chain found in the Milwaukee River including a catfish, northern pike, bass, panfish, and smaller critters that support the food web. “I think I want to continue painting fish,” he says.

Brad Anthony Bernard: A Visual Griot Provoking Humanity Through Art

Meet Brad. Brad Anthony Bernard is an artist, muralist, painter, and associate professor at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, his alma mater in 1993. Brad co-led a (virtual) community walk in the Franklin Heights neighborhood between Ben Franklin School and Melvina Park in summer 2021 along with Wilniesha Smith and Will Plautz.

Brad describes the responsibility of a public artist as a visual griot who documents the times and preserves the legacies of the people.

“Like I often tell my students, as an artist, you’re an educator, an advocate, an activist, and entrepreneur all at the same time. Because either you’re going to be teaching somebody how to do the particular skill that you do, or you’re going to be informing and teaching them about the concepts that you’re picking. Because all imagery brings about question, depending on who’s interpreting it. The days of you want to be an artist because you can be in your studio and not engage with the public around you—those days are gone.”

In addition to copious studio work, Brad has painted many public-facing murals with vibrant color palettes featuring Black leaders and themes of liberation.

“Right now, mission-wise, my art needs to at least express some sort of reflection of history or culture, purpose, or some sort of insight or reflection. It's fun to paint things that are entertaining to look at, but once you pull people in, what do you send them away with. I think that’s important.”

In considering ways that art can serve the Franklin Heights neighborhood to improve pedestrian safety, calm motor vehicle traffic, and call attention to native plantings and pollinators as well as remind residents of the area’s industrial past, Brad observes the power of popular culture icons to communicate across generations. Instantly recognizable symbols or characters from Disney or Sesame Street, for example, can communicate an ethos understood from great-grandparents to grandparents, parents, and children—all without words or context. Building on the power of the most accessible visual art to cue us in to a common experience, Brad and Will Plautz, an artist with ArtWorks for Milwaukee, conceived of a temporary public art intervention of “breadcrumbs.” The “breadcrumbs” could take the form of yard signs or pavement markings to help connect and annotate the way between Ben Franklin School and Melvina Park located just off 27th and Hopkins.

“The breadcrumbs serve as a gateway educator for the youth in the community and also to be a creative informer to the adults in a community,” Brad says. “When an adult can inform a child of something—children remember that.”