Juan William Chávez presents at the 2013 Creative Capital Artist Retreat from Creative Capital on Vimeo.

Juan William Chávez (2013 Emerging Fields grantee) presented on his Creative Capital-supported project, The Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary, at the 2013 Artist Retreat. Read more about his project here: creative-capital.org/projects/view/745.

Video by Timothy Nordmann from Nordmann Video.
The Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary is a proposal for the City of St Louis to transform the urban forest where Pruitt-Igoe housing development once stood into a public space that cultivates community through education and urban agriculture. Drawing parallels to the depleting population of bees and shrinking cities, this interdisciplinary project-in-progress has the unique opportunity to reignite the conversation about urban abandonment and creative strategies for addressing it.

Inspired by education and public space we took the proposal off the page and developed a pilot project and created a
bee sanctuary and an urban garden on a vacant lot in Old North St. Louis.  This pilot project required us to join the
Eastern MO Beekeepers Association (EMBA). The EMBA has been an amazing community and resource.
They have been excellent  mentors and helped up establish our  bee sanctuary.

In addition, we worked with two Washington University students  Anya Liao (printmaker) and Ryan A. Wilson (architect) that helped us construct and design our urban garden.  We created eight garden beds (six veggie and two flower).

Bee sanctuary and an urban garden will be the outdoor classroom for five summer workshop this summer.

[Open/Closed] Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary presentation by Juan William Chavez from nextSTL on Vimeo.

I was invited by R.J. Koscielniak and NextSTL to give a presentation on the Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary project.
The talk was part of the Open/Closed: Exploring Vacant Property in St. Louis conference.

For more information about Open/Closed: Exploring Vacant Property in St. Louis please click on link http://nextstl.com/media/open-closed

Juan William Chávez presents at the 2013 Creative Capital Artist Retreat from Creative Capital on Vimeo.

The Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary is a proposal for the City of Saint Louis to transform the urban forest where the Pruitt-Igoe housing development once stood into a public space that preserves the remaining 33 acres of green space and cultivates community through beekeeping and urban agriculture. Drawing parallels to the depleting population of bees (colony collapse disorder) and the challenges of activating vacant space in post industrial “shrinking cities”, the project intends to redirect the conversation surrounding Pruitt-Igoe by developing creative strategies that both memorialize the past and provide economic opportunity for the future. By working together, Pruitt-Igoe can end on a positive note by transforming one of the worst failures of public housing into a leading example of revitalization.

Juan William Chávez (2013 Emerging Fields grantee) presented on his Creative Capital-supported project, The Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary, at the 2013 Artist Retreat. Read more about his project here: creative-capital.org/projects/view/745.