Street Bazaar
Mount Vernon Park is in Fort Wayne’s Southeast Quadrant where one of the country’s largest Burmese resettlement communities is growing alongside more established African American and Latino households. Mount Vernon Park is also home to several faith-based organizations and has one of the region’s most active in the Bridge of Grace Church. Bridge of Grace wishes to better connect with its community across cultures and physically across high-speed arterials and under-developed parcels. To overcome cultural and physical isolation, YARD & Company was engaged to work with neighbors to develop a program that brought people together in a new way while powerfully redefining the western edge of the neighborhood. As a result, two important intersections were re-imagined and painted in a day, traffic was calmed and the street, now safer, was overtaken for a multi-ethnic street bazaar. The festival brought together vendors, performers and food from a wide cross section of the community. This active approach is now informing future investments and programming.
