Ride It Sculpture Park

Traveling back and forth to an east side jobsite, I noticed construction activity on a vacant lot on the south side of the Davison just as it emerges at Conant.  A series of odd shapes were rising out of the ground, molded out of concrete, in a location that made my attempts at guessing their purpose virtually impossible.  With a little Internet research, I learned I had discovered Ride-It Sculpture Park.

Designed by the non-profit group Powerhouse Productions, the park is described on their website as a, "place where bored neighborhood teenagers and adults can meet, play, create, build and ride on."  Eventually the project is to include the renovation of an adjacent vacant home into a, "mini indoor park, [where] parts of the house [are] skateable and livable at the same time for visiting skateboarders and artists."

In light of the City of Detroit's in ability to maintain most of its parks and recreation centers, the organization's goal is to create a new model for  public space.  A do-it-yourself method that makes the neighborhood stakeholders in the park's success. 

The neighborhood has truly taken possession of this first phase of construction.  Complementing the organic forms, artists have enveloped the ramps and walls with a mixture of graffiti, art work and poetry.  This is a fall cry from the metal wheeled clip on roller skating my inner city generation executed on sidewalks in Philadelphia.  Watching a pair of helmeted skateboarders practice their craft on the colorful ramps, I wondering if I'm watching a future X games champion.  One thing is for sure, they now have a place to practice.