Local

Just Buffalo Receives $41K Grant

by
Aaron Lowinger
/ Dec. 14, 2015 4pm EST

Just Buffalo Literary Center is celebrating its 40th year with the news that they will realize a long-sought dream: installing permanent poems in public places throughout the city. For years, the center has sought the funding to establish a public art program around the city’s rich literary history, and Monday’s announcement that they have been granted $41,000 from the New York State Council on the Arts/2015 Regional Economic Development Council to establish a public art program called LIT CITY. 

“Doing something public art-related is a dream, of ours, and we love to dream really big and we imagine poems popping up all over the city,” artistic director Barbara Cole told The Public. The project will honor the city’s industrial and artistic history, and poetry will be commissioned to artists to be constructed of steel, concrete, and painted murals. 

“Literature is often ‘the invisible art’, and this project will bring poetry off the page and into the environment,” said executive director Laurie Dean Torrell in a press release. 
 
Joining public funds will be private sector support from Rick Smith of Silo City and Rigidized Metals, real estate investor Roger Trettel, and Jason Griffasi, co-owner of Concrete Innovations. Just Buffalo expects works to be installed around their headquarters at Mohawk and Washington streets downtown and possibly along the Buffalo River at Silo City. 
 
And they may not be stopping there. The literary organization has applied for additional grant funds to widen the scope of their public poetry program. The Regional Economic Development Council previously has awarded Just Buffalo with funds to launch and sustain their successful youth writing program at the Writing Center. 
 

Cole said that many details would need to be ironed out, but Just Buffalo envisions a piece in Silo City that can follow the course of the river and be read as one walks or boats further up or down river. 

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