Arts + Public Health
Continuing to build on our approach developed through One Poem At A Time, we recently completed a new culturally-responsive public health communications campaign to support childhood lead poisoning prevention, health equity and housing justice.
Created with Louisville Metro Department of Public Health & Wellness, along with nonprofit partners Play Cousins Collective, Smoketown Family Wellness Center, Family & Children’s Place, Americana and La Casita, the campaign features images of voices of community members. To engage the community, we designed arts and education events hosted at each site in various forms. The campaign features billboards and bus shelter ads, digital ads, and a social media campaign.
The impact of culturally-responsive messaging
In 2020 and 2022, two new series of billboards and digital ads were launched as part of the Healthy Home, Healthy Community campaign – created through a collaboration between the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health & Wellness Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program and IDEAS xLab.
The 2020 campaign featured young people and community members from Bates Community Development Corporation Smoketown Summer Camp.
The 2022 campaign featured Kristen Williams, Executive Director of Play Cousins Collective, and her son Sankara who had high blood lead levels. The campaign expanded its focus to include childhood lead poisoning prevention, housing justice and health equity.
The billboard campaign is a continuation of One Poem at a Time, a project started by IDEAS xLab in 2017, that had already replaced 22 billboards in Smoketown with photos and poetry created with community members.
Focus of the Healthy Home, Healthy Community Campaign: One thing COVID-19 has done is amplify existing housing injustices - disproportionately impacting Black, People of Color, and low-income communities in certain zip-codes - including Smoketown and West Louisville. From environmental conditions (lead, homes in disrepair, etc.) to cost of living - it's hard to be #HealthyAtHome when your home can possibly be harmful to your health. One area where you will spend a majority of your time is in your home. We want that to be a space where you are healthy and whole. And, while these times are challenging, we also look for moments of hope and gratitude that we can celebrate in our community.
“Working with the community to craft the messaging behind this campaign focused on healthy homes and lead poisoning prevention was a top priority for our collaboration,” stated Gabriell Gassaway who supervises the Childhood Lead Prevention Program for the Department of Public Health and Wellness.
“We have seen the positive impact this approach can have, when community members are the ones shaping the messages in their environment,” said Josh Miller and Hannah Drake of IDEAS xLab. “The Bates CDC Summer Camp students participated in taking photos, in writing, in creating art, all focused on what a healthy home, and healthy community means to them and their families.”
“This opportunity for Bates Community Development Corporation to be a partner has been a game changer for our youth. They had a chance to show their natural beauty and creativity in a world that has covered it up for 400 plus years,” said Nachand Hyde Trabue, Executive Director at Bates CDC.
“A healthy Louisville is a lead-free Louisville,” said Dr. Monica Unseld, campaign advisor. “Our families and our neighbors can be unwillingly exposed to lead in our homes, our soil and in products we purchase every day. We cannot allow lead exposure to steal our health and our futures.”
In 2017 - 2018, IDEAS xLab and their partners including the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health & Wellness completed and installed three-rounds of One Poem At A Time billboards in partnership with community members.
Media & Stories
One Poem At A Time: Transforming Billboards in a Black Neighborhood: From Selling Poison to Celebrating Community
FORWARD Edition 1: Public Health
Poetry reclaimed this historic Louisville neighborhood from toxic advertising
The Renewal Project
One Poem At A Time
University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine
Smoketown woman changes the message on neighborhood billboards
Wave3
Smoketown - One Poem At A Time [Crowd-sourced poem]
Muhammad Ali once said, "If your dreams don't scare you, they aren't big enough."
In Smoketown, we stand on the shoulders of dreamers like Ali
Where we are building generations of greatness and rebuilding but never forgetting our history.
Lifelong friendships begin in Smoketown. We are not just neighbors, we are family.
We have faced disappointments and challenges
Some in our community have fallen too soon
However, we know that healing a community is a process and that healing begins one step at a time.
It won't happen overnight and many great things don't
But anything is possible with hope.
We are committed to doing the work
In Smoketown, we have never been worried about getting our hands dirty and rolling up our sleeves to get the job done.
We come from freed slaves that built a community among smokestacks and shotgun houses-we know that we thrive when we work together.
We are setting the foundation for the generation that will come after us because investing in our youth today yields promise for our future tomorrow.
We are planting seeds of promise among the smokestacks and concrete cracks because we know even a rose will fight to grow through the concrete.
Here we fight for excellence.
We won't settle for anything less than greatness because we are worthy. Worthy of everything.
We deserve the right to live, to breathe, to simply be!
We deserve the chance for our souls to dance and for us to move to the rhythm of resilience. When you hear the drumbeats know that majestic magnificent music is for everyone in Smoketown.
Together we are better. Together we stand and together we will rise.
After 150 years we are still here.
We rise from the smoke and ashes like the phoenix.
This is Smoketown
This is Smoketown Remembering, Reclaiming, Rising...
One Poem At A Time.