3 Dots Downtown
3 Dots Downtown
Back to Finalists3 Dots Downtown
Mission Statement
Our mission is to inspire a more vibrant community by elevating the humanities, promoting local arts, cultivating innovative experiences and offering an inclusive public space for civic engagement.
Name of Public Space
Sidney Friedman Parklet
City, State
State College, PA
Website
Organization Overview
Launched in 2019, 3 Dots has quickly become a cultural staple in the region. Since opening, we have consistently been ranked as the “Best Community Space” in the region each year and provide a wide range of support that strengthens the cultural fabric of central Pennsylvania, including:
Programs & Events: We offer a series of original weekly programming which draws a loyal audience and welcomes newcomers.We partner with local community groups to offer a diverse range of programming throughout the year. Most notably, we host a weekly event called Tuesdays on the Terrace which features an open mic, local musicians, local non-profits, and community vendors. Throughout the summer, we also host a monthly block party where we shut down a prominent downtown street in our downtown. We draw large diverse crowds of 1000s of community members who are both intersectional and intergenerational.
Gallery Exhibitions: Our gallery is a vibrant, dynamic part of downtown’s cultural landscape. Exhibits change regularly throughout the year to showcase local artists and invite visiting artists from across the Mid-Atlantic region to connect with our community. Our gallery also extends outside with public murals that bring visual art into the streets of downtown State College.
$1000 Awesome Grants: As a chapter of the Awesome Foundation, we award a $1000 grant to galvanize creative projects in the community each month. All of these projects share one thing in common: they each make Centre County a more awesome place to live.
Proposal Details
How will your town or city benefit from a Levitt AMP [Your City] Music Series and how will the series reflect the three main goals of Levitt AMP: 1) Amplify community pride and the city’s unique character; 2) enrich lives through the power of free, live Music; 3) illustrate the importance of vibrant public Places?
As a University town, downtown State College becomes quieter, and more focused on locals in the summer when a majority of the students leave, halving the population. Downtown businesses often struggle to survive through the summer. With the dramatic decrease in population during the summer, it can be difficult to sustain community building efforts. Many of the downtown residents are students who have left, so local organizations have to find creative ways to recruit other community members to make the trip downtown. Hosting the Levitt AMP [Your City] Music Series would bring critical and consistent energy back to our downtown during the summer months, spur economic activity, and give people a reason to visit. The series would help amplify and unify emergent placemaking efforts in our downtown.
In addition, the summer concert series would convene and connect a diverse group of our community in public space. The Levitt AMP [Your City] Music Series would be a catalyst for vibrant community in by centering the arts in an open, walkable greenspace. By using free live music in public space as the draw, we can highlight the incredible arts and cultural resources in the area and catalyze the role that music plays in amplifying creative placemaking approaches to our downtown development.
Explain how the Levitt AMP [Your City] Music Series will play a role in enlivening the selected public space and surrounding areas.
This concert series proposes to regularly animate Sidney Friedman Parklet, a currently-underutilized greenspace in Downtown State College. Our community has a lack of accessible green spaces available for public use, and this series would build on, amplify, and spur other downtown placemaking efforts. It is an initiative of the State College Borough to bring dynamic public life to this green space, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for gathering safely in open, walkable, outdoor spaces.
The area now known as Sidney Friedman Parklet is part of the ancient homeland and traditional territory of the Susquehannock people. 3 Dots and our partners pay respect to Susquehannock peoples past, present, and future and their continuing presence in the homeland and throughout the Susquehannock diaspora. In the early 1900s, this site became a critical source for public water access for the growing community of State College, which remains a symbol for its vitality and potential in our community. Throughout the 20th century the site supported infrastructure including a publicly accessible playground and in 1966, it formally became a park which was renamed Sidney Friedman Park in 2009.