Knight Foundation gives out two micro-grants for downtown public space initiatives

Two Maconites each received $5,000 from the Knight Foundation for projects to enrich downtown Macon.

The grants are part of the Knight Emerging City Champions program, a national fellowship fund supporting young civic innovators who are reinvigorating city spaces.

This year, the program selected 20 champions across eight cities in the United States, including Macon.

Laura Gomez won funding for Macon for “Everyone, Macon Para Todos,” an initiative to bring more Hispanic people to downtown Macon through community activities. Jonathan Wetherbee earned his grant to start building a new inclusive playground.

The two joined other innovators in Toronto at the end of August for a series of workshops to get their projects online, and along with the $5,000 grant received $500 for tech needs.

When Gomez moved to Macon, she found there weren’t many spaces downtown for Hispanic people, unlike Bogotá, Colombia, where she moved from.

Bogotá has a lot more people, but also more engagement with public spaces, Gomez said, which was something she wanted to replicate in Macon.

“What I would like to achieve is having more people from different origins being able to enjoy all the good things that are happening in downtown Macon,” she said.

Gomez plans on holding three activities downtown starting in November through the beginning of summer next year, including a street painting, a scavenger hunt and a Hispanic cultural celebration —maybe not quite as big as the one happening later this month.

These activities fall under what’s known as tactical urbanism intervention, or low-cost, grassroots initiatives for spurring changes in cities and neighborhoods.

Hopefully, these activities will invite not just Hispanic people, but people of all diverse backgrounds to explore downtown Macon, she said. 

Wetherbee got the idea for his proposal after traveling across the country and seeing different playgrounds with equipment and structures for kids with disabilities or who are neurodivergent.

He said he’s become “playground cognizant” after seeing so many playgrounds and experiencing them with his children.

“I want to make the most inclusive playground in Macon,” he said. “It’s not a very creative idea, it’s really just like they have these playgrounds in other cities, let’s just do it here.”

An all-inclusive playground contains a variety of equipment, like sensory stations or two-person swing-sets, or the same spinney disc toy equipped to be slightly slower or able to be operated by a single person, Wetherbee said.

While there is still a lot of work and money required to complete a playground, Wetherbee will use the $5,000 he received to consult the community, especially those involved with children who have disabilities, about where the playground ought to go, what should be put in it, and what type of programming should be put in place.