A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
City council meetings are an important part of local governance, but also, they're often boring. Emma VandenEinde from member station KUNC takes us to Boulder, Colorado, where they're trying to inject some fun into the process.
EMMA VANDENEINDE, BYLINE: City council meetings can often be filled with jargon like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Adopt ordinance 8695 amending Chapter 10-8.5.
VANDENEINDE: It's super technical and complex. So Boulder leaders took a different approach. They asked an artist to create a living map of the city online, where people could post photos and audio about what they like or want to see changed. The project got nearly a hundred and fifty submissions. There's a variety, like cooking a meal purchased with SNAP...
(SOUNDBITE OF SIZZLING)
VANDENEINDE: ...Concerns about bike and pedestrian safety...
CHRIS CARRUTH: Constantly, people are nearly clipped at that location.
VANDENEINDE: ...Or simply the joy of enjoying street music.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRUMMING)
CARRUTH: This is about seeing the city differently.
VANDENEINDE: Chris Carruth was the artist behind the Voicing Boulder project.
CARRUTH: I don't think many people, myself included, are walking around thinking about, well, what are the safety issues with the city, or what is an inclusive local economy?
VANDENEINDE: Voicing Boulder is part of what the city is calling experiments in public art. Using artistic community feedback in city planning is unusual, but health researcher Chidinma Ibe with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has sought artistic feedback in her work. She says it more purely captures public sentiment.
CHIDINMA IBE: It really emerges from a tradition of community activism and just this idea that the solutions to local problems are found among the people who live in that locality.
VANDENEINDE: But for all of this to work, Ibe says people need to see how their posts directly correlate to policy change, and city leaders need to be present and engaged when considering the recommendations. Boulder Mayor pro tem, Lauren Folkerts, is doing just that.
(SOUNDBITE OF TYPING)
LAUREN FOLKERTS: Go to the south side. That's my side of town.
VANDENEINDE: She's reviewing Voicing Boulder posts on a laptop. At first, Folkerts wasn't sure how this method would pan out, but she likes hearing people's stories through photos and audio.
FOLKERTS: I think it puts you almost more in the moment of what they're experiencing, what's not pre-curated for us, which so many things on council are.
VANDENEINDE: She's seen a lot of posts about housing and food accessibility. But more than any big overarching goal, she's noticed the little things that deeply matter to people, like adding a streetlight or keeping a beloved bench.
FOLKERTS: Just these ideas that, like, their human experience was considered. I don't think we would have connected that in the same way without this kind of engagement.
VANDENEINDE: Folkerts is still waiting to see how this all turns out. But she loves how this method brought new perspectives to the table.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER FLOWING)
VANDENEINDE: Matthew Nesselrodt (ph) is one of those new perspectives. He knows city council meetings are important, but as a busy, full-time student, he hasn't made it to one. He decided to participate in the Voicing Boulder project because it was accessible and fun. At a local stream, he hops across the rocks and starts recording on his phone. He's trying to capture the sense of safety he says outdoor spaces can bring. Nesselrodt has some doubts about the project, but he's cautiously optimistic.
MATTHEW NESSELRODT: It was very cool that the city was willing to engage in - and valued art as a form of data that can actually be implemented or used to consider what we'd like the city to be.
VANDENEINDE: City leaders will discuss the Voicing Boulder recommendations at a December meeting.
For NPR News, I'm Emma VandenEinde in Boulder.
(SOUNDBITE OF INST'S "CLEOPATRA (INSTRUMENTAL)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.