#DuboisCoChalkTalk; creating community conversations and fun

Twelve chalkboards saved from Maple Park School in Huntingburg will now be put to use as focal points for community expression.

The first installation of Chalk Talk was unveiled at Ferdinand’s 18th Street Park Thursday. Children participating in the TriCounty YMCA Summer Day Camp trecked over to the park to try out the two boards recently installed near the park’s newest playground area.

The kids immediately grabbed the large pieces of chalk and began to draw or write on the new free-standing addition to the park. Drawings of trees, favorite superheroes and carefully printed names began to speckle the lower third of the chalkboard as the three-foot tall artists expressed themselves.

For the leadership academy team, ChalkTalk, this is exactly what they want to see happen. Members Dean Gogel of Ferdinand, Courtney Knies of Jasper, Luke Rasche of Huntingburg, and Steffi Schmücker of Jasper, created the ChalkTalk boards as their capstone project for the 2015 class.

The team installed the weatherproof chalkboards two weeks ago, according to Schmücker. After finishing the installation, a few nearby kids became curious and asked about the new feature. They asked the kids if they wanted to draw on the boards. “They said no, but when I came back about an hour later, the board had been drawn on,” Schmücker said.

Since then, the boards have been drawn on every day.

The team decided on the ChalkTalk as their capstone project after finding that members of the community were interested in a project that families could do together.

Rache canvassed neighborhoods in Huntingburg to find ideas from community members. “They basically said they would really like something that the whole family could get involved in,” he said.

Knies was reminded of a similar chalkboard display she had seen while attending Depauw University in Greencastle, Ind. Then a Washington Post article highlighted a community using chalkboards to invigorate a community conversation around specific issues.

“It was called the Courage Wall,” Knies said. “It simply said ‘I wish I had the courage to …’ and the community could write whatever.”

Knies had also explored the idea of the chalkboards during a creative brainstorming session hosted by the Dubois County Community Foundation in September of last year.

Once the team made the decision to move forward with ChalkTalk, they then ran into a wall in regards to the cost. Chalkboards are expensive.

Fortunately, through Huntingburg Mayor Denny Spinner and an employee at the Southwest Dubois County School Corporation, the team found some chalkboards. Maple Park Elementary was being prepared for a demolition, and there were 24 chalkboards being stored in the section of the building being torn down.

The chalkboards were still in their frames and one even had a final lesson still written on it, but the boards weren’t from Maple Park, they had been removed from Southridge High School during the remodel.

Ferdinand is the first Dubois County community to receive the new community conversation piece.

For those boards, Gogel built a freestanding structure housing the boards using steel c-channel welded together. The seam is caulked for weatherproofing, and the frame is bolted to wooden posts mounted in the ground. “We left the frame out in the weather for about two months to make sure it would work,” Knies said.

The team knew Mayor Spinner was excited about the chalkboards, but they were surprised when the presentation for the new Market Street Park included the chalkboards as a feature.

The City of Jasper is still working out details on how they want to incorporate ChalkTalk. “We think they may want to do something like the Courage Wall,” Knies said.

Other towns have also been approached but aren’t ready to commit to the feature yet.

The team accomplished their goal of having a completed project from the Academy — some leadership academy projects have taken longer to complete due to cost or other unforeseen circumstances.

Now, it is up to the cities and towns to decide how they want to incorporate the features into their communities.

For the future, the team is promoting artists to take photos of their images and invigorate conversations online through social media. By using the hashtag, #DuboisCoChalkTalk, community members can follow, view and share the creations from the boards.