Category: Archived Articles

Dec. 6, Nature Play Becomes Reality

A man and boy sitting at table with plants.


City Park Friends and Neighbors is honored to host Jacqueline Altreuter, Project Manager for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science’s (DMNS) Nature Play project, for a presentation on the final design for Nature Play. The program and slideshow will take place on Dec. 6 in the Multi-Purpose Room at Carla Madison Recreation Center, 2401 E. Colfax Ave. at 6:30 pm. This is an in-person event.  There is parking behind Carla Madison. After five years of gathering community input and working and re-working designs reflecting the public’s vision for this extensive natural play area, Jackie speaks for the museum when she says: “We are so happy to be giving the community what they want!”

“Water” was one of the elements Jackie and the museum heard loud and clear. At one of the many DMNS-sponsored workshops where dozens of kids were asked to design their ideal playground, every child included some kind of water feature in their design. Then and there, DMNS committed to bringing water back to the DeBoer Canyon – and through a long, difficult process they have delivered on their promise. The area in the southeast corner of City Park will also showcase the diversity of Colorado’s ecosystems through natural features and play experiences that include the much asked-for climbing, jumping and sliding activities.

Work on implementing the Nature Play design will begin in early 2023 and construction may continue over the course of a year. Expect to see fencing and machinery in the area. There may be some inconvenience for park visitors during construction, but the end result will be worth it and it may be interesting to watch how the project develops month by month.

Jackie promises that the finished Nature Play will be “gorgeous and spectacular.” Come to our Dec. 6 meeting and get an overview of the new wonders that await us in City Park! Light refreshments will be served!
Please join our Board Meeting, Dec. 6
As a Registered Neighborhood Organization (RNO), City Park Friends and Neighbors’ (CPFAN) board meetings are always open to the public. Our board of eight members welcomes this city requirement and are very happy to have CPFAN members and members of the community attend to learn about our activities and priorities. We particularly enjoy your joining in on our conversations about City Park, its past, present and future – often with representatives directly involved with the park, like DMNS, the Denver Zoo, East High School and its Sustainability Board, City Park Alliance and City Council members like Candi CdeBaca who represents District 9 where City Park resides.
 We hope you will join us at this month’s Board meeting on Dec. 6. The board meeting will take place at 5:30 pm before the Nature Play program with Jackie Altreuter. The Board meeting will begin with a 30 minute presentation by Maro Casparian, Director of Community Engagement for the Denver District Attorney’s Office on Safety, regarding issues facing the city and specifically City Park. Because the City Attorney’s Office manages municipal issues including grafitti, the unhoused, vagrancy, etc., Marley Brodovsky, Director of Prosecution at the City Attorney’s Office,will also attend the meeting to answer any questions you may have.


The Dec. 6 Board agenda will also include the effort headed by CPFAN member Hank Bootz to renovate the City Park handball or wall courts just to the east of the tennis courts. Board member Patty Paul will give an update about republishing Denver’s City Park by Bette D. Peters. This scholarly work, now out-of-print, is the only book ever published about City Park and is an important resource for historians and for our CPFAN City Park tour guides. Finally, Board member,Brooke Badon will talk about her Herbal Workshop that will be our Jan. 2, 2023 program. This hands-on workshop will give you a healthy and invigorating outlook on the New Year.

Please join us for our 5:30 board meeting and then our 6:30 pm program at the Multi-Purpose Room at Carla Madison Recreation Center, 2401 E. Colfax Ave., on Dec. 6! Light refreshments will be served.

Kristina Maldonado Bad Hand to Speak, Oct. 4, 6:30 pm, Carla Madison Recreation Center

A woman smiling for the camera with her head on top of a box.


CPFAN is honored to host a presentation by artist, activist and educator Kristina Maldonado Bad Hand at its October 4 Board Meeting/Program. The meeting is open to the public and will begin at 5:30 pm. Kristina’s program will begin at 6:30 pm. Kristina is a Sicangu Lakota and Cherokee artist who hails from Taos, NM, but Denver is her home now – luckily for us! In describing her “A Story of Denver” mural featuring treasured Denver landmarks (an interactive artwork created through the Storytelling Studio at the Denver Art Museum), she says:  “From the moment I came here to attend college I fell in love with the energy. Every time I travel, I always feel a wash of relief when I drive back into town. It’s my city. And I, like so many others, have some really great memories in various places all around the metro area.”

Kristina grew up traveling, singing and dancing with her family at powwows. She spent most of her high school career experimenting with mixed media, participating in youth art shows, painting murals and doing set design for her high school drama class. Arriving in Denver, she studied at the Art Institute of Colorado in the Media Arts and Animation program. She has ten years of experience in after-school and summer programs with organizations like Think 360 Artist.

She is particularly known for her work with Pop Culture Classroom, the nonprofit that “delivers high quality, all-inclusive educational resources to school districts, teachers and educational organizations using comics, graphic novels, and related pop-culture media.” One of the educational materials Kristina developed is the comic narrative, A Tale of Sand Creek, created for third graders. The beautifully rendered cartoon video recounts the story of a Sand Creek survivor – a Denver woman whose great grandfather was put in a saddle bag and sent out of the massacre to be received by family elsewhere.
“Indigenous Warrior Woman”
by Kristina Maldonado Bad Hand
As the Creative and Public Engagement Fellow at the Denver Art Museum, Kristina is constantly creating new ways to promote her passion for storytelling and for community and social justice. She has also created several Land Acknowledgement art installations in the Denver area. One of the most recent is a Living Land Acknowledgement in Five Points, funded through a “P.S. You Are Here” grant administered by Denver Art and Venues (DAV).  The sponsor is Redline Contemporary Art Center. DAV describes the project: “P.S. You Are Here funds will support the centerpiece of the garden, a collaborative community-responsive artwork that actively acknowledges the Indigenous ancestral land of Five Points in an ongoing conversation to fortify residents’ sense of belonging, agency, and place-keeping. Co-designed by Five Points residents and a local artist selected through an open call, the topiary sculpture will feature Indigenous plants that thrive in Colorado’s arid climate to reconnect gardeners to native plants and to promote environmental sustainability.”

The Color Field installation at City Park’s Lily Pond was funded by a P.S. You Are Here grant sponsored by City Park Friends and Neighbors in 2020. CPFAN is now collaborating with Kristina on a P.S. You Are Here grant to install a Land Acknowledgement installation in the seed beds of the Lily Pond. We are excited to bring the City Park Lily Pond back to life under the inspired leadership and vision of Kristina Maldonado Bad Hand. Please show your support by attending the Oct. 4 program. You may also attend by Zoom. Also, email your thoughts and ideas about the proposed project to info@cpfan.org

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Oct 4, 2022 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIlf-2oqTgiG90hZT563M_PFLf6Dc-YuQAY

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Seeds of Power Unity Farm, 3551 Humboldt St., Denver CO

East High School Sustainability Club calls for Change

A group of people sitting on the grass.


September is going to be a special month at CPFAN, starting out with a presentation by the East High Sustainability Club at our monthly Board Meeting and Program on September 6 at the City Park Pavilion. The Board Meeting will start at 5:30 pm and the program will begin at 6:30 pm.  Please join us to learn about the many ways the East High Sustainability Club benefits the community. The club’s mission is to “create a conscious culture of sustainability across our school and in the broader Denver-metro area. We’re all about inspiring action to take action against climate change. It’s time for you to change climate change.”

 

The club hosts an annual tree planting event every Spring around Denver in concert with Tree-Plenish, a national, student-run organization. The mission of Tree-Plenish is to “empower students to create more sustainable schools by replenishing the environment with the resources they use each year. With Tree-Plenish, students host community tree planting events based on how much energy their schools use.”  Last year, East High students sent volunteers to the areas impacted by the Marshall Fire to help reforest those landscapes.

 

According to Mariah Rosensweig, the Club’s Vice President, the club fulfilled its educational mission in 2021 by creating lesson plans educating students on the basics of composting and recycling and pointing out how everything we do impacts the environment. On the club’s Instagram site (eastsustainabilityclub) is a quote from Albert Einstein: “The environment is everything that isn’t me.”

 

In 2022-23, the East High Sustainability Club is working towards an Eco-Schools certification through the National Wildlife Foundation. Eco-Schools was developed in 1994 by the Foundation for Environmental Education. It was founded in response to the needs identified at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development and is the largest global sustainable schools program, spanning 69 countries. For more information on the East High Sustainabiility Club, go to their webpage at https://sites.google.com/lightco2.org/sustainability-club.

 

This will be an in-person meeting/program featuring co-Presidents, Gabriel Nagel and vice presidents, Kate Todd and Maria Rosensweig at the City Park Pavilion and will also be available on Zoom.

 

 

 

 

1 … 3 4 5 6 7 … 48