DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION TRAFFIC SIGN PROJECT

Groundswell Community Mural Project ©
www.groundswellmural.org

Digital images on metal signs made by DOT
30 in Diameter
2010

Lead Artist: Yana Dimitrova
Assistant Artist: Chris Beck
Youth Artists: Students from multiple K-5 classes at PS7X
Location: PS7, 3201 Kingsbridge Ave, Bronx, NY 10463
Community Partners: PS 7X, Trust for Public Land

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

In the second year of a partnership with the Department of Transportation, Groundswell artists Nicole Schulman and Chris Soria worked with over 200 students in seven schools across the five Boroughs to create a series of traffic signs. Nicole and Chris engaged 5th and 6th grade students at each school in the creation of road safety signs for their school communities. In this project, over 200 students had the opportunity to work with a professional artist and learn how signs and symbols work to communicate ideas. Each group developed the art skills needed to create informative traffic signs to increase safety awareness and prevent accidents around their schools. The students designed each sign using standard silhouetted shapes featured on traditional traffic and pedestrian signs in new scenarios and color combinations to convey their personalized safety messages for pedestrians and motorists. As part of this partnership, Nicole worked in the classrooms with Michael Nesbitt, Traffic Safety Instructor from DOT. With Michael, the students explored first hand the traffic safety information provided by DOT’s Safety Education program. The signs, which were manufactured at DOT’s Sign Shop in Maspeth, Queens, were placed at locations where students identified the need for additional pedestrian-safety signage in their school communities.

During August, facsimiles of each sign were displayed in the windows of the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 40th Streets.