The ‘heart’ of the process guiding the Danville Project is collaboration among partners and other interested parties. As an advocate for universal design as defined by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Arts Council brings a new perspective to the marriage of engineering and art with the Danville Project, by insisting it is possible to create environments that everyone can use and enjoy.
The Danville Project exemplifies the Council’s inherent value as a community partner and a catalyst for exchange between artists and organizations: it offers education opportunities and technical advice, collects and disseminates arts information, documents the project in its role as the State’s foremost arts advocate.
Listed below are Council's partners in the Danville Project.
The Vermont Agency of Transportation [VTrans] leads the national movement toward context-sensitive design solutions and public involvement. Its goal is to bring a community together early in the process to help design an outcome that is in keeping with local values.
This Project encourages creative solutions to engineering problems surrounding the design and maintenance of infrastructure. The Danville Project proves that including artists in the process is a natural fit, due to their unique visioning and communication skills, and ability to articulate a community’s hopes and dreams. Many of the lessons learned in this small town are already being applied on other planning projects in the state.
Ken Robie, S.E.T., is VTrans Project Manager for the Danville/U.S. Highway Route 2 Reconstruction Project. For additional information regarding the engineered portion of this Project, contact him by email, or phone 802.828.2645.
The Town of Danville was chartered in 1784 and was designated as the county seat in 1796.
For more than 150 years, agriculture formed the economic base of the community, and was well-supported by tourist, lumber and mining industries. Today, the town is a small rural community defined by several distinct compact historical villages surrounded by farmland, forests and scenic vistas. In 2000 the population of the town was 2211.
Strong connection to the land and traditions of community service, self-sufficiency, independence, education, civic pride, family, and neighbor helping neighbor are the underpinnings of local support for the Danville Project.
Merton Leonard is Administrative Assistant for the town of Danville. For additional information regarding the community portion of this project, contact him by email or phone 802.684.3426.
Central to the Danville Project is a Local Review Committee [LRC] consisting of nine area residents who offer up their time and energies to serve as representatives of distinct constituencies within the greater community.
The Danville Selectboard identified these constituencies in March 2000 as “...providing a broad cross-section of the interests and concerns of the community”.
In addition to the nine local members, four members of the Design Team also have Voting Member Status on the LRC. Other representatives from VTrans, the Vermont Arts Council and their consultants as well as interested community members attend LRC meetings, contribute to, and are active participants in the process.
However, only consensus by the Committee itself determines the direction of the Project and its ultimate realization.
In late summer 2000, the Local Review Committee reviewed applications from artists and selected two to collaborate on the project:
David Raphael, ASLA of Panton, VT is Lead Artist for the Danville Project. He is a graduate, with honors, of Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and received a Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
He is the founder and Principal of Land-Works, an interdisciplinary planning, design and communications firm based in Middlebury, VT and has collaborated with environmental artists and designed public art projects throughout Vermont, New Hampshire and Virginia.
Andrea Wasserman of Vershire, VT serves as Creative Consultant to the Danville Project. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Master’s Degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She works both as a sculptor from her studio and as a visiting artist/teacher in Vermont public schools.
She has led and collaborated with teams of artists to design and fabricate site-specific art installations including projects in Vermont, Massachusetts, Florida and Pennsylvania.
Consulting services for the project are provided to VTrans by Stantec of South Burlington, VT. For more information regarding engineering design and the regulatory review portions of this project, contact Office Leader Gary Santy by email or phone 802.864.0223.
Video documentation of the Danville Project is provided by Kingdom County Productions of Barnet, VT.
For additional information regarding the film “The Danville Project”, contact producer/director Bess O’Brien by email or phone 802.592.3190.