A compilation of signs from the first round of CoSign in Cincinnati's Northside neighborhood; photo courtesy of the Queen City Project

Updates
As we look to our next round of CoSign, we are reflecting on what worked well and what we can improve. With an eye towards creating a seamless project that is easily replicated, we are reviewing what team members are central to the process. The upcoming round of CoSign will take place in a different neighborhood, with different strengths and challenges than Northside. Our next neighborhood, Covington, has different permitting and historical preservation guidelines and is a much smaller community. Therefore, our team will able to include City of Covington folks, something that might not be possible in a large municipality. Covington’s different zoning guidelines will allow more flexibility in permitting, thus allowing for more complex signs. We are excited to see how the CoSign process unfolds in a new neighborhood and share the story with the ArtPlace community.

Recent Wins
We have developed a schedule for Covington, and CoSign always wants to connect our unveiling with a neighborhood event. It is our goal to support already existing neighborhood events, while working to develop a creative place. We have set the schedule for the next round of CoSign, running the project from March to September. This timeframe allows us to coincide our unveiling with the Covington annual event, "Art off Pike," in hopes that CoSign can help support and promote other wonderful programs in the neighborhood.

The Covington neighborhood is receiving a major community investment and is perfectly poised for the CoSign program.

Insight/Provocation
As part of the ArtPlace grant, we will be developing a toolkit so that other communities to replicate our CoSign project. We had a very successful initial brainstorming meeting about the toolkit. We included individuals that have knowledge of the project, but aren’t currently involved. This allowed them to take a step back. Sometimes, it can be difficult for the team working on CoSign every day to critically look at the program and synthesize it for replication. It is so important to bring in that outside perspective.