In-person at South Downtown Atlanta
Walk Starting point: 170 Mitchell St SW
About This Event
Want to know more about Atlanta, architecture, and history?
Join us for a free walking project, Drift The Map, originated by ThreadATL and led by founding artists Joel Silverman and Darin Givens. The project advocates for smart urbanism in Atlanta and will highlight spaces like historic Hotel Row through interactive story-telling with special guest, Jon Birdsong. The evening will end with compelling conversations at Wild Leap Brewery.
Explore the most ambitious historic preservation and adaptive reuse project in Atlanta history!
Over the past half-century, South Downtown Atlanta has been hollowed out by abandoned buildings and underused parking lots as the city's business district shifted northward. The South Downtown redevelopment is transforming 58 historic buildings over eight mostly abandoned and neglected blocks into a dense cluster of walkable retail, dining, and creative workspaces.
This mix of adaptive reuse and new residential units includes Hotel Row, the most intact cluster of early 20th-century commercial structures in Atlanta's original business district. Our special guests will include co-owner Jon Birdsong, who launched Buckhead’s small-business incubator Tech Village.
ThreadATL hosts this program in partnership with Museum of Design Atlanta led by artist @joelsilverman Joel Silverman and @atlurbanist Darin Givens, advocating for smart urbanism in Atlanta.
Admission is free. Folks are encouraged to RSVP using the button below.
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Joel Silverman’s work focuses on excavating stories of community resistance for justice too-long denied. He creates counter-monuments that scrutinize the stories America tells about itself. Works are placed in cities as digital projections, annotating the built environment; or as interactive and immersive installations in museums. Silverman’s practice asks a viewer to assess their role in history and the part every person has to play in freedom for all. Silverman has spent his career at the forefront of the creation and conservation of digital artwork, and exploring new frontiers in interactive storytelling technology. He creates site-specific installations brought to life through motion-activated video projection and sound. Silverman’s work is intended as urban archaeology, recovering lost histories of our communities and drawing audiences to sites reverberating with ancestral memory—where the passage of time or intentional forgetting has blurred our vision of a shared humanity. It is artwork that is unfinished until a viewer becomes an active participant in reenacting pivotal moments of liberation and bearing witness to long-past spasms of violence. Having a background as a lawyer and political organizer steeped in democracy work informs his approach. This work takes the Civil Rights Movement’s dream of a “beloved community” as a starting point, in which a critical mass of people become committed to the philosophy and methods of nonviolence. Love and trust might yet triumph over fear and hate. Silverman is also a history museum curator and exhibition designer confronting human rights and social change through projected site-specific video projection, glass sculptures cast from geospatial data, artist-led city walks, and the use of video game engine tools as narrative forms. Silverman’s studio practice and curatorial projects synthesize disparate disciplines— art, the law, cartography, and critical theory --into a unified narrative of power, place, and advocacy for sustainable change.
My advocacy for Atlanta arts and culture began in 1997 when I successfully sued the City of Atlanta as an ACLU attorney to overturn Atlanta’s ordinance banning street artists and musicians from busking in public. Soon after, I was asked by Georgia Governor Roy Barnes to assist former Mayor Maynard Jackson and future Mayor Shirley Franklin in drafting an anti-sprawl strategy for the Atlanta region that incorporated city arts funding, environmental justice, and clean air goals into a regional transportation plan. I continued this advocacy once I quit the law at age 30 to become an installation artist and photographer. I have also taught since 2008 as adjunct faculty at Emory University, Georgia State University, and Agnes Scott College, offering college classes on photography, experimental printmaking, and filmmaking with a focus on social justice-minded artmaking, digital futurism, and photographic and cinematic art history. - Joel Silverman
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Darin Givens is a former journalist and freelance writer who posts about urbanism in Atlanta. He's the co-founder of an advocacy organization called ThreadATL.
Creative Loafing named Darin the Best Blogger in Atlanta in 2015 for ATL Urbanist, and he was included in Atlanta Magazine’s Best of Atlanta for 2013 for blogging.
PEDS, the non-profit for pedestrian advocacy in the Atlanta region, gave him a Golden Shoe Award in 2018 for “walk-friendly journalism.”
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Jon Birdsong has spent his entire career in the Atlanta technology community starting or working for startups. He loves selling, marketing, writing, and storytelling. When not doing one of those activities, he's organizing community and podcasting. Listen to Five and Thrive for interesting and meaningful companies, entrepreneurs, and events in the South or The Atlanta Story Podcast for more in-depth interviews of builders and entrepreneurs. He lives in midtown Atlanta with his wife, daughter, and son.
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When and Where to Meet: We'll meet at the intersection of Broad and Mitchell, 170 Mitchell St SW at 1:00 PM on November 3rd. This is a short two block walk from Five Points MARTA.
After our walk, we’ll meet for drinks at Wild Leap Brewery, steps away from the revitalized Hotel Row.
What to Wear and Bring: Wear comfortable walking shoes and protection from the sun. Consider bringing a bottle of water!
Walking Distance: approximately 1 mile
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MARTA: Our friends using MARTA should get off at the Five Points station. We will meet 2 blocks away at at the intersection of Broad and Mitchell, 170 Mitchell St SW.
Parking: Parking is available at 110 Ted Turner Dr or any of the 188 other parking lots in downtown ATL (sigh, we counted) that have replaced historic downtown buildings over the decades of disinvestment in our historic downtown.
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Accessibility: This walk covers paved terrain and is wheelchair accessible in most cases. The walk may also include options to access building construction sites with debris present and use of hard hats and/or climbing stairs to see second floor areas. Should someone not seek those options, the group will rejoin any participant within a few minutes and the tour will continue as a group.
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Pictures and videos will be captured during MODA public programs and may be published on the official website, social media, and newsletters of the Museum of Design Atlanta. If you do not wish to appear on these platforms, please write to felicia@museumofdesign.org.
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This program is hosted by ThreadATL in partnership with Museum of Design Atlanta led by artist @joelsilverman Joel Silverman and @atlurbanist Darin Givens, advocating for smart urbanism in Atlanta.
For any questions about this program, please contact Joel Silverman at joel@silvermanphoto.com
Admission is free, but you are encouraged to RSVP.
Felicia E. Gail, MODA Public Programming & Membership Manager at felicia@museumofdesign.org