HeartSpots Link City’s Past to its Future
Salt Institute slideshow and HeartSpots story tours make for lively evening on Main Street in Biddeford
For Immediate Release
October 23, 2009
Main Street in downtown Biddeford
is undergoing a kind of contemporary
grassroots Renaissance.
Biddeford, ME—The old Woolworth building was brought to life last Thursday evening when more than 100 residents gathered at Hog Farm Studio Annex to share good food, great company and the premier screening of “…our love letter to Biddeford.”
That’s how Claire Houston described “Heartworks: A Storytelling Project in Biddeford, Maine,” the 40-minute sound slideshow she and her two colleagues presented to a standing-room-only crowd at the Annex. Houston, Anna Schechter and Willa Kammerer, recent graduates of the Salt Institute in Portland, explored Biddeford and interviewed residents all across the City throughout the summer and early fall to help record and share the special people and places that make Biddeford tick.
Based on the elated, at times emotional response of the crowd, the show managed to capture the essence of this once proud mill town now giving rise to its own creative comeback. Last week’s screening culminated the Salt graduates’ work in Biddeford, but it also initiated a new phase of Biddeford’s two-year Heart & Soul Community Planning project, HeartSpots: Downtown’s Memory Lane.
“HeartSpots could be the next big thing in knitting communities back together,” said Foundation spokesman John Barstow. “Biddeford is breaking down barriers and building bridges with memory and story in ways the Foundation could only imagine when we began the project. They’ve found a simple way for anyone and everyone to have a say in their own words, recorded for all to hear. It’s a new path to the future.”
drew an estimated 2500 people
downtown for the festivities.
Heart of Biddeford (HOB), a downtown organization modeled on the Main Street Maine program—in partnership with the City and supported by the Orton Family Foundation—is working over the next year to broadly engage the community in recalling its past to help fuel a vision for the future. The Biddeford Downtown Master Plan project, part of Orton’s $10 Million Heart & Soul Initiative, aims to engage and unite voices from each of the City’s distinct regions and across generations, including youth at the local high school. The resulting objectives will guide the creation of a new Downtown Master Plan.
“Rather than planners or experts telling residents what they envision for the future, we’re asking folks to tell us what they would like to see,” said HOB Director and Project Coordinator Rachael Weyand.
HeartSpots recognizes places—Reilly’s Bakery, the Central Theater (now the City’s police station), the Palace Diner, the Puritan (now the Happy Dragon), the North Dam Mill, Oh Baby Café and a dozen others—that residents have said are (or were) important in their daily lives. These locations along Main Street and around downtown are now marked with large “HeartSpot” signs, which include a telephone number that passersby can call and leave a message explaining why that place is special to them.
Within 12 hours of the release of the HeartSpot number, stories began flowing in. One of the first came from Saco resident Gilman Seaver: “I want to mention two great hotspots. One was the old Murphy’s Music Store. You could go in there, get a couple of records and go in a booth and listen for hours. We used to love to go to that place... There are so many many more places...Fishman’s and Woolworth’s—we used to go get nuts—and (the) Five and Dime. I’m telling you, those are some great, great, great, great times... Biddeford downtown on Friday nights...it was something else... It was the best of times.” The recordings will soon be available on Heart of Biddeford’s website.
Listen to Gilman Seaver’s complete HeartSpot recording:
Listen to Frank Hammond’s HeartSpot recording:
Watch clips from the Salt graduates’ “Heartworks”:
Biddeford Pool
Palace Diner
The Orton Family Foundation, based in Middlebury, Vermont, and Denver, Colorado, seeks to help small cities and towns discover and describe their heart and soul—the collective attributes that make communities unique—and build on those attributes in planning toward a vibrant, enduring future.
For More Information Contact:
John Barstow, Director of Communications
Orton Family Foundation
PO Box 111 (152 Maple St., Suite 101)
Middlebury, VT 05753
802.388.6336
communications@orton.org
www.orton.org