The Penn Project for Civic Engagement partnered with the Kimmel Center, PennPraxis, The University of the Arts, and the Philadelphia Inquirer's Great Expectations project to involve citizens in generating ideas for redesigning the Kimmel Center's public spaces. Their ideas guided the Kimmel Center's re-evaluation of how to make its public spaces more active and inviting.

For while the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts has some wonderful performance spaces, it has never quite lived up to its promised to provide a kind of "town square" that would draw Philadelphians and visitors to the Center for all kinds of events, or just to meet.

At four public discussions, involving 200 people, PPCE moderators lead small groups in dialogue about the Kimmel Center’s strengths and weaknesses. They developed guiding principles for rethinking the exterior and interior spaces. That input was combined with online suggestions to serve as the foundation of designs by the undergraduate students at the University of the Arts and by Penn Design graduate students.

As a result of this input, the Kimmel board and administration used citizen input as initial specification for redesigning the public spaces at the Kimmel. Some citizen ideas were immediately implemented.

For more information about this project, click here.