JF(x): Imagining the River Beyond the Freeway

Join us to imagine new futures for the Jones Falls at this collaborative workshop

No waterway has been more essential to the development of Baltimore than the Jones Falls. And yet this river has endured the effects of pollution and neglect for well over a century. The river was forced underground in the early twentieth century, a radical transformation in the name of public health and efficiency that has had lasting consequences for the environmental quality of the water and watershed. However forgotten the Jones Falls may be as a river entombed by urban infrastructure and even a major freeway, a fundamental ecological restoration of the river remains possible and necessary. What if we reimagined the future of this river instead as the center of a sustainable, equitable, and ecologically vibrant Baltimore?

The Peale's exhibition on “The Future of Here: A Glimpse of a River Culture to Come" is anchored in a collective exploration of the Jones Falls watershed and an imagination of what collective life in this environment might one day become. The exhibition is an invitation to extend our senses into the landscape around us and the other futures it may promise, to turn our attention from the commotion of city streets to the vibrant yet unseen riverscape at our feet. Taking inspiration from the exhibition, this workshop will invite participants to engage in collaborative and speculative exercises to imagine and visualize alternative futures, a hands-on modeling activity, and a walk to the nearby mouth of the Jones Falls. The workshop will be led together by social designer Lee Davis, public artist Bruce Willen, and anthropologist Anand Pandian.

Cities around the country are now paying heed once again to buried and neglected urban waterways, working to daylight these rivers and streams, increase equitable access, and reconnect them with urban communities. The lower Jones Falls has been buried below I-83 for over 50 years, overlooked and mistreated. With the Jones Falls Expressway nearing its own end of life in the coming decades, we are on the threshold of another phase of radical change and possibility for the future condition of this river system. With this horizon in mind, the workshop is meant to kindle a collective imagination of how else the future of the river might look in ecological terms. The hope is that Baltimore too may one day join the many cities working to undo the damage caused by pervasive patterns of urban development.

Lee Davis is an author, designer, and social entrepreneur, and co-Executive Director of the Center for Creative Impact at MICA where he leads MICA’s collaborations to generate greater awareness of, inspiration for, and investment in the Jones Falls Watershed.

Bruce Willen is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, musician, and creator of the Ghost Rivers public art project, which has brought wide public attention to one tributary of the Jones Falls buried under the streets of Baltimore, Sumwalt Run. He is the principal of Public Mechanics, a studio focused on public art, design, and placemaking for public and cultural spaces.

Anand Pandian teaches anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. He is a curator of the Ecological Design Collective, and one of the organizers of "The Future of Here." He is working on a new book project on decay, waste, and the crafting of ecological futures.

This workshop is co-sponsored by the Ecological Design Collective (EDC), a community for radical ecological imagination and collaboration. The workshop is part of a 2024-25 EDC series of Baltimore-based “Groundings” on the theme of Reimagining Land. Those interested in these themes are welcome to join the Jones Falls community group on the EDC online platform as one way of continuing the conversation.

Host or Publisher The Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture