HeartLands Conservancy: Growing Community with Lots of Love

Abstract

This Capstone Project explores what aspects of HeartLands Conservancy’s current Lots of Love program are most influential in program success and, thus, may be key to designing methods for expanding the scope and scale of the program in a way that is sustainable for the organization to manage. The Lots of Love program is an ongoing project that helps local volunteers transform abandoned lots into parks, pollinator gardens, or other new places. Community involvement is an essential factor in these Lots of Love transformations, with organized groups of community members working with HeartLands’ staff to envision how their community will work together to revitalize a space. Through field visits and a survey of volunteers, I explored what factors most influenced the development of the projects undertaken through the Lots of Love program and what characteristics of the current volunteers might be indicators of growth in collective community identity. This mixed methods project is rooted in the conceptual framework of the Virtuous Cycle of Placemaking, introduced by Silberberg et al (2013).