{"id":661,"date":"2015-09-23T16:44:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T20:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/water.phila.gov\/blog\/new-video-philly-water-art-strengthens-river-connections\/"},"modified":"2023-01-05T10:43:35","modified_gmt":"2023-01-05T15:43:35","slug":"new-video-philly-water-art-strengthens-river-connections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/water.phila.gov\/blog\/new-video-philly-water-art-strengthens-river-connections\/","title":{"rendered":"New Video: Philly Water Art Strengthens River Connections"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nWaterways <\/a><\/span><\/strong>art at the Venice Island Performing Arts and Recreation Center. Photo credit: Philadelphia Water.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Before we started our trailblazing Waterways<\/a><\/em> collaboration with Mural Arts<\/a>, we hit the streets for an informal survey looking at what people in Manayunk know about our efforts to improve the health of the Schuylkill River and whether that\u2019s something they care about.<\/p>\n

Since the dozens of colorful vinyl pieces created by artist Eurhi Jones<\/a> for Waterways<\/em> were designed to act as steppingstones linking Pretzel Park<\/a> to a vastly improved Venice Island Performing Arts and Recreation Center<\/a> with tons of important stormwater features, we wanted to know how many people knew about those improvements.<\/p>\n

In that survey, a striking 90%<\/a>\u00a0of the people we spoke to weren’t aware of all that Venice Island’s stormwater\u00a0features are\u00a0doing to improve Schuylkill River water quality. The number was way out of whack with the percent of people\u2014a full 100%\u2014who support improving the health of our waterways. In other words, everyone wants healthy rivers, but not many people know how money is being spent to achieve that goal.<\/p>\n

So, five months after the Waterways<\/em> debut, we went back out to the streets of Manayunk to see if people had a better sense of how features like the green roof\u00a0\u00a0and 4 million gallon stormwater basin at Venice Island are helping to make the Schuylkill better. And, we\u2019re pleased to say that 30.6% of respondents said they knew about Philadelphia Water\u2019s Venice Island improvements. It might not be the 100% we all want, but it\u2019s a start!<\/p>\n

To further highlight Waterways<\/em> and other infrastructure-enhancing public art projects, we put together a cool video about Philly Water Art projects. You can find out all about Philly Water Art while getting a unique drone\u2019s-eye-view of Venice Island and Manayunk here:<\/p>\n