Describe your community. You may be a part of many communities: church, school, neighborhood, youth groups, town or social activities. Describe the community that you seem the closest to. My community consist of Leesburg, Florida we are a somewhat small town in Central Florida. In 2009 our population was around 22,286. We have lots of churches but currently I do not belong to one. I am apart of Leesburg Elementary school as two of my children attend school there. In my neighborhood we have a crime watch team and also we keep an eye on all the children in the neighborhood due to we currently have a convicted child molester that lives amongst us.
What are the shared experiences and events in your community? During the year the community library does children programs every Tuesday and Thursday for our local children from the ages of 2-15 and during the summer the city also offers summer day camp for campers of all ages. I work at the local hospital and we do some stuff for the community as the Rotary Fair where we do free blood work ups and also we do the Relays for life. Also the city of Leesburg does many different community stuff like Bike Fest, Mardi Gras, Christmas Parade, and Light up Leesburg.
My family and I participate in the Christmas Parade because our children is in the Community Dance center and our children take part in the Christmas Parade. I take part in the Rotary Fair. I help out by drawing blood during the fair because at the hospital I work as a Phlebotomist.
What common goals do you and the people in the community share? To help our community to flourish and become a strong community where people love to come and live. Help keep our children safe and keep our community looking clean.
What stories in your community need to be told? Leesburg City Hall was completed in 1926, more than 50 years after the city was incorporated in 1875. During those five decades, Leesburg's government had many homes.Originally, the commission met on the first floor of the Masonic Lodge, then on the northwest corner of Orange and Fifth streets. Later, City Hall was moved into the old Sumter County Courthouse after Leesburg lost the county seat. The last temporary City Hall was in upstairs offices in the old Armory Building on the northeast corner of Fourth and Main streets.
Citizens passed a $60,000 bond issue for the construction of City Hall. In addition to housing city government, it was also home to the police and fire departments. Two of the three bays used by those departments are visible on the east side of the building, across from the library.
City Hall was designed by Alan J. MacDonough, an architect with an office on Main Street. Locally he also designed the Historic Lake County Courthouse, Eustis City Hall, Clermont High School, Eustis Grade School and the Masonic Temple at the corner of Fifth and Main streets in Leesburg.
Work on expansion of City Hall was completed in 1988, doubling its size. Bricks were gathered from the original brickyard in the expansion. It was a $1.5 million project (School).
Edward H. Mote and his wife Lucretia bought the property at 1021 W. Main Street from John Love in February 1889. The Victorian-style house was completed in 1892 for about $9,000. The house had a nursery, but the Motes remained childless and sold the home to Bishop Henry Clay Morrison in 1908, who bought it as a retirement residence.
Morrison made many improvements to the house, including the addition of electricity by his son, Dr. H.K. Morrison, who birthed about 3,000 Leesburg babies.
The house was sold to John S. and May James Morris in 1918. A member of the Morris family lived in the house for the next 70 years. They added indoor plumbing in phases.
Son Robert moved his family into the house to care for his aging mother May in the mid-1950s. His father, John S. Morris, died several years earlier. When May J. Morris died in 1973 the house was willed to Robert and Georgianna. The Mote-Morris House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places the following year.
The Mote-Morris House was purchased by Morrison United Methodist Church in 1988 and the church offered the house to whomever would move it. The house was relocated from 1021 West Main Street to 1195 West Magnolia Street in 1990. The community raised $95,000 so the house could be moved (School).
How might individual, group, and community stories be told through art work? (This is a key question! Please give this question some thought, as it will be the main focus of your final project.). There are several different ways this could happen through paintings, poems, the internet, but I feel one great way to do this is to make a community quilt that shows everybody what our community is all about.
Is there a sign, symbol, ritual, or story from these questions that could act as a central metaphor? I would say after reading from our city website and I agree it would have to be the" Lake front City".
Are there opportunities for you to support and expand upon local craft traditions? Yes, because during the year our city holds a local craft fair and in the craft fair our local schools enter drawings and different stuff that they have made so the community may look at them and buy them. My youngest daughter about two years ago had one of her painting put in the craft fair and she sold her picture of a cat for $10.00 that what quite interesting and made her feel really good.
Discuss the idea that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” What aspects of the community environment do some members of the group find beautiful that others do not? Can those who find something ugly see it in another way? Some people may find all the lakes we have to be beautiful and some might not like them at all. Some may like the Bike fest we hold in our city for the weekend and some may not. But yes I believe if you find something ugly you can see it another way if you look at the item in a different aspect because just cause it is ugly this way does not mean that opening your eyes and looking at differently cannot change the way you feel about something.
Who could you partner with for this project? I would target the local schools to see if they would be interested in helping to produce the community quilt and at the end we could put the quilt together and have one giant quilt made from all of our community members to be put up during our different events to show that our community is strong.
Where could this event take place or displayed at? This could take place in downtown Leesburg on Main Street just like all the other community events that we have and when we are done it could be held in our City Hall so everybody could stop in and see it displayed.
Who would you like to reach in this project? Who would you like to see this project or be educated about your community? I think this project should be geared towards the children in our community so they can see the power of the people and see what it is like to be part of something big and how to represent our community and make them want to become involved with our community.
