Reimagining Downtown Holly Springs
Festival Street Design Lab | Holly Springs, NC | August 2026
After working with the Town of Holly Springs on its first-ever downtown mural, I was excited for the opportunity to continue our creative partnership and explore an even bigger question:
What could downtown Holly Springs become?
As part of a larger Festival Street initiative, the Town hired Bolton & Menk as the engineering firm helping develop a vision for the future of this downtown corridor. I was brought onto the project as an Art Activation Consultant, focusing specifically on the public art possibilities within that larger vision and exploring how art, color, interaction, and community participation could help bring those possibilities to life.
The site itself is, on most days, a standard downtown street lined with diagonal parking spaces. But for one night, the goal was to look beyond what the space currently is and imagine what it could be.
🔷 What if a street could become a gathering place?
🔷 A canvas?
🔷 A place to play, eat, connect, and spend time together?
Rather than simply telling the community about that possibility, we wanted to bring the vision to life.
Phase 1: Designing The Experience
The process began collaboratively with Bolton & Menk and the Town of Holly Springs team, thinking not only about how Festival Street could look, but how people could move through and interact with it.
Building from imagery and motifs connected to Holly Springs, I developed a visual language incorporating elements inspired by local nature and identity, including holly leaves, bees, water, fish, branches, flowers, and other playful geometric forms.
A continuous white ribbon moved throughout the design, weaving between these different elements as a visual representation of the many layers of identity, people, and experiences that make up Holly Springs.
But this project needed to go beyond creating something beautiful.
We were designing an experience.
The temporary activation included a large-scale pavement mural, an illustrated fence installation, interactive community prompts, gathering spaces, and opportunities for play.
Together, these elements transformed the street from a place designed primarily for cars into a place centered around people.
Phase 2.01: Community Engagement - Share Your Ideas
Before paint ever touched the pavement, we brought the project to the Holly Springs Farmers Market. Instead of presenting the community with a finished idea, we invited them into the creative process.
Children and adults experimented with colors, shapes, patterns, and imagery through hands-on activities while community members shared feedback about what they wanted Festival Street to feel like.
🔷 What colors felt like Holly Springs?
🔷 What imagery connected with the community?
🔷 Should the future space feel colorful, relaxing, energetic, playful, or something else entirely?
These small interactions became another layer of the design process.
For me, meaningful community engagement isn't simply asking people whether they like a finished design. It is creating opportunities for people to contribute ideas, make choices, experiment, and begin developing a sense of ownership over the space before it even exists.
Phase 2.02: Community Engagement - Paint With Us!
Then it was time to turn the street itself into the canvas.
During a community paint day, volunteers helped bring the pavement mural to life through a large-scale paint-by-number experience.
Flowers expanded across parking spaces. Bees, leaves, water, fish, branches, bubbles, and geometric forms began appearing across the asphalt. White lines moved between the individual illustrations, visually connecting the different areas of the street.
Community members weren't just watching a public art installation happen. They were helping create it.
That distinction was important.
The finished mural became a record of many individual hands contributing to one shared environment, while the process of painting together gave people another reason to gather, talk, collaborate, and experience the street differently.
Phase 3: Experiencing Festival Street
The final phase was designed to culminate in a Festival Street block party where the community could experience the transformed space together.
Unfortunately, weather had other plans, and the full evening event had to be canceled. But the activation still had a chance to do exactly what it was created to do.
During a shortened midday event, community members, nearby businesses, Town staff, and visitors were able to step into the transformed street, pull up a chair, play games, explore the artwork, interact with the installations, and experience the area as something other than a place to park or drive through.
For a few hours, the street became a place to stay. And that temporary shift was the point.
What Could This Space Become?
One of my favorite things about temporary public art is that it gives communities permission to experiment.
Not every idea for a public space has to begin with permanent construction. Sometimes paint, furniture, programming, games, and community participation can help people experience an idea before deciding what should come next.
The Holly Springs Festival Street Art Activation Design Lab was an opportunity to do exactly that.
🔷 We took an ordinary downtown street and temporarily changed its purpose.
🔷 We added color where there was asphalt.
🔷 We created gathering spaces where there were parking spaces.
🔷 We invited residents to contribute rather than simply observe.
Most importantly, we created an opportunity for the community to ask: What if this street could be more?
Could it become a place for markets, performances, public art, outdoor dining, community celebrations, play, or simply spending time together?
The answers don't have to come all at once.
Sometimes the first step toward reimagining a place is simply giving people the opportunity to experience it differently.
For one colorful weekend in Holly Springs, that's exactly what we did.