Two years ago, college student Joe Franke and founder of ActivateMKE, whose mission is "to connect the community by activating people and unused space through the idea of sports and fitness, thus providing focal points where all can gather," put together a team to renovate the two ragged basketball courts at Tiefenthaler Park in the Midtown neighborhood.
The first court was painted last summer.
"We believe basketball brings people together in a powerful way," Franke told me two years ago when I wrote more in-depth about the project. "Milwaukeeans from all walks of life can coexist and share the experience through sport, music and art.
"So, with this (project), we were lucky to take a step in the right direction. We updated the nets, rims and paint lines at Tiefenthaler Park. This is the first of many series of renovations to not only Tiefenthaler Park, but ideally more parks around Milwaukee. It will not only be basketball renovations, but bringing in art and music, as well."
Recently, Franke, along with Activate Co., the PEAK Initiative, Artists Working in Education and the Friends of Tiefenthaler Park and a group of students participated in a series of art workshops called "Play in the Paint: Court Art Course and Curriculum."
"This class was envisioned after two successful years of improvements made to Tiefenthaler Park using Sport and Art as the medium for change," wrote Franke in an email.
"Throughout last summer’s HOME Court project, a question emerged: How can we build on the momentum of the past two summers while utilizing the significant investment we’ve made in a team of artists, court painting experience and content creation to develop a course for youth that would lead to a community-centric design, execution and activation of the second basketball court at Tiefenthaler Park?"
The result is the redesign of a second basketball court in the park. Painting will take place Wednesday through Tuesday, Sept. 10.
Here’s the design for the second court:
And here’s what the first one looks like:
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"Through this class, our job as guides was to take the students of this community through a process of discovering their own artistic creativity, their own color palette, and ultimately their own mural design from which to paint on the second court in Tiefenthaler," wrote Franke.
"By using the foundation of this neighborhood as their springboard to their future, we are happy to say that the students did not disappoint.We hope you appreciate the hard work of those who made this happen."
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
