Friendly Fronts is a nationwide movement, sprouted in St. Paul, MN, providing people with a step-by-step process and support system to transform their front yards into places that make them and their community feel alive.
The movement is transforming the most ubiquitous and underutilized space in America - the front yard - from empty expanses of grass into dynamic places that are loved, used, and facilitate relationships between neighbors. By creating more inviting front yards (and boulevards, stoops, etc.), people will spend more time in them and in turn build more and deeper relationships with their neighbors and neighborhood.
Funded by a Knight City Challenge Grant, the first version of the Friendly Front Yard Toolkit was launched in the Summer of 2016. The toolkit and process was piloted with 22 households from the Frogtown and Hamline-Midway neighborhoods of St. Paul and four apartment buildings owned by Blaisdell Housing and Common Bond in the Whittier Neighborhood of Minneapolis in partnership with the Whittier Alliance.
Those who used Friendly Fronts benefited.
Single-family home dweller participants:
The movement is transforming the most ubiquitous and underutilized space in America - the front yard - from empty expanses of grass into dynamic places that are loved, used, and facilitate relationships between neighbors. By creating more inviting front yards (and boulevards, stoops, etc.), people will spend more time in them and in turn build more and deeper relationships with their neighbors and neighborhood.
Funded by a Knight City Challenge Grant, the first version of the Friendly Front Yard Toolkit was launched in the Summer of 2016. The toolkit and process was piloted with 22 households from the Frogtown and Hamline-Midway neighborhoods of St. Paul and four apartment buildings owned by Blaisdell Housing and Common Bond in the Whittier Neighborhood of Minneapolis in partnership with the Whittier Alliance.
Those who used Friendly Fronts benefited.
Single-family home dweller participants:
- Friendly Front Yard members met an average of 5.4 new neighbors.
- 43% saw an increase in neighbors out in their front yards.
- Every one of the participants told us that after being involved in the Friendly Fronts project they were motivated to increase their civic activities.
- 91% want to keep making socially-based improvements to their front yard.
- 43% felt an increase in safety and security after participating in the project.
- 77% said they are interested in staying in their apartments long term.
*Survey results based on 2016 Survey Monkey survey of pilot project participants
"I like getting people together. I got a lot of good ideas from the toolkit. I actually sat on my porch and drew out a plan and visualized it. I like to get people together. I do a lot of family events. I've had neighbors stop to talk with me and sit in the front yard with me."
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The Friendly Fronts initiative is a project of The Musicant Group, an interdisciplinary placemaking and space activation firm that
"creates places where people want to be."
Funding for the project has generously been provided by the Knight Foundation's City Challenge Grant initiative.
"creates places where people want to be."
Funding for the project has generously been provided by the Knight Foundation's City Challenge Grant initiative.
