I have been waiting to write my second blog post until I could say that the labyrinth was finished, but then I realized, it will never really be finished. There will always been new plants to plant or a focus point altar to be updated and people to invite to join in the community. Here is a picture of the stepping stone that was placed at the entrance of the labyrinth. It was made by children at a gathering in the space this past summer solstice.
We did have a dedication of the Rivoli Park Labyrinth on October 10th, 2013. As part of Indy Do Day, more than a dozen people helped place bricks to mark the outline of the path. Fox 59 filmed the installation live on the 4 o’clock and 6 o’clock news as part of their coverage of service projects going on throughout the city. Tim Nation, leader of the Peace Learning Center and the Focus 2020 initiative that funded this project, joined us as we walked the path when it was just marked out with white paint on the dirt. Neighbors, family, and volunteers from the group, Evolver Indianapolis, were part of the crew that participated in the installation.
The path of the labyrinth is a focus triune design created by John E. Ridder of
Paxworks: the Labyrinth Shop . Dhyana Raynor and Katherine Ogawa Boyles marked out design, which was slightly altered to allow for circles of plants to be part of the labyrinth layout. Dhyana wrote the first entry in the log book for the labyrinth about finding the center of the path.
To date nearly thirty people have walked the labyrinth and left a comment in the log book. They have spoken of the peace and beauty of the labyrinth and listed personal insights that they gained from their walk. Often illumination comes when one is at the center of a labyrinth. We installed a boulder at the center that can be used for sitting and contemplating.
Work on the labyrinth continues. Mounds, known as berms in landscaping, are being created around the labyrinth using the hugelkultur technique that is popular in permaculture circles. We will plant native Indiana wildflower seeds in the labyrinth design right after we have a hard freeze. Another aspect of the project that is getting underway is the community art that will be installed in the space. Some money has been raised and been used to purchase the boards that we will be decorating. Two groups have been confirmed to create pieces to be displayed on the fence next to the labyrinth. Students in a self-contained classroom at School #54, which is less than a mile away, are going to create art and participants in a art group at Midtown Community Mental Health Center are going to lend their skills to the project as well. You can learn more at this crowdsourcing
website, www.gofundme.com/rplabyrinth. It has been fun distributing thank you gifts of key chains, t-shirts and even original art to people who have donated. A supporter, modeling her new t-shirt before she walked the labyrinth.
We plan to have a celebration in the space on World Labyrinth Day, which will be May 3rd, 2014 at 1 pm with twenty-one decorated panels installed on the fence for viewing. You can receive more updates by liking the Rivoli Park Labyrinth Indianapolis public page, www.facebook.com/rplabyrinth. Please do subscribe to the blog in the upper right hand corner of the page if you want to keep up with digest updates of the Rivoli Park Labyrinth project posted roughly once a season. I also wrote a guest blog post for Shawndra Miller, who is researching community resilience, at the beginning of October. I encourage you to read that post
here.
Thank you so much for being a part of the Rivoli Park Labyrinth community.
We did have a dedication of the Rivoli Park Labyrinth on October 10th, 2013. As part of Indy Do Day, more than a dozen people helped place bricks to mark the outline of the path. Fox 59 filmed the installation live on the 4 o’clock and 6 o’clock news as part of their coverage of service projects going on throughout the city. Tim Nation, leader of the Peace Learning Center and the Focus 2020 initiative that funded this project, joined us as we walked the path when it was just marked out with white paint on the dirt. Neighbors, family, and volunteers from the group, Evolver Indianapolis, were part of the crew that participated in the installation.
The path of the labyrinth is a focus triune design created by John E. Ridder of Paxworks: the Labyrinth Shop . Dhyana Raynor and Katherine Ogawa Boyles marked out design, which was slightly altered to allow for circles of plants to be part of the labyrinth layout. Dhyana wrote the first entry in the log book for the labyrinth about finding the center of the path.
To date nearly thirty people have walked the labyrinth and left a comment in the log book. They have spoken of the peace and beauty of the labyrinth and listed personal insights that they gained from their walk. Often illumination comes when one is at the center of a labyrinth. We installed a boulder at the center that can be used for sitting and contemplating.
Work on the labyrinth continues. Mounds, known as berms in landscaping, are being created around the labyrinth using the hugelkultur technique that is popular in permaculture circles. We will plant native Indiana wildflower seeds in the labyrinth design right after we have a hard freeze. Another aspect of the project that is getting underway is the community art that will be installed in the space. Some money has been raised and been used to purchase the boards that we will be decorating. Two groups have been confirmed to create pieces to be displayed on the fence next to the labyrinth. Students in a self-contained classroom at School #54, which is less than a mile away, are going to create art and participants in a art group at Midtown Community Mental Health Center are going to lend their skills to the project as well. You can learn more at this crowdsourcing website, www.gofundme.com/rplabyrinth. It has been fun distributing thank you gifts of key chains, t-shirts and even original art to people who have donated. A supporter, modeling her new t-shirt before she walked the labyrinth. 
We plan to have a celebration in the space on World Labyrinth Day, which will be May 3rd, 2014 at 1 pm with twenty-one decorated panels installed on the fence for viewing. You can receive more updates by liking the Rivoli Park Labyrinth Indianapolis public page, www.facebook.com/rplabyrinth. Please do subscribe to the blog in the upper right hand corner of the page if you want to keep up with digest updates of the Rivoli Park Labyrinth project posted roughly once a season. I also wrote a guest blog post for Shawndra Miller, who is researching community resilience, at the beginning of October. I encourage you to read that post here.
Thank you so much for being a part of the Rivoli Park Labyrinth community.
