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What’s happening around Fargo and at World Garden Commons
10 Sectors, 10 Solutions: Artists and Community Change
Nationally, The Fargo Project, World Garden Commons in Rabanus Park, Fargo is known for it exemplifies good, ethical practice, and demonstrates the positive impact of arts and culture in environmental[…] Read more
Photos: Prairie for the People Grand Opening
Aug. 2018 – Non-profit partners and the community near Rabanus Park, Fargo, celebrated the end of construction at World Garden Commons on August 5, 2018. The purpose to celebrate construction,[…] Read more
Basin Virtual Tour
World Garden Commons – Summer SceneSeekBeak Snap View World Garden Commons stormwater basin during winter, after a rain event and during a full prairie flower bloom.
Read moreOur Mission
The Fargo Project’s first installation is the World Garden Commons at Rabanus Park to transform a neighborhood storm water basin into an ecological commons, a greenspace that reflects the cultural vibrancy of the Fargo community. The Fargo Project’s first installation is the World Garden Commons at Rabanus Park to transform a neighborhood storm water basin into an ecological commons, a greenspace that reflects the cultural vibrancy of the Fargo community.
Learn more…
1
STORMWATER BASIN
18
ACRES OF LAND
20+
CULTURES COMING TOGETHER
Our Sponsors
The effort is made possible through partnerships with ecological artist Jackie Brookner (1945-2015) and funding from ArtPlace America, the City of Fargo, Fargo Park District, The Kresge Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Our Town, and the North Dakota Outdoor Heritage Fund.
Our Artists
The new vision for the site considers the surrounding communities, the traffic patterns, rainfall events, and the Rabanus park amenities to provide neighborhood connectivity, water-quality improvement, continued flood control, and beauty to benefit the community.
Always Remembered. Never Forgotten.
Jackie Brookner, Lead Artist (1945-2015)
Fargo Project Lead & Ecological Artist
Jackie Brookner brought 20 years experience as a socially engaged ecological artist to The Fargo Project. Her body of work unites plant-based water remediation for parks, rivers, and wetlands with habitat restoration, landscape sculpture, and active community collaboration. Her projects demonstrate how undervalued water resources can be reclaimed to create evocative public places that connect people with natural systems and are grounded in aesthetic understandings developed throughout Brookner’s 40 year practice as a sculptor. Her whole-systems approach activates nodal points where social, cultural and ecological revitalization meet. Brookner’s works can be found in Finland and Germany, and in the United States in Ohio, Washington, Idaho, Florida, California, and Missouri. Brookner published and lectured internationally linking sustainable cities, water, expanded art practice and global ecological urgency. Jackie passed away May 15, 2015.
What Our Partners Say
The Fargo Project Project has many partners, this is what just a few of them have to say.
Take a look at our partners!“It’s an honor to be a part of this process for such a good community and ecological mission. Our students are a now a part of a different type of creativity – the re-envisioning of community spaces and utility – that may have a lasting impact on our community for hundreds of years.”
Alex Fogarty
MSUM
Graphic Communications
Assistant Professor“What excites me about the Fargo Project is there are so many different parts coming together. There is the natural play area. There is the cultural component bringing in a lot of new Americans in the area, as well as reusing this basin which has pretty much been dead space”.
Christine Hargiss
NDSU
Natural Resource Science Assistant Professor
“There are some really exciting and interesting things going on here, this idea of a natural playground. That becomes a little bit more difficult to maintain than a plastic playground. I hope that people take ownership and that it can be sustained for a very long time.”
Stephanie Day
NDSU
Geosciences
Assistant Professor