DIY Lowell Projects and Programs
Each year, DIY Lowell volunteers start new projects. Many of these projects, such as Points of Light Lantern Celebration, take on a life of their own outside of DIY Lowell. This is our goal: each project is a small experiment that, if successful, leads the way to bigger changes in Lowell.
Featured Project: Acre Art & History
The Acre Art & History Activation Project is guiding a Project Team of community members from different backgrounds, ages, and perspectives to work together to tell their story through pop-up signage, art, and installations. DIY Lowell facilitators are helping the team not only learn how to gather information, interview other community members, develop themes, and create and manage technical efforts such as calls for art, but also to leverage those stories to boost local businesses.
We can’t say what specific interventions we’ll create together – because it will be led by the Project Team! In the fall, we’ll recruit the team and get oriented. In the winter, we’ll release call for artists, begin writing history signs, procure materials, and get licenses and permits. The project will be ready for a ribbon-cutting celebration in summer 2027.
In the meantime, there’s a photo contest, we’ll be sharing updates via social media, and plenty of opportunities for the broader community to connect with the Project Team. Huge thanks to MassDevelopment for a Creative Catalyst grant to make this project a reality – learn more on the project webpage!
(Below photo: Yuletide Market, City of Lowell)
Ongoing Programs
Festival and Event Planners Resource Group
The Lowell Community Festival and Event Planners Resource Group is a collaboration with Mosaic Lowell to bring together festivals and events of all types to teach and learn from one another. This includes both regular workshop panels to share best practices and skills and space for creating new collaborations. We meet on “odd” numbered months on the first Wednesday, 6:00 pm, at LTC (unless it’s a holiday). Check our social media for upcoming topics and changes!
(Photo: Adam McCune)
Let's Talk Lowell
We’ve always been stronger when we come together. This is why DIY Lowell is hosting, Let’s Talk Lowell, a series of round table community connection conversations about preserving our vibrancy. Everyone is welcome. Refreshments served and child-friendly activities are available. Interpretation available upon request.
In 2025, we brought together more than 120 people over the course of a year to talk about downtown vitality, homes for all, community connection, safe and secure mobility, and welcoming city – to newcomers and immigrants. An ongoing volunteer project, “Let’s Walk Lowell,” spun out of it. We’re planning to return to Let’s Talk Lowell sometime in 2026!
(Photo: Fahmina Zaman, Photo below: Points of Light Lantern Celebration, Jenn Myers)
Previous Projects 2022 - 2025
Open Streets Lowell
Open Streets are a nationwide movement to encourage healthy activities such as walking and biking and the use of streets for outdoor dining, shopping, activities, and more. An all-volunteer DIY Lowell Project Team organized Lowell’s very own pilot Open Streets event. It’s free fun – family and student friendly! For one afternoon, Merrimack Street between Kirk and Central was closed to vehicular traffic and open to you!
Our long-term vision is to revitalize downtown through increasing foot traffic. We hope this will establish downtown as a friendly and popular destination for patrons to spend time, thereby attracting more businesses, creating a virtuous cycle for a thriving downtown core. This is a pilot: we’ll learn from this event with the hope that each year, it will come back with changes that make it stronger and more successful. The team is already working with the City on a second year!
Lowell Yuletide Market
The Lowell Yuletide Market was held in December 2024 on JFK Plaza in downtown Lowell. It brought together regional vendors selling unique goods, one-of-a-kind entertainment by local and regional performers, hot chocolate, cozy lighting, fire pits, and more.
It was a pilot for possibly creating a seasonal “yuletide village” that would share holiday spirit, bringing celebratory light to the shortest days of the year. The event was a big success, and Team Members are hoping to one day see the pilot’s promise fulfilled with a recurring, seasonal, Yuletide Market with semi-permanent kiosks.
The event ran concurrently with the City of Lowell City of Lights parade. Featured performers included Krampus, Witches’ Guild of New England, Morgana Mirage, and a holiday Kerouac reading. We brough together more than a dozen volunteers and more than twenty vendors. Most importantly, the project team learned critical skills related to event planning, fundraising, and community outreach.
(Photos: City of Lowell)
Visualize Lowell's Black History
Visualize Lowell’s Black History
is an exhibition of Black history, art, and performances. In 2021, DIY Lowell partnered with Free Soil Arts Collective to create a temporary history trail marked with zip-tie signs complete with wayfinding signs and COVID-19 reminders, art banners hung from lampposts, and performance on Juneteenth, 2021. The project leveraged undertold stories to encourage visitors to explore downtown and stimulate business recovery from COVID-19.
DIY Lowell also created additional elements that provided information on businesses and attractions downtown, such as a website, a directory kiosk, and a bulletin board kiosk. The project continued with wooden structures decorated with murals created by youth groups. DIY Lowell is now working with a committee of Black-identifying Lowellians and artist Kamil Peters for a sculpture celebrating the Black Lowell experience as a capstone to the project.
The Centralville River Path
The Centralville River Path‘s goal is to identify challenges, implement short-term solutions, and plan for long-term changes on the walking/biking trail on the north side of the Merrimack River. Between November 2020 and February 2021, DIY Lowell took a preliminary survey with over 100 respondents to judge interest and themes desired by the community. After that, DIY Lowell teamed up with Lowell Litter Krewe for multiple clean-ups and a pop-up public meeting at the Bridge Street trailhead (Gold Star Park). There, participants commented on initial concepts for short-term interventions inspired by the first survey. Those comments have been incorporated into designs and translated into concepts for longer-term changes by a pro-bono landscape designer, Jess Wilson!
In 2022, we completed quick-build demonstration improvements. Lowell Litter Krewe is now leading the creation of permanent improvements with funding secured by the State Delegation. This might take a long time, but it will include accessibility and aesthetic improvements. They’re going to work hand-in-hand with the community that uses this amazing resource and DIY Lowell, making the vision a reality!
Community Idea Summit Projects: 2015 - 2022
2021 Idea Summit
In addition to the above large community projects, four teams started projects at the 2021 Community Idea Summit (Summit Photo: Britt Boughner).
The Public Restroom Feasibility Team is diving into many questions, exploring the feasibility of public restrooms downtown that would address the human need for dignity, respect, and cleanliness. The restrooms could be for visitors or for the unhoused population, it could be staffed or have other technology, and they could be at many locations.
The Centralville Food Truck Festival team proclaimed theirs as “the fun project!” Didn’t they hear all DIY projects are fun? But this one is especially fun: A “Taste of Centralville” showcasing different restaurants in a tent, food trucks from many places, entertainment, all tentatively in summer 2022. This event would be at Gage Park.
The Kerouac Multilingual Poetry Trail group plans to collaborate with schools and students to a trail along Kerouac historical sites with temporary signs including their bilingual poetry. It may also include a poetry competition at a local venue. The project may also include Little Free Libraries, an interactive chalkboard at Kerouac Park, and a marker at the historic site of the former Textile Bridge, made famous by Kerouac’s work, Dr. Sax.
Amazing young people and adults from the Acre came together using the “Acre Canalway Playway” idea as a springboard for a comprehensive neighborhood improvement project along the Canalways that cross the Acre. The project might include doggie stations, park playground equipment, repainting, repair or replace security cameras, more lights, and improved landscaping.
2019 Idea Summit
Underground Railroad Monument will look at a potential short-term walking path with signs and long-term interpretive signs at key locations teaching about the anti-slavery movement and the underground railroad in Lowell. They’ll need folks good at fundraising, knowledgable about history, or connected with diverse communities to help!
Open Arts Spaces is DIY Lowell’s first Young Idea Project. They will identify a space or spaces for young people (ages 13-21) to explore visual or performing arts in a youth-focused environment with mentorship from local artists. They need input from young people, visual and performing artists, educators, and other community members who want to help make this idea happen!
Ghost Signs Alive selected and researched multiple faded, historic painted advertisements throughout Lowell. As a pilot, they are illuminating the J.C. Ayer Co. sign on middle street with an animated projected recreation of the sign. They are selling custom-made soap inspired by Ayer Cherry Pectoral medicine and postcards to raise funds, with the hope to illuminate additional signs in the future.
Did You Know Signs for Lowell will work with community leaders to zip-tie temporary signs with facts about Lowell’s zoning, land use, and more to inspire people to think about how Lowell’s laws shape its community and become interested in local government.
2018
No Community Idea Summit occured in 2018, but an ad-hoc project was taken up by DIY Lowell volunteers:
2017 Idea Summit
These ideas were selected to be discussed at the 2017 Community Idea Summit. Project Teams completed many of them!
Rover the Riverhawk, the Lowell Trash Machine
Longest Day, Longest Table, a Rooftop Dining Event
Green Rooftop Garden Demonstration
In addition, an ad-hoc project was taken up by DIY Lowell volunteers starting planning in 2017:
2016 Idea Summit
These ideas were selected to be discussed at the 2016 Community Idea Summit. Project Teams completed most of them in the following years! Click on each link for more information.
Points of Light Lantern Celebration (Completed 2017, ongoing spin-off)
Park(ing) Day Pop-Up Parklet (Completed 2016, ongoing spin-off)
Domestic Violence Survivor Gallery of Hope (Completed 2017)
Pop-Up Cinema (Completed 2018)
2015 Idea Summit
These ideas were selected to be discussed at the 2015 Community Idea Summit. Project Teams completed them over the following years! Click on each link for more information.
Lowell-Themed Artistic Bike Racks
In addition, an ad-hoc project was taken up by DIY Lowell volunteers last winter:
