A series of maps with the trajectory of Kerouac on those places and with quotes from those places. Mexico City, Big Sur, Denver, San Francisco,NY, Lowell Desolation Peak…

Kerouac CornHole Game – Use concrete corn hole game board already installed in the park, temporarily paint or install portrait of Jack Kerouac’s face on surface, and create bean bags that are books, quotes, or Jack’s influences that can be tossed into his head

Install some kid friendly outdoor percussion instruments (drums or chimes). Such as: https://strictlyforkidsstore.com/OutdoorInstruments. With or without snarky Kero-whack sign to encourage folks to play.

Jack wanted more people to express themselves, so my idea is for an installation that the public can use to create Kerouac-American-Haikus. It may be difficult to pull off, but what I’m imagining is similar to those installations which are common in playgrounds that have plastic letters you can spin to create simple three letter words. In this iteration however, there would be much more spinning letters – all 26 – (or more likely rearrangeable sliding letters that resemble a wooden sudoku board) so passerbys and rucksack revolutionaries with short poems in their heads can form them for others to enjoy. I suppose there are many ways an artist could bring this concept to life, and it is open to interpretation. “A sentence that’s short and sweet with a sudden jump of thought in it is a kind of haiku, and there’s a lot of freedom and fun in surprising yourself with that, let the mind willy-nilly jump from the branch to the bird.”

To honor Jack Kerouac at 100, I propose to install a Little Free Library in or near Kerouac Park to allow Lowell residents to easily access and share books by and about Jack Kerouac as well as topics addressed in his works (travel, philosophy, race, religion, history, and of course Lowell itself). Residents would be free to influence the ongoing content of the library by adding books as well that they think their neighbors should read around these topics, so content would evolve as residents change it. The weatherproof finished “little library” sells from Little Free Library from between $300-$380, plus the cost of purchasing the initial books.

When the Old Man in the Mountain in NH fell down, they installed a series of “profile poles” at the base so you can stand in footsteps and sight along and still experience the Old Man as being where he always was. My idea is to install a series of similar poles along the riverwalk on the north bank of the Merrimack River between Aiken St. and past Bridge St. to Duck Island, where walkers can stop and see projected on the city scape across the river, images or cutouts of famous Lowellians and visitors: Kerouac lifting a copy of his On the Road above his head, Henry David Thoreau and his brother in a canoe at the Merrimack and Concord River Confluence, etc., but also projections of the diverse community which is Lowell: for example, an image of the Angkor Dance Troupe (I see that on a mill rooftop!)

A monument shaped like a “blank note pad” that allows the public to write their thoughts on the this note pad and every year on Jack’s anniversary, the pad is Re-painted as a new blank page for the public to re-visit.

A day of music, jazz,
Open pianos and open mics
Poets and priests alike
A reading of the golden eternity by Kerouac at the end by candlelight silence ,

Kerouac was a bilingual author. In a city where the residents speak many languages, a project honoring Kerouac’s many “voices” seems appropriate. I would like to see a project that nurtures the next generation of Lowell’s writers and especially encourages young people who speak different languages in various parts of their lives.

Pick historical Jack Kerouac locations throughout Lowell and put sidewalk stencils and temporary lightpost signage at each location. Make a billboard map installed at Kerouac Park with pamphlets people can take for a walking tour of all the locations.