Following the successful renovation and reopening of the historic Flagg Mountain observation tower, the Alabama Trails Foundation (ATF) received funding from the Alabama State Council on the Arts (ASCA) to explore the potential for arts engagement as a driver of community involvement on the site. Led by architect and educator Cheryl Morgan, the project team included Stick, ATF executive director Cindy Ragland, and artist, writer, & community organizer Jay Lamar.

The team began by facilitating a “Come To The Mountain” planning and listening session that brought together a wide range of community members and multidisciplinary specialists at the intersection of outdoor recreation, stewardship, and the arts. Attendees included geologists, botanists, ornithologists, musicians, writers, poets, painters, sculptors, foresters, trail scientists, and park rangers, among others. These listening sessions led to a pair of public arts programs hosted on the mountain, which welcomed visitors into an immersive, many-faceted experience of Alabama’s “first mountain”.

As part of this initiative, Stick designed and coordinated the installation of seating along the accessible approach path to Flagg Tower. These locally-quarried, monolithic benches and pedestal seats punctuate the winding 1/2-mile trail with a sculptural design element while simultaneously providing points of pause and rest. Besides highlighting the mountain’s natural substrate, the choice of stone was informed by the need for seating resilient to the periodic managed burns crucial to maintaining the native longleaf pine ecosystem.

Stick also produced a comprehensive, illustrated plan for deferred improvements and recurring maintenance that will ensure the long-term safety, functionality, and accessibility of the tower’s physical complex, and enhance its capacity to support robust arts programming. The result of a close study of on-the-ground conditions, this report documented critical outstanding site needs, and made recommendations for future upkeep and infrastructure improvements including restroom facilities, outdoor gathering spaces, and universally accessible viewing platforms.

The ASCA grant enabled Stick’s architectural involvement – in ways both conventional and unconventional – in assessment, planning, and visioning around arts engagement at Flagg Mountain. Dimension and aspect were added to these processes, and future goals better set up for success, by the inclusion of architectural viewpoints and competencies not typically associated with arts planning. Ongoing architectural initiatives at Flagg, meanwhile, have likewise been informed in rich and novel ways by engagement with artistic viewpoints, an engagement not typically included in the scope of architectural services.

The work of this project enlarges the concept of what a commissioned work can be in the context of the arts. By conducting architectural and landscape design in concert with arts planning, a more holistic vision emerges. Art, artist, audience, architect, the built and natural environments – this project creates space at Flagg Mountain in which all of these are in active dialogue with each other.