2023 $2 Tour of the Village is back!

Header Image for the event that gives the event details written out below and shows a man giving the peace-sign after getting dunked last year

Looking for something fun to do or just want to see what the Village has to offer? 

When: August 26 from 4-8 PM
Where: The Village in Muncie

2023 $2 Tour flier (pdf)

Live music and huge discounts on items ranging from FREE to just $2!

The Riverside-Normal City neighborhood association is excited to host a $2 tour of the Village! Participating Village merchants will be offering $2 items that range from an Art Mart goodie bag to a hard-shell taco at Chavas or a $2 t-shirt from Screenbroidery. Live music will begin at 4:00 PM on a stage at the intersection of Dill St and University Ave.

This event will showcase local village businesses while promoting the Riverside-Normal City neighborhood and its unique features, like the neighborhood’s prime location between Ball State, downtown Muncie, and Minnetrista!

Bonus:

  • The first 500 attendees will receive a Village Passport.  Collect 5 stamps to be eligible for prizes donated by participating Village merchants.
  • The first 100 attendees will receive a $2 bill!

Sponsors:

This free event is sponsored by Ball State University, Ball Brothers Foundation, Muncie Action Plan, Muncie Map Company, and the Riverside-Normal City Neighborhood Association.

Muncie Neighborhood Visual Identity Design (ongoing)

snippet of one of the branding images

The City of Muncie has diverse communities with friendly people, exciting pasts, and outstanding cultural amenities that make it a desired place to live, do business, and visit. Starting in Spring 2019, Studio 165+, an immersive design studio in the School of Art, began working with neighborhood committees to develop their visual identity, elevate their image and evoke a sense of pride in residents. The students researched each neighborhood determining unique key aspects, characteristics, challenges, and opportunities. After developing a neighborhood identity, they created designs to captured those characteristics and established style guides to help the neighborhoods illustrate graphic standards and rules to ensure consistency and continuity across applications and platforms. The neighborhoods done so far include Gatewood, Halteman Village, Westbrier, Old West End, Robinwood Estates, Forest Park, McKinley, Southside, Riverside/Normal City, and Whitely.  With input from residents of each neighborhood, they created a variety of materials including logos for each neighborhood to choose from, each one tailored to what makes that area of our community special–from the mid-century architecture of Halteman Village, to the open hands of Whitely.

If Studio 165+ is coming to your neighborhood soon, please fill out this brief questionnaire to help them get started on your new neighborhood identity.

Photo Gallery | You can also check out the great work they’ve done so far!

Awards & Recognition:

Whitely Community Identity Design

  1. American Graphic Design Award (National Award)
  2. American Advertising Federation East Central Indiana, Silver ADDY (Local Award)

Old West End Neighborhood Identity Design

  1. American Advertising Federation East Central Indiana, Gold ADDY (Local Award)
  2. American Advertising Federation East Central Indiana, Judges Choice ADDY (Local Award)
  3. American Advertising Federation East Central Indiana, Best of Show ADDY (Local Award)

Studio 165+

Project Page: https://www.studio165plus.com/bbn
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/studio165plus/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studio165plus

 


Spring 2019

Faculty Mentor: Shantanu Suman
Department: Art
Community Partner: Building Better Neighborhoods, Muncie Action Plan, Halteman Village, Robinwood Estates, Westbrier Neighborhood, Whitely Community, Old West End
Students: Nikki Abel, Ashley Allegretti, Hanna Boggs, Mariah Drake, Kate Hamilton, Valerie Francis, Emily Lipps, Sylvia Marbach, Samantha Robbins, Cameo Smith, Ashlyn Sterling, Katie Strader, Angel Winchester


Fall 2019

Faculty Mentor: Shantanu Suman
Department: Art
Community Partner: Building Better Neighborhoods, Muncie Action Plan, Forest Park, McKinley Live Learn Neighborhood, Southside Neighborhood
Student Team: Samantha Robbins, Ashlyn Sterling, Dominic Zelli, Erin Mawhorter, Jared Carter, Joel Hall, Katie Strader, Katie Hamilton, Mariah Drake, Ashley Allegretti, Jakob Rosenberger, Mariah Jester, Nikki Abel


Spring 2020

Faculty Mentor: Shantanu Suman
Department: Art
Community Partner: Building Better Neighborhoods, Muncie Action Plan, Riverside/Normal City
Student Team: Samantha Robbins, Ashlyn Sterling, Katie Strader, Valerie Francis, Angel Winchester, Hanna Boggs, Mariah Drake, Cameo Smith, Kate Hamilton, Ashley Allegretti, Sylvia Marbach, Nikki Abel, Dominic Zelli, Erin Mawhorter, Jared Carter, Joel Hall, Jake Gesick, Aubrey Hayden, Xander Crawley, Kimberly Holbrook, James Ong Jakob Rosenberger, and Mariah Jester

Assigning the Living Quality of Muncie Neighborhoods Using Remote Sensing and GIS

map thumbnail of the neighborhoodSocial well-being and quality of life can be measured using indicators like income, housing, education, health, and the physical environment of an area. In this immersive learning Building Better Neighborhoods project, students evaluated the quality-of-life for residents in the Riverside-Normal City Neighborhood in Muncie. They assessed the living quality for each housing unit in the neighborhood, including the building’s health, physical environment, and its adjacency to community amenities and hazards. Features, such as driving and walking distance to nearest grocery stores, parks, and other amenities, were derived from existing GIS layers or extracted from high-resolution aerial photos in the GIS lab at Ball State University. Additionally, the students used smartphones equipped with thermal infrared cameras to collect information on structure heat loss, road conditions, and lawn health. The students integrated the collected data into a living quality geodatabase of Muncie neighborhoods for further analysis. Explore some of the story maps created using the collected data.


Faculty Mentor: Jason Yang
Department: Geography
Community Partner: Muncie Action Plan
Student Team: William Cape, Nathan Gagnon, Becca Garrett, Elante Ingram, Aaron Jones, Connor Kurtz, Benjamin Lutz, Riley McCreary, Ben Meyer, Patrick Ollier, Nathan Santichen, Jonathan Strang, Erick Wilson, Clay Zeigler

Spring 2020 Ball State Immersive Learning Projects

Ball State faculty, students, and community partners worked together this spring on a number of immersive learning projects in and around Muncie.

Academy of Model Aeronautics Video Project
Faculty Mentors: Tim Pollard, Department of Telecommunications; Suzanne Plesha, Office of Immersive Learning
Community Partner: Academy of Model Aeronautics

Assigning the Living Quality of Muncie Neighborhoods Using Remote Sensing and GIS
Faculty Mentor:  Jason Yang, Department of Geography
Community Partner:  Muncie Action Plan

Beneficence Records (ongoing)
Faculty Mentor:  Daniel Porter, Department of Music Media Production
Community Partner:  Indiana Public Radio

Capturing “The Big Idea”
Faculty Mentor: Melinda Messineo, Department of Sociology
Community Partner: Second Harvest Food Bank

Geospatial Design Laboratory
Faculty Mentor: Jörn Seemann, Department of Geography
Community Partner: Muncie Visitors Bureau

Halteman Park Landscape Architecture Studio Project
Faculty Mentors:  Chris Baas, Jeremy Merrill, J.P. Hall; Department of Landscape Architecture
Community Partners:  Halteman Village Neighborhood Association, City of Muncie, Muncie Parks Department

Human Rights Symposium
Faculty Mentor: Ruby Cain, Department of Educational Studies
Community Partners: City of Muncie Human Rights Commission, Industry Neighborhood Association, Whitely Community Council, Muncie Public Library, Muncie Housing Authority, It Is Well With My Soul, DePaul University School of New Learning and Service Engagement Projects, Northeast Indiana Workers Project, Inc.

i-Made (Indiana Made) Muncie:  Custom Fabricated Design-through-Production (ongoing)
Faculty Mentor:  Kevin Klinger, Department of Architecture
Community Partners:  Indiana Hardwoods (IHLA), Midwest Metals, Minnetrista, Mobile Market

The Junior Producers Club
Faculty Mentor:  Christoph Thompson, School of Music
Community Partners:  Boys and Girls Club, Buley Community Center

Muncie Neighborhood Visual Identity Design (ongoing)
Faculty Mentor:  Shantanu Suman, School of Art
Community Partners:  Building Better Neighborhoods, Muncie Action Plan

Preserving the Past and Looking Toward the Future:  Historic Preservation and Digital Storytelling for a Muncie Landmark Church
Faculty Mentor:  Peggy Fisher, Department of Communication Studies
Community Partner:  St. Mary Catholic Church

Renovation of Residential Structures
Faculty Mentor: Janet Fick, Department of Construction Management and Interior Design
Community Partners: ecoREHAB, Urban Light, and Brothers 2 Brothers

Sustainable Muncie Project:  Assessing Sustainability for the City of Muncie
Faculty Mentor:  Sanglim Yoo, Department of Urban Planning
Community Partner: Muncie Action Plan

Teen Dating Violence
Faculty Mentor: Ron Dolon, Department of Social Work
Community Partner: A Better Way

Tourist Maps for Muncie and Delaware County
Faculty Mentor: Jörn Seemann, Department of Geography
Community Partner: Muncie Visitors Bureau

Urban Health in Muncie, IN:  Pb in the Soils (ongoing)
Faculty Mentors:  Carolyn Dowling, Department of Geological Sciences; Jessi Haeft, Department
of Natural Resources and Environment Management
Community Partner:  United Way of Delaware County

Well Connected 
Faculty Mentor:  Jane Ellery, School of Kinesiology
Community Partners:  Muncie Action Plan, Future of Work/Sustainable Muncie, George and Frances Ball Foundation

Working with the Whitely Community to Identify Needs and Resources of Men who are Reentering the Community After Periods of Incarceration
Faculty Mentor:  Keisha Warren-Gordon, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology
Community Partner:  Whitely Community Council

Riverside-Normal City: Portrait of a Middletown Neighborhood in a Post Industrial Age

This project conducted an ethnographic study of the Riverside Normal City (RNC) neighborhood, which is the area east of Ball State University in Muncie. Using participant observation, oral history, archival research, photography and semi-structured interviews, students provided an interdisciplinary analysis of how this neighborhood has changed over time. Students attended monthly RNC neighborhood meetings, interviewed neighborhood residents, scanned residents’ photos while collecting stories, reading about the history of Muncie and documenting the neighborhood today. In analyzing this data, students were asked to consider the economic, sociocultural, and political causes that changed this neighborhood overtime and how these changes have impacted local residents. The findings were published in a book.


Faculty Mentor: Jennifer Erickson
Department: Anthropology
Community Partner: Riverside-Normal City Neighborhood Association
Students: Iesha Alspaugh, Simran Bhinder, Abby Clark, Joseph Coachys, Alejandra Diaz-Fernandez, Barbara Dickensheets, Kathleen Harper, Amber Janzen, Savannah Myers, Mia Nickelson, Kathryn Powell, Alexis Smith, Bevin Snyder, Leslie Thomas