Why was it important to design Rainbow Road?
An Interview with Amos Kajner-Nonnekes, Principal Founder, DESIGN, et cetera.
On July 11, 2020, the ‘Rainbow Road’ mural was revealed on Spur Line Alley in Old Strathcona. The mural has been getting a lot of coverage and attention on social media for its unique use of colours becoming an attraction for the area.
In this interview, we talked with Amos Kajner-Nonnekes, Principal Founder, DESIGN, et cetera., to know more about the story behind this initiative.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Urban Narratifs: Why was it important to design Rainbow Road?
Amos Kajner-Nonnekes: Old Strathcona is very significant in the city because it is where you find this kind of hidden gems. The stroll down Whyte Avenue is the quintessential Edmonton experience. You don’t really go down Whyte Avenue with a specific goal in mind, you kind of go down and see what you can, and stumble upon these hidden gems. So when someone comes around the street expecting to see a dirty car driving space on this alleyway and instead finds themselves in front of this magnificent pop of colour, we want them to think ‘this is so Old Strathcona.’ This project is so Whyte Avenue, it adds such a colourful pop of vibrancy to the area, and it really highlights some of our underutilized space here.
UN: How did this idea come about?
AKN: The Old Strathcona Business Association reached out to us about two or three weeks ago to help them with the openings of lanes to pedestrians that they were doing. So they opened this lane on Whyte Avenue, and they reached out to us and said ‘How do we make this a people-friendly space? Cause it looks like a construction zone right now. It’s not very friendly to pedestrians. How do we really create some benefit from having this space?’ We came back and said ‘let’s do a little bit of a placemaking exercise, let’s really engage people in the area, make it safer, and make it people-friendly, and inject some vibrancy and life in it.’
Part of that idea was to work on Spur Line Alley because it already had been painted a couple of years ago, but it was also crumbling and was kind of dirty. We have all these alley businesses popping out now and this space was kind of underutilized. So they said ‘what can you do in Spur Line Alley, that might bring some life back to it?’ And the first thing that came into our minds was ‘let’s throw out some paint, let’s throw out as many popping colours as we can and really inject some life into the space.’ And so apart of the other installations we did on Whyte Avenue to open it up, we ended up including this space to try to create a holistic placemaking exercise of Whyte Avenue.
UN: What has been the reception of this idea so far?
AKN: People have loved it. We were here for about 36 hours of painting or about three days. We had a fence and people were already sneaking in to take Instagram photos. We had to say ‘sorry there is wet paint in the ground, you can’t really come in.’ But after we opened the alley it has been all over social media, which some people might write off as the ‘Instagram or whatever’ but people are really excited to come down to Whyte Avenue to see this mural and all of the art murals that Whyte Avenue has to offer. People are excited to experience all of this kind of culture and vibrancy here.
Right now, especially when businesses really need some people in their stores and some cash injections, this is a great initiative to bring people down. As they are in the area, they linger, spend some money, and discover all these businesses and all this new art culture that is on Whyte Avenue that they might not have seen before. So people have been ecstatic about it, I’ve seen it from people all over Instagram where they are taking photos with it. Which makes me so happy. People are engaging with it and really thinking that this space is as cool as I think it is.
UN: What needs to happen next?
We need to really focus on some of the underutilized spaces in our city.
AKN: I think we need to really focus on some of the underutilized spaces in our city. It is not always about creating brand new buildings or spaces. Sometimes we just have to look at the space that we have and do some low cost and really high impact initiatives to transform that space. I mean, this used to be a dirty alleyway and now it is really injected with some life, and people are here, people are engaging with the space, they are really exploring Old Strathcona. We have a lot of these spaces in the city that if we put a little bit of creativity, and maybe throw down a little bit of paint, to make them places where people want to be, I think businesses are going to thrive. People are going to have a better time in the area and overall is going to be better for our city.
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