GREENFIELD — An organization that’s fostered relationships between Greenfield and a Japanese city for over three decades has been internationally recognized for a piece of art it brought to a local trail.
As the group takes pride in that acknowledgement, it also looks forward to one day getting back to its program involving Greenfield residents visiting Japan and Japanese residents visiting Greenfield, and the exchange of friendship and culture that results.
Sister Cities of Greenfield received the Sister Cities International 2021 Annual Award for Innovation in Arts and Culture for a city with a population under 25,000. Greenfield’s organization won for a mosaic it had commissioned of its logo along the Pennsy Trail. The awards competition is open to sister city programs worldwide. Greenfield established its sister-city relationship with Kakuda, Japan, in 1990.
Lyndi Grubb, president of Sister Cities of Greenfield, said the organization was looking to do something to celebrate its 30-year anniversary in 2020 when it came up with the idea for the mosaic. A plan got underway to place it near a park and pagoda created for the organization’s 20th anniversary along the Pennsy Trail west of State Street and south of South Street. The pagoda and the cherry trees in that area served as the inspiration for Sister Cities of Greenfield’s logo, created by Lucie Rice, an artist formerly based in Nashville, Tennessee, and now in Carmel.
“We wanted to create something that would enhance an area of the trail where we already had a presence,” Grubb said.
The Hancock County Community Foundation awarded Sister Cities of Greenfield a grant to help fund the mosaic of the organization’s logo, which was later created by WitsEnd Mosaic based in Pulaski, Wisconsin. The artwork was placed with the help of the Greenfield Parks and Recreation Department.
“It was really a community affair,” Grubb said.
Two years spanned between the grant application and the mosaic’s unveiling in October 2020.
“So it was nice to see the hard work paid off and we hope that the community enjoys seeing it when they’re walking down the Pennsy Trail,” Grubb said. “We think it enhances that area nicely.”
Leroy Allala, president and CEO of Sister Cities International, said in a news release that the mosaic is a symbol of how Greenfield and Kakuda remain connected despite such trying times.
“It is important that communities such as Greenfield continue to remind their residents of the significance in maintaining such relationships around the world,” Allala said. “During this pandemic, this organization has been a shining beacon of citizen diplomacy, through both its exchange program and the physical symbols of the connection between these two beautiful cities.”
Throughout the decades Sister Cities of Greenfield has been operating, about eight to 10 Greenfield-Central students a year travel to Japan for 10 days, usually in June. They stay with a family in Kakuda, experience different schools and visit Tokyo as well.
Then, usually in August, students from Kakuda travel to Greenfield. They also stay with local families and visit Greenfield’s schools and different parts of the city, as well as attractions in Indianapolis and Chicago.
Exchanges have been on hold since 2019 due to the pandemic.
“I think when we are able to understand other cultures and respect other cultures, we see the world differently,” Grubb said. “When we understand a different culture, we understand a different perspective; we can relate to that. We can build sort of a personal connection with that. The more that youth in our community see different cultures, they can understand that the world is bigger than the community that we live in, but that we are still part of one big community, and that’s the human race and the world itself.”
Sister Cities of Greenfield is looking forward to starting exchanges back up again when it can.
“Our hope is that the program is still building those relationships with our communities a hundred years from now,” Grubb said.
Sister Cities International Annual Awards recognize excellence in overall programming and highlight key innovations in arts and culture; humanitarian assistance; business, trade and professional exchange; and youth and education. The organization also honors a Volunteer of the Year and a Youth Leader who demonstrate exceptional efforts to advance peace through citizen diplomacy. This year, SCI honored all award winners during the 2021 Virtual Annual Conference in July. This year’s theme, “Building Stronger Ties for an Interconnected World,” focused on furthering diplomacy with technological advancements especially in the era of COVID-19.
The annual conference connected sister cities members, United Nations representatives, business leaders, academics, civic leaders, entertainers and others in an interactive and specially designed online platform.
