Activating Alleys: Tenn Little Birds

By Remi Lynch, Landscape Planning Associate

4 min read - Tenn Little Birds asked the Civic Design Center for help envisioning their business’s unique alley entrance in East Nashville near East Park off Woodland Street. We were immediately excited to take on the project to promote increased alley activation in Nashville.

The Civic Design Center worked with Tenn Little Birds, ​​an early childhood music program, to engage the community around them and create a vision for their future facility. The space, located alongside an alley parallel to Woodland Street, is an example of how to better address our alleyways, and treat them as an asset for communities and local businesses with a unique and intimate feeling. We need our alleys to be accessible in order to create opportunities for infill development. This would allow for more affordability and housing/business diversity. We believe that facilitating the creation of this community gathering space can help to strengthen the unique identities of East Nashville. By also encouraging more child-care options within neighborhoods, we can help open doors for employment and in-turn promote community-supported, diverse local economies.

 

Map above showcases their exact business location

Context map of the new location’s area in East Nashville’s Historic Edgefield neighborhood

Plan view of the new outdoor classroom location demonstrating car and foot traffic paths to their entrance

Birds eye view of the future Tenn Little Birds outdoor classroom

Learn About Tenn Little Birds

Tenn Little Birds is a local business that offers the early childhood music program, Music Together®. Since 1987, Music Together has introduced millions of children, parents, and teachers around the world to the joys of family music-making and the powerful benefits of having music in their lives. Today, classes for children ages birth through grade two are found around the world---including right here in East Nashville.

The project was started by Allison Link, the Director of Tenn Little Birds, and her husband Ryan, are both musically gifted individuals, who have performed in a variety of ways across the country. They have a baby boy, Edison, and two rescue pups Bodhi and CoCo.

From left to right: Allison Link, Joe Mayes, Ryan Link, and Eric Hoke at a site visit

Photos of Tenn Little Birds outdoor classroom in session at Eastwood Christian Curch

FUTURE FOR TENN LITTLE BIRDS

Tenn Little Birds, formerly located in several different locations in East Nashville, is moving to its final nesting place at 819 Woodland Street. With the interior space being renovated, Allison and Ryan wanted to make their entry space more accessible to children and families since it is currently a loading dock located on an alley. Historically, alleys are not the most welcoming spaces to the public, especially if there isn’t an obvious destination within the alley, like Printer’s or Banker’s Alleys Downtown. They wanted to help transform this concrete, hidden entrance into a welcoming place for neighborhood families that not only walk through, but come to make music!

Activating alleys publication spurred the partnership

Since we have been involved in activating alleyways in the past, the Civic Design Center was approached by Allison and Ryan with the idea. It was an exciting opportunity to create some visuals of how the space could look and present it to a landscaper or builder! We believe that this project could help set a precedent for activating other alleys in East Nashville with business frontages.

ENGAGEMENT PROCESS

After meeting with the Tenn Little Birds team, we decided the best route would be to host a charette with current Music Together parents and stakeholders to get their input. We wanted to know not only how they want the alley to function, but also address any concerns that the families had for the space. During the meeting, we presented ideas on how they could analyze their site. This gave us amazing feedback and we were able to work with this data to understand how the site should be used.

One of the stakeholders’ main concerns was that the alley should feel safe and secure. We designed the space to be protected with fencing and vegetation. This helps create outdoor rooms that feel private from the surrounding context, but also beautifies the alleyway and serves as a gateway treatment. Guests should feel as though they have arrived while also out of direct view when participating in the classes. For additional security, we tried to flatten out the space to prevent trips and falls in addition to creating room spaces that keeps everyone together.

Community engagement results

SITE VISITS

As a team, we were able to engage with the site to see how it could be broken down. We walked through design concepts in real time at the site and pass ideas around with the whole team. Being able to be on the site helps everyone get a better understanding of what the vision is, and what challenges need to be addressed beyond the stakeholders’ feedback.

DESIGN PROCESS

Working off of the site visits and community engagement we were able to bring all of those thoughts together and create our initial design concept, which would create a safe space for the music classes to take place, a place for the families to come together, and also provide space for community events. Once we had that draft we all came back together and went to the site to visualize the design. From that meeting we went back to work on improving the concept and finalized our concepts.

FINAL DESIGN

The main focus for the Tenn Little Birds was to create an outdoor classroom, so we focused that main class area in the orange space. This area is just outside of the garage door entrance to the building so the classroom space will bleed naturally from the inside to outside. Connected to the class space is a raised deck which helps address the elevation change of the loading dock on the site. The deck can expand the classroom as well as act as a platform for events outside of the class time. 

Adjacent to the class space is the green area, and that acts as a waiting room from the alley entrance and the building itself. Families can wait for their children in this area, but it can also act as an expansion of the classroom if more space is needed. From the parking lot to the building is the transition space—within this area there are plants that act as privacy walls, but the space offers potential for collaborative art, group seating, and access to the storage under the deck. With just a few key elements this empty loading dock can be transformed to create a dynamic classroom that works with the current needs of Tenn Little Birds while also providing them with opportunity to expand and grow. Ultimately, this will set the precedent for alley frontages to be more welcoming and inviting spaces.

Axon drawing of the outdoor classroom concept

Plan view of the classroom concept

We look forward to seeing the Tenn Little Birds community grow into their new location!