People Centered Colorado Springs hosts community film festival

[The Pikes Peak Bulletin is a sponsor of this event. – ed.]

What if new development around Colorado Springs and across the nation was focused on people instead of cars?

That is one question the community organizers of People Centered Colorado Springs want us all to consider at their first-ever People Centered Film Festival with panel discussions. The film festival starts at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 26 at Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort (2 El Paso Blvd.).

People Centered Colorado Springs is a community group that partners with Bike Colorado Springs to raise awareness around access to different forms of transportation, community organizer Zuri Horowitz said. The money raised by ticket sales will go to Bike Colorado Springs, a nonprofit whose mission is to make bicycling in the Pikes Peak region more accessible for all people.

Horowitz said she encourages people to come to the film festival if they care about their family, the community, and being able to get around.

"It will be fun, there will be food trucks, there will be live music at the end, and there will be a lot of people there who will be excited about urbanism," she said. "You can bike to the venue and learn how you can make your community a more welcoming and easier-to-access place for everybody."

We are for people-centered planning. - Zuri Horowitz

The first screening at 1 p.m. is a compilation of some of the most acclaimed and award-winning short films from the Better Cities Film Festival which revolve around themes of housing, placemaking and land use. Following the film, there will be a panel discussion; panelists include Stephanie Vigil of Citizens Project, Electra Johnson of Manitou Urban Renewal Authority, Jill Gaebler of Pikes Peak Housing Network, and Beth Roalstadt of Homeward Pikes Peak.

The second screening at 4 p.m. is of a film titled "Motherload" which looks at multimodal transit. Discussion panelists include Jacki Mueller of AngleTech, Aspen Saren of Kids on Bikes, Karl Stang of Manitou Bike Bus, John Crandall of Old Town Bike Shop, and Brian Gravestock of Bike Clinic Too.

Horowitz said multimodal transportation is a big focus of the festival because transportation planning impacts so many other aspects of community life.

"It's all connected; the design matters," she said. "If you are really sprawled out and you're designed only for cars, it makes it more dangerous [and] less convenient for people because those roads are so wide and they're so fast. [The road] is just separating you from another suburban enclave."

Horowitz said she feels this makes families feel more cut off and isolated from each other, rather than living in community.

"You can't just run over to your friend's house to play like you might have in the past, and you don't get to meet friends in the public square … Instead, we're kind of atomized."

With people-centered city planning, Horowitz said, someone could go on a walk to get groceries instead of getting into a car and worrying about traffic and parking.

This type of planning could include building trails throughout the city, not just for exercise, but to allow people to make trips on foot or bicycle to run errands, she said.

Films to inspire conversation

People Centered Colorado Springs cofounder and Bike Colorado Springs communication chair and board president Cully Radvillas said the film festival will showcase the types of environments that People Centered COS would like to see built throughout Colorado Springs in the future.

"One of the films that we're showing, 'Motherload,' is about cargo bikes and how bikes bring freedom and mobility to women specifically and to people with kids," he said. "It allows people to experience the world and their neighborhood outside of a car, more fully than what you experience inside a car."

Radvillas noted that older parts of Colorado Springs are more accessible to multiple forms of transportation.

"In the time before cars, things were built at a scale that's walkable," he said.

Since many cities in America are designed with cars in mind, people who don't have a car face barriers doing shopping, getting to a job or finding childcare, organizer and cyclist Carla Norris said.

"Not everybody should need to have a car to exist," she said. "There are plenty of cities where people can get around and thrive without a car … [and] it can be better for the environment in terms of greenhouse gases and emissions."

Norris mentioned statistics from Paris, a city that banned cars from more than 100 streets, which caused air pollution to drop 50 % since 2005.

"Just watch the films and listen to the panelists and come learn something," she said. "We're not saying you have to be a cyclist or you have to be somebody who walks places or takes the bus - but watch these films and see how other people are living."

"It doesn't make the conversation about land use zoning codes which puts everybody to sleep," she said. "It's watching a film, getting some ideas and just bringing the community together and making some conversation."

The festival schedule includes a public group bike ride that will depart from Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort at 8:30 a.m. and return at 11 a.m.

Tickets are free though there is a suggested $5 donation to attend. More info and tickets at PeopleCenteredCOS.org/people-centered-film-festival.