The Conway School is pleased to announce its 2025 spring term community projects in collaboration with communities in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The spring term projects are plans or designs for a large site such as a farm, college campus, town center, city park, extensive conservation area, or other open space. Students gather input from stakeholders and create plan sets with designs, employing the site analysis and design skills they learned for their fall projects along with the community engagement and planning skills and strategies they practiced during the winter projects.
We are happy to introduce the community groups, organizations, and municipalities from across the state who will be partnering with our students for their spring projects. The completed projects will offer thoughtful, long-term solutions to clients that address community needs in consideration of ecological impacts and long-term resilience. Partners come away with plans that are holistic, grounded in the realities of the host communities, and feasible within the scope presented (see Sample Projects).
Spring term projects for 2025 cover a breadth of needs and communities, from a climate resiliency plan for an urban neighborhood to a comprehensive landscape plan for a native plant nursery. Conway’s eight student teams will each work closely with a core client team of three to five community members. Each project contains multiple opportunities for community engagement between April and June. The selected projects are as follows:
- Kroka Farm Comprehensive Plan (Marlow, NH): Kroka Expeditions is a non-profit wilderness expedition school and organic farm that fosters a living relationship with the natural world and the development of skilled, compassionate, and community-minded young people. A Conway student team will develop a comprehensive plan that will primarily address water issues such as flooding, erosion, and wetland areas as they relate to site use.
- Site Plan for Sage Mountain Botanical Sanctuary (Orange, VT): Sage Mountain Botanical Sanctuary is a conservation education center stewarding over 600 acres within nearly 80,000 acres of contiguous wilderness in central Vermont. A Conway student team will create a comprehensive landscape plan for the Sanctuary that can be used to guide future development, allowing space for more guest lodging, staff housing, and educational on-site programming.
- Climate Resiliency Plan for the Charles Neighborhood (Providence, RI): The Charles neighborhood of Providence is a diverse, low-income residential community that is somewhat isolated by highways and in proximity to two rivers. Students will conduct a full site analysis and create neighborhood-scale landscape design concepts that respond to current and projected conditions, including flooding, ecological health, and community connectivity.
- Pond Road Study and Design (Shelburne, VT): Pond Road is an unpaved road in the Town of Shelburne that requires frequent intensive maintenance. A student team will analyze site, neighborhood, and regional conditions, and prepare design concepts that address flooding, pedestrian safety, and wildlife crossings while considering ecological impacts.
- Comprehensive Landscape Plan for the Sugarloaf Condominium Community (South Deerfield, MA): The Sugarloaf Condominium community is located at the base of the west-facing slopes of Mount Sugarloaf. A student team will complete a site analysis of the existing conditions and provide design concepts to improve the health and climate resilience of the property and explore alternatives to conventional turfgrass.
- Memorial Park Site Plan (Walpole, MA): Located in downtown Walpole, Memorial Park covers approximately 26 acres. A student team will develop a plan aimed at improving public access, ecological health, and stormwater management in the park while better integrating the park into the social and environmental fabric of the community.
- Comprehensive Landscape Plan for Nasami Farm Nursery (Whately, MA): Native Plant Trust’s approximately 75-acre Nasami Farm serves as a seed hub?hug for native plants, seeking to ensure genetic diversity to offset the clones sold by traditional nurseries and to build resilience into a landscape facing change. A student team will provide design concepts to improve the climate resilience of the property and explore ways to provide educational opportunities around native plants and bring the Trust’s vision for a potential expansion to life.
- Relational Uprising Educational Center (Becket, MA): Relational Uprising is a nonprofit training and coaching institute with a mission to build resilient, interdependent, and relational culture within organizations and communities working for social change. A Conway student team will create a site plan for an educational center on an approximately 34-acre site, informed by an analysis of the existing conditions and relevant local and regional conditions.
Students will present their findings and preliminary planning details at our upcoming Spring Student Project Presentations: Work in Progress on Friday, May 30. Learn more and register: Join Us May 30th for Spring Project Presentations: Work In Progress
