Economic Context

Visual arts professor Jim Toia, our team’s main community contact, serves on the KSAT Advisory Board as their Executive Director and Curator. His responsibilities include selecting, sharing, and implementing a variety of artistic exhibits for the trail. Recently, Professor Toia was able to secure funding for a new type of exhibit – one with an audio feature, currently referred to as “The KSAT Spoken Word Project.” This novel initiative has the goal of incorporating the diverse voices of poets from throughout the Lehigh Valley. Therefore, with its emphasis on prioritizing local sources for both physical and recorded components, investing in this project equates to investing in building community. Easton residents will benefit from the addition of an engaging educational component to their valued trail, and the featured poets will expand the reach of their work to a receptive and supportive audience.

According to Professor Toia, the initial project grant from the Northampton Tourist Fund will be worth $10,000 and is intended to be spent over a two-year period. He anticipates that the project will gain positive attention and traction, with the potential to receive up to $35,000 total for its eventual implementation (Toia 2024). The KSAT Advisory Board will be a key player in obtaining and allocating this additional funding. The Board already facilitates an annual fund campaign, encouraging friends of the KSAT to contribute to fostering its mission of connecting art with nature, history, health, and wellness (Karl Stirner Arts Trail 2024). For our team’s contribution to the overall project, we elected to work only within the constraints of the $10,000 budget, as we wanted to ensure our proposal would be feasible using guaranteed resources.

The choice of the base structure depicted in each design iteration allows our proposal to conserve a portion of this budget from the beginning. During our interview with Professor Wilford-Hunt, an Engineering Studies professor and architecture professional, we learned that the lamp posts used on campus have been provided by Alan Brink, a Lafayette alum and economics major from the class of 1970 (Wilford-Hunt 2024). Brink is currently the president of Spring City Electrical Manufacturing Co., a company dedicated to the production of American-made light posts (Spring City 2024). A set of twenty-five cast-iron lamp posts was first gifted by Brink in 2003, and his company continues to develop and donate the fixtures as needed (Lafayette College 2003). Since such materials are clearly available for the benefit of the Lafayette community, our team decided to capitalize on the connection and model our designs around a standard lamp post, thus devoting more funding towards additional materials and installation costs.

Each of our three design iterations requires a solar panel, a speaker, and wiring to connect the solar panel to the speaker. Costs will also accrue from installation, accounting for labor and for a concrete foundation, and for the artistic components, such as weather-resistant paints and compensation for contributing poets. As discussed within the Technical Context section, our team researched the structure itself, with emphasis on speaker and solar panel requirements. Thus, the scope of our current cost estimates applies to the physical structure and not to its collaborative development or implementation.

Options 1, 2, and 2B differ in how they store and play audio recordings. Option 1 requires a laser-activated motion sensor to play a poem recording and employs a cone to effectively funnel sounds from the speaker. Options 2 and 2B opt for a simpler mode of operation via a push button. Option 2B features the additional component of aluminum panels to maximize protection for the inner equipment as well as surface area for artistic expression. While they share the same base structure, each iteration’s unique design results in a different final price. Figure 18 depicts a breakdown of the estimated costs that are associated with each option.

Figure 18: Cost Breakdown of Options

The components required for Option 1 yield the highest overall cost, as the motion sensor and cone are more technically involved and must be weatherproof. Option 2 has the lowest total cost, but its internal structure is not well-protected. Option 2B falls in the middle of the pricing scale, as it incorporates the push button of Option 2 and a method of protecting the speaker like in Option 1.

Based on this rough cost breakdown, we believe that an initial investment of $325 is reasonable for an audio poetry installation. The final product must be durable and functional while maintaining aesthetic value. This price point would allow the baseline requirements of one installation to be met. As mentioned, this estimate does not incorporate the costs of labor that accompany building, setting up, decorating, or recording the audio component for the structure. Yet, this estimate should leave room for the majority of these necessary costs while splitting the $10,000 budget between our two identified locations to test their suitability for the project.

Scaling must be prioritized when purchasing the materials listed in Figure 18. Once a design is chosen and able to be funded, and its prototypes have been successful enough to warrant multiple implementations, each material should be bought in bulk. For example, Professor Toia mentioned aiming to feature ten poetry posts along the KSAT (Toia 2024). Thus, ten of each item should be bought at the same time. Not only can this save on shipping costs, but each part will be the same age and have experienced the same wear at the time of installation. Scaling is particularly applicable to the aluminum sheets, as a quote is required, and all 30 sheets may be cut at the same time.

As with other art installations along the KSAT, the Spoken Word is meant to be enjoyed by the Easton community for many years. Long-term considerations for this project include routine maintenance, repairs, and obtaining backup or replacement parts. Professor Cohen told our team that Easton Public Works will likely be servicing the poetry posts along with the rest of the trail (Cohen 2024). Responsibilities for maintaining the structures will include cleaning the solar panels, checking the functionality of the speakers, and swapping out the poems when necessary. Our team used estimations of hourly wages and required maintenance time to determine reasonable upkeep costs. Predicting that a post would require about one hour of maintenance per month, and using an average salary of $20 per hour for a city employee, we concluded that sustaining one post would cost at least $250 per year. This projection does not include unanticipated repairs and should be factored into the number of planned installations for the exhibit.

While we are unable to predict when unexpected material failures or vandalism might occur, we do have information regarding routine part replacements. The ACOPOWER solar panel has a 5-year workshop warranty, so if any part of the panel breaks within 5 years of its purchase, a replacement should be covered by the manufacturing company. It also has a 20-year output warranty, which means the equipment’s capacity for electricity generation will have dropped to 80% of its initial power output and should be swapped out after 20 years to ensure energy efficiency. The BOGASING speaker has the lifespan of a typical household speaker, though this will likely be impacted by its constant use in an outdoor environment. Its lithium-ion batteries must be replaced approximately every two years, a factor influenced by specific speaker volume, usage, and average outdoor temperatures.

It is important to select companies and products that will likely be accessible for an extended period of time. Sourcing expertise for maintenance and repairs from the City of Easton will ensure local investment in the Spoken Word installations. In addition to the speakers and solar panels, replacement parts should be purchased from reliable vendors with warranty plans for the life of the product. Ensuring project longevity from the start can help alleviate financial concerns during and beyond its functional life.

Our team devised a timeline for the project based on conversations with our community contacts. During our initial meeting, Professor Toia shared his interest in constructing the installations in the spring of 2025, with a ceremony celebrating their launch to occur in April or May. His intention was for Lafayette students to decorate the posts as part of their spring semester art classes (Toia 2024). However, Professor Cohen expressed his concerns with this project’s completion date, considering it is currently under the guidance of students who will transition the project to another course at the conclusion of the fall semester (Cohen 2024). Professor Wilford-Hunt provided advice on how to develop a more appropriate timeline, informed by her industry experience in architecture. Instead of debuting multiple installations at once, prototypes should be created, followed by the first permanent iteration (Wilford-Hunt 2024). This procedure would provide adequate time to test the suitability of different materials for meeting user needs and withstanding outdoor conditions during all seasons. Users should also be encouraged to provide feedback on the design as it improves. This timeline will require the initial grant budget to be spent on the building and testing of prototypes prior to the eventual implementation of the final product using the full projected budget.

Our team believes that this project will be a valuable use of the KSAT Advisory Board’s $10,000 grant. We have conserved the budget by selecting base posts that are already available, and we have included reasonable material sources to create cost estimates. We have also outlined the anticipated costs whose numerical values we cannot yet estimate and projected the lifespan and maintenance requirements of the structures. Financial benefits of the Spoken Word Project may include more donations to the KSAT annual fund, increased demand for published works from the featured poets, and higher rates of trail users visiting neighboring businesses.

As with any community project, not all benefits are measurable in a monetary manner but come to fruition through social change. These would include increased engagement with the Karl Stirner Arts Trail as a whole, ideally by all age groups and demographics due to the accessibility of the installations. Other benefits could take the form of increased interest in poetry and awareness of local poets, prompting creativity among trail users. Finally, the installation creates an educational opportunity for visitors to learn about topics such as poetry, solar energy, and the connection between art and nature. This project has significant potential to benefit Easton and even the greater Lehigh Valley area.

Next: Conclusion.