CEDAR CITY — Brightly colored with banners with inspiring song lyrics have been put up along Main Street to help spread positivity to community members.
Brad Abrams, Cedar City Economic Development Coordinator, told Cedar City News the banners are an effort put on by city staff in response to potentially negative feelings because of COVID-19.
“There was negative news, just a heavy feeling that everyone had with COVID-19. So we just decided to put out a positive message on our banners to share, just the message to everyone … ‘Keep your head up. We’re in this together. We can get through this, it’s not all bad,’” Abrams said.
Abrams said originally he thought to use the banner spaces for advertising, but he asked other staff members for ideas, and City Treasurer Wendy Bonzo suggested a “dancing in the streets” theme.
Bonzo said the idea was inspired by neighbors actually dancing in the streets together.
“He (Abrams) just wanted an idea for something happy for downtown, and I had just seen a thing on TV about a neighborhood up north where all of the neighbors got outside on their sidewalks and they were dancing,” Bonzo said. “It just reminded me of dancing in the streets, so I just suggested the theme of dancing in the streets.”
Bonzo said other staff helped come up with song lyrics to put on the banners.
“He (Abrams) took it from there and ran with it,” she said. “We all kind of helped come up with happy songs, the lyrics and stuff, and it was so fun to look for fun songs, things that made us happy.”
Abrams said staff tried to include a wide range of genres and generations in the lyrics that were chosen.
“Music resonates with everybody, so it’s something that hits all people from all walks of life. That’s kind of why we did it,” he said.
Along with the banners is a social media campaign using #cedarcitytogether.
“We didn’t know what was going to be happening. Everything was kind of hitting us in the news. We thought since we’re apart, since we’re doing social distancing, it’s kind of a play on that,” Abrams said. “We can be together — together but apart.”
The brightly colored banners are posted along Main Street in historic downtown as well as north of Freedom Boulevard.
In addition to the banners, Main Street is also lined with American flags that were donated by the youth of the Cedar 9th ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with a similar goal of boosting community spirit.
Updated March 23 at 9:20 a.m. to include details on American flags.
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