Swings Tampa Bay

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Swings Tampa Bay is a spontaneous community building organization. We hang handmade Swings all over Tampa Bay. Click here to learn more about us!

See What’s Swinging!

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About

What is Swings Tampa Bay?
Swings Tampa Bay is a spontaneous community building organization! We hang hand-made hand-painted Swings all over Tampa Bay on trees, random structures, inside buildings, off of bridges…anywhere and everywhere, really. Our favorite so far? Inside the pedestrian overpass on I-275. We don’t get permission for all of them and we never really have an exact location picked out. We just find a fun place that speaks to us and go for it!

Why Swings?
A Swing becomes much more than a playful pastime as it instantly sparks curiosity, refreshes our community’s perception of our environment and encourages immediate interaction with people we may have otherwise walked right past. Swings provide opportunities to share stories, ideas, and a set of arms to push each other!

Vision Statement
Cultivating a tightly knit community based on love and respect indefinitely results in happier people, more opportunities to support and challenge each other, and the community solving problems more efficiently. A community focused on pushing past personal comfort zones in favor of meeting new people is a community with a strong future in deep relationships, connections, and engagement. Tampa Bay can be that community. We will continue to grow stronger as we encourage each other to spontaneously step out of our daily routine and adapt to a constantly changing environment.

Mission Statement
Get people together, together.

History
What began as a successful environmental design project quickly turned into Reuben and Hunter hanging classic red Swings all over downtown St. Petersburg. They began to notice the simple power a random Swing had on our community: people that would have never even acknowledged each other were immediately magnetized to their new discovery and began sharing warm conversation and new experiences while pushing each other high up into the air.

They applied for the 10/100/1000 awards by Creative Tampa Bay and Creative Loafing, and won first place and $1000 for ‘the best idea to better the Tampa Bay Community’. They hosted their first “Let’s Paint Swings” event at the Saturday Morning Market and gave the opportunity for anyone to hand paint a swing to be hung or hang themselves. Over 100 Swings were painted that first day. They knew this was something Tampa Bay wanted and continued to spread the love.
As of August 2011, we’ve hung almost 50 Swings and have had over 400 painted by Tampa Bay at the last five “Let’s Paint Swings” events. 400!

Currently
We’ve hung Swings in multiple cities in the Tampa Bay Area and are always looking for exciting (spontaneous!) new locations. We’re always preparing for the many “Let’s Paint Swings” events planned for the future.

We are also in the process of officially registering as a 501(c)(3), working with the City of St. Petersburg to figure out more possibilities, and developing many more spontaneous community building projects to get people together, together! We’re always partnering with other non-profits to more fully realize each other’s missions by hosting “Let’s Paint Swings” events and donating professionally painted Swings for auction.

For the Future
We have plans to help other communities start the same thing we have here, and have already started with a few! We don’t plan on stopping hanging Swings anytime soon and will definitely be throwing out other spontaneous community building installations in the near future. Once we have our official 501(c)(3) status, we plan to apply for grants to start on bigger projects to help bring people in the Tampa Bay Community. Our ideas constantly change and grow, and we never know exactly where we are going.

We are always open to new ideas, and love any kind of help you would like to give!

Who We Are

Meet the whole team

Reuben Pressman
coFounder

hunter
coFounder

Help Out

Hang a Swing
This is by far the best way to help out! We encourage everyone to join in and hang Swings all over Tampa Bay with us. Click here to learn how. Or Get in touch to come hang one with us!

Want us to hang a swing in your community space? Let us know!

Volunteer
We’re always looking for new friends to help! To be part of realizing Tampa Bay’s project please get in touch and we can talk about opportunities.

So far we have had help with hanging swings, painting events, marketing, city politics, and grant writing. What are you good at? Reach out and get involved!

Partner
Are you involved with another non-profit or project? We are always looking for ways to partner and work with other organizations. Get in touch and let’s help each other.

Spread the Word
Without you, nobody would know what we’re doing. If you like what we’re up to, let others know! Share our website, Facebook, and press articles with everyone you know! Want some stickers, or need some our info to give to others? Get in touch and let us know.

Donate

Swings doesn’t make money, and we don’t charge at our events. Everything is Free! Swings lives off of donations! If you want to help out, here are a few ways we have thought of:

Monetary
This is the easiest way for us to keep going; all donations go directly to the project to fund the cost of wood, rope, paint, and many other things necessary to keep moving! You can click here to donate.

Supplies
Have some extra supplies laying around? We use 2×6′s and climbing rope to hang our swings. We’re also looking for supplies for our new ideas, and are open to anything you think we could use! Get in touch and we’ll see how it can work!

Space
Our “Let’s Paint Swings” events give the opportunity for anyone in the community to hand paint Swings to leave with us or to take out to hang into our city. We are always looking for venues to host our event. Get in touch and we’ll see how it can work!

Blog

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Tie the Knot

Join our mailing list!

Projects

Hanging Swings
We’re hanging hand-made hand-painted Swings off of everything in the Tampa Bay area! Click Here to see pictures of some we have hung, and their locations!

See-Saws
Another installation that requires two. Coming soon!

St. Petersburg Chalk Buckets
Inspired by the great chalk-poet Jacob Christiano of Tampa Bay and “For the Love of Cities” by Peter Kageyama, Swings is leaving behind carefully placed buckets full of chalk all over St. Petersburg to encourage others to write/draw a message to their city.

Events

“Lets Paint Swings”
Our “Let’s Paint Swings” events give the opportunity for anyone in the community to hand paint Swings. We bring everything you need to paint! We’re taking a break from painting for now..We’ve already had over 1,000 swings painted and are gonna focus more on hanging!