2024 Impactful Placemaking Merit Award Winner – Harrisonburg!

The Virginia Main Street (VMS) program’s Impactful Placemaking merit award highlights a community’s physical and visual transformation by recognizing an outstanding people-centered, placemaking project that bolsters the downtown’s uniqueness. The 2024 award went to Harrisonburg’s Downtown Ducklings project.

Inspired by the Mice on Main project in Greenville, South Carolina, Harrisonburg’s Downtown Ducklings is a permanent, public art installation that includes small bronze duck statues by Virginia sculptor David Turner. Families are invited to participate in a self-guided scavenger hunt to find all nine statues, a mother duck and her eight ducklings, spread around downtown. Clues are provided online and in a printed brochure that can be picked up at the museum, tourism centers and various downtown businesses.

The ducklings pay ohmage to downtown Harrisonburg’s well-established and widely loved duck population that live along Blacks Run, a creek that meanders through downtown Harrisonburg. Installation of the individual statues was completed in late fall of 2023, and by early December, community members took to knitting tiny scarves for the ducks. The community was also invited to help name each duck through a social media campaign. Winning names were unveiled in March 2024, during Explore More Discovery Museum‘s Lucky Duck Party. A companion book titled “Look Up, Patito,” written by the museum’s exhibit director Marcia Zook and illustrated by local artist Kathleen Johnston, complements the scavenger hunt and promotes literacy and reading among families.

“Our hope is that the ducklings will attract new visitors and shoppers and encourage the exploration of our entire 40-block downtown district leading to businesses and attractions off of Main Street.”

– Andrea Dono, HDR Executive Director

Many partners made this project possible. Explore More Discovery Museum led the project, and Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance (HDR) provided support with logistics, marketing strategy and funding. The City of Harrisonburg’s Public Works Department assisted with installation. Four downtown business / property owners allowed a statue to be installed on their property, and the remaining five were installed on public, city-owned land. Harrisonburg Tourism actively promotes the Downtown Ducklings to visitors and has the printed brochures available in both of their tourism centers.

Harrisonburg and HDR continue to find new ways to promote the Downtown Ducklings, and the community looks forward to enjoying them for years to come!