It’s not unusual to see a little free library standing sentry in St. Louis. But what MADE Makerspace is planning to commemorate the May 16 tornado takes that idea and multiplies it by 26.
The nonprofit arts space plans to build, decorate, and stock 26 little free libraries, each representing a neighborhood that was hit by the storm. It plans to arrange them in a spiral—an “Upward Spiral,” per the project’s name—on what’s known as Maker Hill on Delmar near its building. And then, months later, it plans to place them around the community, with each of the 26 neighborhoods getting an installation and upkeep. And it plans to involve the community, with members of the public invited to MADE to make the tiles that will bedeck the little free libraries, even as art therapists are on hand to help them process what they’ve experienced. It is a lot—but then again, the last year has been a lot.
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Rachel King, the executive director of MADE Makerspace, vividly remembers the horror of May 16, 2025. “We’d gotten an alarm on our phone, and within three minutes, windows were shattering and coming off at us,” she recalls. She hid under a table (miraculously, no one at MADE was hurt). After the noise stopped, she walked outside—almost in a daze—and encountered not just Ben Poremba, whose restaurants Nixta and Florentin suffered serious damage, but people from the streets north of Delmar, some of whom had lost everything. “We were all just together,” she says. “What happened was horrible, but just seeing all the people come together, it was really refreshing. It didn’t matter who you were, you just wanted to help people.”
She hopes to bring that same spirit to the project, which MADE is spearheading with artist and MADE ambassador Martha Valenta.
Valenta says she found herself thinking about the difference in recovery in affluent areas (where roofs may still be tarped, but they’re tarped tightly and professionally) and the devastation in other parts of town. She wondered if Maker Hill—which she describes as “just a big grassy area” between Craft Alliance and MADE on Delmar—could become more of a space to bring people together.
In the year following the tornado, MADE has worked to make it easier for neighbors to use its resources, pioneering “community classes” that don’t require people to pay for a membership to participate. Valenta wanted to build on that.
“I thought, What if we could all come together again, and make it be a more positive thing?” she says. And so the project will invite community members into MADE to paint tiles at no cost. Valenta and King plan to solicit participation from each affected neighborhood and to customize their library so it speaks to the ethos of residents there. She says she’s approaching each with one question: “How might we really make these neighborhoods shine and help people understand more about these neighborhoods?” For example, she notes that Chuck Berry was a longtime resident of The Ville. “So it might have a music box,” she says. “There might be a handle on the side of it that you hear music, or it might be a take one, leave one for musical instruments or printed music sheets. I don’t know. I’m going to find and work with folks from the neighborhoods to develop those.”
The project kicks off on May 15 from 6–8 p.m. at MADE Makerspace (5127 Delmar) and May 16 from noon to 3 p.m. at St. Louis ArtWorks (5959 Delmar). Community workshops will begin on June 2 from 4–7 p.m. and should continue throughout the year.
The goal is to have “Upward Spiral” in place by the two-year anniversary of the tornado in 2027, and to have it live on Maker Hill for at least six months before the little free libraries are scattered from there to all 26 neighborhoods.
They’re hoping the project will draw attention throughout its crafting, installation, and then dispersal. “We really want people to see what’s happening in St Louis, because there’s still work to be done,” King says. “And we really want to bring some positive attention to the area, like this is something that we’re doing—to just recognize the amount of work and the amount of turmoil that we’ve gone through.”
