205 Day: Urbanist, Birmingham native is hosting a three-day celebration of the city

Ask Carmen Mays to define the word “urbanist,” and she’ll tell you the meaning is subjective.

But there are, however, a few common themes. Urbanists study landscapes, buildings and the behavior of people. Above all, they love cities.

“I absolutely love working in local government,” said Mays, who has a master’s degree in public administration from University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Urbanism— it’s my passion. It’s my chosen profession.”

Mays’ passion for urbanism led her to work with governments up and down the east coast, including Washington, D.C., Spartanburg, S.C., Guilford County, N.C., and Atlanta. Those experiences led Mays to realize that community engagement, especially for young entrepreneurs, was essential for building a city. So she founded Elevators, an organization focused on building business opportunities for people of color in the creative industries.

When Mays moved back to Birmingham in 2018, she hit the ground running. In addition to running Elevators, she also works as a business consultant while growing her brand as an expert on policy and urban placemaking. Last year, Mays took her work in urban planning to a new role with the city of Birmingham when she became Councilwoman Carole E. Clarke’s chief of staff.

Councilor Carole Clarke (center) and Carmen Mays attend the 4th Avenue Jazz Fest and the Sidewalk Film Festival weekend on August 27, 2022 (Shauna Stuart| Al.com)

“Cities are for everybody,” Mays said. “Everybody at every stage of life deserves equal access and equal opportunity in a city.”

Those beliefs are the foundation of her urban philosophy: “All residents have a right to their cities.”

One of those rights, Mays said, is joy.

That doctrine inspired Mays to create the concept of 205 Day — a pep rally dedicated to celebrating Birmingham’s history and culture and future.

Mays was inspired by 404 Day in Atlanta, the city’s hat-tip to its popular 404 area code and celebration of its art, music, and food scenes.

“When I moved back to [Birmingham] this last time, I was like, ‘we should have a 205 day.’ We are blessed to have an area code that actually fits on the calendar. We’re the only place in the state that can. There is no February 56th or March 34th,” said Mays, nodding to Huntsville’s 256 area code and the 334 area code in Montgomery. “So essentially, Birmingham is the only place that can really do this.”

After floating the idea, Mays and her Elevators collaborator Melvin Griffin hosted a soft launch of 205 Day in 2022 during the weekend of the inaugural Kickback After Dark festival.

The morning of Feb. 5, 2022, Mays and Griffin held an Instagram Live celebration of 205 Day, complete with music from Birmingham artists including Love Moor, and a table lined with Alabama-grown treats like Grapico grape soda and Buffalo Rock ginger ale (“It’s good for whatever ails ya!” said Mays). For more than an hour, guests joined the conversation in person or on the live video to share their favorite stories about Birmingham.

It was an atmosphere of joy Mays wants to recreate every year. While Birmingham does have commemorations for historic events, such as a day of reflection for the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, Mays said the city doesn’t have an annual jovial festivity.

“There should be some celebration,” said Mays. “And not just for promoting it to other people, but promoting Birmingham to Birminghamians. I mean, there are so many parts of Birmingham or things in Birmingham and the greater region that people don’t even know about. And so, this is the opportunity for us to start to really just show love to ourselves and not just necessarily be so consumed with what people outside of Birmingham are thinking or what they need to know. It’s like we don’t know each other very well.”

This year, the Elevators team will mark 205 Day with an inaugural series of events from Feb. 3-5 (All events are free. Registration is requested for each event, but not required). The celebration kicks with a collaboration at the Birmingham Museum of Art during Art After 5, the museum’s Friday evening collision of art, music and pop culture.

Elevators will host an activation inviting guests to write positive messages on paper hearts that will later be strung into garlands. Mays intends to give the garlands to different organizations and groups that serve people who need more love and care, such as homeless shelters and youth detention centers. The effort is called “Spread Love; it’s the Birmingham way”— a riff off the Notorious B.I.G. song “Juicy.”

“[It’s] just as a visual reminder from their fellow citizens that they are worthy and thought of and appreciated during the month that we designate for love,” said Mays. “I think it’s a great activity to try to move them into some visibility. These people are here. And they’re part of the 205, too. So this is a way to start building that connection and spread some love their way.”

To Mays, the activity is also a reminder that a significant portion of the city’s buildings often go unseen.

“Older folks homes, homes where we’ve placed disabled people. They’re just invisible in the urban sphere for the most part.”

On Saturday night, Elevators will host “Drifting on a Memory” at Continental Drift, the cocktail bar helmed by Eric Bennett and John Easterling. The party will be a celebration of the sounds of Birmingham and the South with DJ sets by The Phasing Octopus and the creative collective The Kickback. At midnight, Elevators will invite attendees and bar patrons to ring in 205 Day with a toast as they make wishes for a better Birmingham.

The Kickback at Continental Drift — DJs Trenton Foston a.k.a Flock Wav (left) and Ishmael “I$H” Morgan host a holiday DJ set at Continental Drift on December 9, 2022. (Shauna Stuart| Al.com)

Sunday, Feb. 5 is the official 205 Day, and the weekend of events will wrap up with a grand finale— the Birmingham edition of Better Cities Film Festival at Sidewalk Cinema. The four-hour event will showcase short and feature-length films about cities and urban renewal including “Raised/Razed,” a documentary about the effects a federally-backed urban renewal program had on Vinegar Hill, an African American neighborhood in the heart of Charlottesville, Va.

Mays said the film sets the stage for conversations about similar programs in Birmingham, particularly the civil rights distinct. She said people often wonder why the area has so many churches, but so few houses.

“There used to be a neighborhood there,” said Mays. “There were people who lived there. They just didn’t spring up churches absent a population to attend them.”

After the screenings, Mays will sit down with fellow MPA and urban researcher Christopher Tyler Burks for a podcast-style conversation about the films and the future of urbanism in Birmingham and the region.

Mays first encountered the founders of the Better Cities Film Festival during the World Urban Forum in Poland. She was interested in hosting an iteration of the festival in Birmingham, so she worked with the team to select and secure rights for a selection of city-focused films for a local screening.

Mays hopes to make the festival an annual event. She wants to expand the festival to different locations around the city, as well as showcase local filmmakers and host workshops.

“So it’s not just movies, but also scholarly presentations, workshops, and activations that permeate out into the city,” said Mays.

Overall, the theme of 205 Day will focus on four questions: What do we want the city to be? What is the city right now? Who gets to decide what it is and how are we experiencing it?

But the bottom line: 205 Day is about joy.

“It’s really about the upbeatness. The pride of being from the 205 and the joy that you experience here,” said Mays. “It’s not only the burden of trauma and high murder rates and all these legacy issues. Not to demean those issues, but [I want to] bring joy up to the same level in context. It’s not just this one-sided story.”