In the summer of 2018, against a backdrop of national immigration policy restrictions, Mural Arts had the opportunity to work with Chiléan artist Artes Ekeko (Ian Pierce). The pieces fell into place as we worked quickly to create something meaningful: North Philadelphia’s Providence Center joined us as a partner; members of our Restorative Justice Guild program were available to assist; and local artist Cesar Viveros signed on to help make this mural possible. A 900-square-foot wall was available in the Fairhill neighborhood, a predominantly Hispanic and Latinx community, and so we got to work. Ekeko and Viveros created a bright, textured design in line with Philadelphia’s longstanding status as a sanctuary city, representing a family making their way to a new home. Over a few short weeks, the mural went up on the wall, invoking conversation around community, empathy, and home. 

Nashville is a city known for the way we engage our community; we’re famous for our southern hospitality, our musical roots, our booming art scene, and enough decent restaurants to satisfy anyone. However, we also are a swiftly growing city with a deep cultural history that is often overshadowed by the more recent trends of rideshare scooters, bachelorette parties, and changing neighborhoods. With the city growing rapidly and the historical narrative of Nashville’s communities in jeopardy, we’ve had to reevaluate our responsibility to our communities’ past, present, and future through the lens of our public art program. In 2017 Metro Arts released a Public Art Community Investment Plan to alter our overall approach to public art in the city of Nashville. The plan emphasizes the importance of community centered public art and offers a number of recommendations and best practices to implement. One recommendation challenged us to shake up the way we engage with our community by hosting a curated temporary public art exhibition.

Community-based artworks in general require an ability to remain organic and observant. Every person is an important participant, and though we each come to projects with different sets of skills, needs, and motivations, most importantly we are reliant on each other. I’m speaking of the agencies and organizations here, but similarly, the female inmates at Malibu Conservation Camp 13, who helped each other through our creative process. When institutions and communities come together to organize a project, in a sense, hierarchies are put aside for a moment, because no one around the table holds all the answers. Each person knows this, and each moves forward toward a worthy goal. In this case, the common goal was understood to be the development of valises as a teaching tool to educate people about fire abatement, wildfires, and our role in nature.

Public art directly influences how people see and connect with a place, providing access to aesthetics that support its identity and making residents feel appreciated and valued. Considering what positive impact public art can have on communities, in this year’s Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review blog salon we asked our authors to consider: How did their project enhance the community? In what ways was the community engaged, either during the development of the artworks or after? What positive impact did the project have on the community? This week, we will hear from several artists and administrators whose selected projects for the 2019 PAN Year in Review engaged or impacted the community for whom the project was created.

On my recent road trips across Vermont, I was reminded how essential cultural organizations are to the vitality of each of their communities, and how the arts are, in fact, economic drivers in urban and rural economic development. The Flynn Center, which I ran before becoming a legislator, employs 300+ people with an annual payroll of over $2.8 million. The Vermont Arts Council recently released a study showing that the creative economy in the Northeast Kingdom employs 3,327 individuals, 9.4% of the workforce of 35,500. The Arts Council is expanding its research statewide to illustrate how substantial the arts sector is in each community. As a state legislator, I feel Vermont can do more for the arts. As we seek to encourage younger people to relocate here, added support for the cultural sector will make our region even more attractive and deliver immense returns on investment.

The digital landscape is crowded, and with human attention spans coming in at 8.25 seconds (yes, that’s shorter than the attention span of a goldfish), arts marketers need to create content that not only stands out but also helps them connect with their audiences.

In September 1919, American Legion Tom Powell Post #77 in St. Louis was the first of its kind to become chartered as an all African American Post, decades before the military would desegregate. Post #77 takes pride in having members who served with distinction with the Tuskegee Airmen, Buffalo Soldiers, Montford Point Marines, and many other distinguished military units. Post members also have a proud history of assisting disabled and unemployed veterans, and a strong legacy of providing community youth arts programs. Tom Powell Post #77 was instrumental in bringing the concept of competitive marching music to the community through the development of the Spirit of St. Louis senior drum and bugle corps, and mentored the famed American Woodmen Cadets junior drum and bugle corps programs. The Tom Powell Post Junior Drum and Bugle Corps was organized on September 1, 1935, to help curb juvenile delinquency in and around the neighborhood and to provide music to the Post members marching in the American Legion parade held in St. Louis. The Corps as a competitive group won many honors, including perennial Missouri State championships and placing in the top 10 of numerous national conventions. The Corps was the only Black Corps in the country participating in American Legion competition.

First launched in 2012, the pARTnership Movement is a program and online platform of Americans for the Arts which demonstrates that by partnering with the arts, businesses can gain a competitive edge. Over the past seven years, Americans for the Arts has developed toolkits, shared stories of success, published how-to workbooks to engage employees, and continued to celebrate America’s best businesses supporting the arts—all for the purpose of supporting the work of local arts organizations and businesses as they seek to build creative relationships. Our goal has always been two-fold: build the capacity of the arts field to cultivate and sustain mutually beneficial partnerships with business; and make the case to businesses why partnering with the arts is good for their people, their companies, and their communities. We are pleased to introduce a new pARTnership Movement website to help us (and you) further this work.

Every day, the sound of jackhammers provides a soundtrack to my workday. My organization, COCA–Center of Creative Arts in St. Louis, is expanding with a 50,000 square foot addition. Historically, arts organizations have built facilities and spaces in service to their art, such as grand museums and acoustically pristine symphony halls. In planning for our expansion, we have done more than our fair share of discussing, debating, and decision-making about the technical specifications and “performance” of our new space. However, as the project has evolved, I’m more interested in thinking about how our space, and our art, can be in service to humanity, not the other way around. Can we, as arts organizations — with our abundance of theatres, studios, museums, and community spaces — do a better job of serving as cornerstones of community connectivity and human engagement?