With social distancing practices supported by many medical professionals and government agencies to help slow the COVID-19 pandemic, limitations on public gatherings are good for public health but can provide a challenge for public art administrators to keep projects on schedule. Generally, public art community engagement practices aim to build connections and strengthen communication with stakeholder groups related to a project’s location or themes, or as part of oversight for public art programs. Communities engaged through public art include residential groups, local stakeholders, arts commissions, and others; and canceling or postponing events may hinder the development of public art projects. This blog post aims to provide insight, resources, and recommendations to maintain community engagement for public art projects and programs as we all work to promote health and safety in our communities. 

Like most of you, Americans for the Arts has been watching the breaking news about Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and we are seeing inquiries coming in from the field and through our national service organization colleagues. While gathering and sharing pertinent information, we are also working to understand the long-term effect on arts and culture activities from performance to festivals, touring artists, and school field trips. We are monitoring responses and preparations and will share more information as it becomes available. You can help us and the nonprofit arts field by sharing with us how you are responding in the immediate and in the long-term. There is still much to learn about the outbreak, and we hope the following information assists you in preparation for both you and your loved ones, your organization, and your community. 

The Jewish Arts Collaborative was new to public art when we commissioned Julia Vogl to create Pathways to Freedom in 2018. Our priority was to take the Passover Exodus story and make a universal story of freedom, exile, and immigration—relevant to all in the Greater Boston community in a major way. It was a bigger undertaking than our staff of five really understood, but we knew that Julia’s commitment to digging into individual stories and beautifully featuring them was just what was needed in our community. We took a leap of faith on a project of this size and cost—and this is what we learned.

When a Jewish organization wants to make an artwork accessible to all—it has to reach out to all in the making of the work. That’s what I and the Jewish Arts Collaborative, a Boston arts organization, did together to explore the meaning of the Passover holiday. To me, the themes of Passover were already universal—leaving oppression, seeking a new start, ending up in limbo for years as you find a new home. The Exodus story is the story for many refugees today, one of how seeking freedom is about liberation but with a responsibility, too. Because the Pathways to Freedom artwork was going to surround the Soldiers and Sailors Civil War monument on Boston Common, at the city center, I wanted to be as inclusive as possible in making the work. So, I created a pop-up cart and with the JArts team and a band of volunteers, we travelled across the Boston region. Our mission: to engage people on the subject of freedom and immigration. 

What if you could score a mural the way that you can score a movie? A unique project from painter Joshua Mays and DJ King Britt answers this question. In West Philadelphia, Dreams, Diaspora, and Destiny comes to life through an augmented reality app (MuralArtsAR), weaving together interviews with community elders, neighborhood sounds, and beats created by local students from The Haverford School and Mastery Charter’s Shoemaker Campus. The final mural evokes perspective and curiosity, invitations to meaning, and possibility through cosmic awareness and cultural connection. The artwork is intensely rooted in the neighborhood, and best experienced in person, but ultimately we wanted this public art to be accessible to folks farther afield—the final app includes a feature that will “create” the mural experience right in front of you, wherever you are. 

Five years ago, I remember feeling profound sadness and disappointment when I thought about the condition of too many buildings in my town of Eagle Butte, South Dakota. Not only were the structures in rough shape; graffiti tagging had further defaced them. I’ve been the executive director of the grassroots, nonprofit Cheyenne River Youth Project since 1988, and three decades of youth development work here on the Cheyenne River reservation have taught me that our young people need to find healthy ways to explore their identities, find their voices, and share their stories. That’s fundamental to who we are as Lakota people, because for us, art is life. And without a positive outlet for so much youthful creative energy, vandalism is inevitable. I found myself wondering if CRYP could make a difference. In 2014, we invited a professional graffiti artist to complete a mural in town and provide lettering classes for our teens. We didn’t know it then, but this little test project was the proverbial pebble thrown into a lake, and the ripples are still expanding.

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.