Kathryn Armstrong is the Executive Director at the Columbus Area Arts Council in Columbus, Indiana where she has worked since 2016. The Columbus Area Arts Council’s mission is to strengthen the Columbus community through arts and culture. With 15 years of experience working as an art professional, Kathryn’s work is centered around making communities stronger through art, culture, and civic engagement. During her tenure, she has implemented artist-led workshops, pop-up performances, and the 411 Gallery in downtown Columbus. Previously a faculty member at the Herron School of Art and Design from 2010 until 2016, Kathryn taught professional practice courses for undergraduate and graduate students and served as the Director of the Basile Center for Art, Design and Public Life. “As an arts and cultural leader, I look for ways to enhance daily life through arts activation, supporting artists and arts organizations, inspiring others to be creative, empowering youth, and more importantly implementing ways for folks to have equal access to the arts.” 

“This toolkit was born out of a desire to fight despair,” shares Candida Gonzalez, artist and consultant to Forecast, a nonprofit for artists working in the public space. “I watched in disbelief as many friends all over the country lost their projects and gigs. Rather than pausing to think on alternatives, many funders’ knee-jerk response to the pandemic was to pull funding and cancel projects.” This despair birthed an idea from the team at Forecast for a toolkit created and launched in April 2020 with artists, arts organizations, presenting organizations, and others collaborating with artists in mind. “Innovation in the Time of COVID” is designed to be an ever-evolving platform that contains strategies for adapting in-person arts-based activities during the COVID-19 pandemic for everyone to share, use, and contribute to. Forecast continues to develop the toolkit based on open-source input from artists and arts organizations and examples of how they are adapting in-person arts-based projects. 

Katrina Daniels is the Exhibition and Gallery Sales Director at the Lansing Art Gallery and Education Center, which provides public awareness, education, and enjoyment of the visual arts by promoting the works of Michigan artists. Katrina coordinates exhibitions and public art programming working directly with artists to increase engagment between them and the Lansing community. Katrina is a co-founder of ARTpath, a program developed by the Gallery and the City of Lansing to bring artwork out of the traditional gallery setting and into the public realm. ARTpath offers more accessible opportunities for the community to engage with the work of Michigan artists. Our Member Profile series features the many Americans for the Arts members doing transformative work for arts education, public art, advocacy, arts marketing, and more. An Americans for the Arts Membership connects you with this network of more than 6,000 arts leaders and gives you access to latest professional development and research.

The decision to stand up and speak out on the injustices in our society does not always come as a choice for those who are subjected to them. In some cases, protest becomes a necessary means for which progress and justice may be made. The protests that followed the death of George Floyd in May 2020 took place all across the country, including Boston, where MASARY Studios is located. On May 31, a peaceful march in memory of George Floyd turned into a large rally on the Boston Common. The cultural tension between people of color and the local police force was felt in the air as the events unfolded throughout the night. Sparked by this event, the civil unrest became headline news and a prominent point of discussion. The start of our Protest Projections in Downtown Boston began the night after the rally at the Boston Common, emerging from the same cultural energy and tensions. As creatives we are motivated by our feelings of wanting to speak up, make a difference, and be a part of or start the conversation. Using our experience in public spaces as artists doing projections, we wanted to continue to use this medium to make an impact for change. Witnessing the nationwide protests, specifically the ones in our own city, the sense of creative urgency was even more present as we thought about our response as artists but also as protestors. Motivated by our drive to take action and the fact that so much is on the line for our future, it was not hard for us to decide whether or not we should take action.

Whenever you make public art, there are risks—usually financial. But today with monuments being challenged, politics, history, and community emotions are often also at play. Oh, and we are in a pandemic. When everything was halted in March, I fell into a depression. The prospect of making art with community, if we could do it safely, felt like a mental health salvation. Our Neighborhood Rolls became a beautification project to cover the cinder block wall at the side of a building, but primarily it was envisioned as a point of pride that, in the making, would build community-a meaningful, fun, educational, and engaging project for local kids and residents in Kingston, NY. At a time when everyone is evaluating what risks are worth taking for the greater good, maybe making art with people in public sounds like an unnecessary hazard. However, after my experience in Kingston, I would argue it was an essential action. It greatly impacted my mental health, and visibly demonstrated the importance of placemaking and tangible engagement for community in these apocalyptic times.

Across the nation, communities have taken to the street to express their feelings about the Black Lives Matter movement in paint. Public art is an effective tool for local government expression because it amplifies messages of political and social importance with a clear and powerful statement. It also brings people together, creates social understanding, and aids the healing process. That’s just what it did in Asheville, N.C. After a month of planning, on Sunday, July 19, 2020, dozens of artists and volunteers came together on behalf of the City of Asheville to create a Black Lives Matter mural in the heart of downtown. Having been through this process, I have 5 tips for arts agencies looking to serve in a similar role. I also recommend reaching out to other organizations in your area, state, or region that have played a role in the installation of a street mural project for additional insights.

On May 25, 2020, Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin brutally murdered George Floyd, an unarmed Black father accused of issuing a counterfeit $20 bill, while other police officers stood by. This tragedy, following many other recent police-involved shootings of unarmed Black men and women that have been broadcasted and protested nationwide, has sparked renewed and global visibility for the Black Lives Matter movement. This most recent wave of protests has prompted a discussion within the public art field: How can public art respond to the Black Lives Matters movement? Should it? What will we do about the public artwork that is being tagged and damaged during these protests? Public art, at its best, is an authentic reflection of our times and values. Public art should reflect the community around it, and represent the hopes, lives, and aspirations of the people in that community. What we can do as public art policy makers and administrators is uplift those voices in our communities that are calling for justice and equal protection for people of color under the law. It is time to talk about the lack of diversity within our public art commissions, artist selection panels, and our public art workforce. We need to address the elitism with which we dictate to communities which artworks are acceptable, and which persons and cultures are worth affirming with monuments and beautiful objects.

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.