Excerpts from an excellent article by Jan Brennan
Public art plays an invaluable role in the process of community building. Not only does it establish and beautify public spaces, it expresses and supports a sense of neighborhood history, culture and identity and helps drive economic vitality. One aspect of increasing interest is participatory public art, in which the public plays an active role rather than merely being appreciative viewers.
Public Art Basics
Although we often think of outdoor murals and sculptures, public works of art can take any shape or form, use any artistic medium, including performance, be either permanent or temporary, located indoors or outdoors, and be integrated into the architecture and site design or stand alone. Beautification, enrichment and enjoyment are valuable benefits of public art, but it is also often designed to elevate cultural history, help address urban issues, support economic vitality and build community cohesion.
Public art projects are most often site-specific works triggered by public construction and development projects. The most common funding mechanism for municipal public art are percent-for-art ordinances, dedicating a small percentage of capital improvement building or infrastructure budgets to fund public art associated with the project. State and local budget appropriations, public and private foundation grants, corporate sponsorships and individual donations are also sources of support.
Public art processes are managed by a wide variety of entities responsible for public space, including cultural offices, parks and recreation departments, economic development entities, educational institutions, transit authorities, nonprofit organizations and even private developers. Public art selection processes include direct commissions and selection through a competitive request for proposals or qualifications. Review and selection may be conducted by staff or an appointed selection panel, typically comprising both community members and arts professionals, with final approval from a public art commission or department.
What Makes Public Art Participatory?
The role of the public in the public art process described above is limited, primarily as passive consumers of the finished public artwork. More public art agencies are turning to participatory approaches that increase involvement and make public art more reflective of the communities in which it is located. Artists are being asked to create works responsive to a specific area’s culture, history and residents, rather than proposing artworks that could be dropped into any park or neighborhood.
Public art allows for varied participation, including public engagement in planning, selection, creation, installation, maintenance and collective appreciation. Participatory public art better reflects neighborhood identity, culture and history. The shared experience of creation and interaction with public art builds community cohesion. Participation amplifies the sense of ownership, discouraging graffiti and vandalism while supporting beautification, safety and economic development. At a time when public budgets are stretched thin, there is also a recognition that greater public participation increases voter support for public art programs and investments.
Strategies for Participatory Public Art
1. Participatory Planning
Municipal and regional planning for public art is the first opportunity for public participation. Plans are typically driven by staff, but public input helps ensure public art programs align with community priorities and values and can help improve public art access and impact.
ACTION ITEMS
2. Participatory Selection
Current public art models most often include community participation in the selection process. While formal arts expertise is important, most public entities have opted for a balanced approach, ensuring artistic skills and experience while also including locals on site-specific selection committees. Denver Public Art, for example, appoints selection panels with a “balance of community members who live or work near the project site and members who are more widely experienced and knowledgeable about art.”2 This is a beneficial practice, providing the selection committee with local input and heightening the responsiveness of public art to neighborhood context, history and culture.
In reviewing policies related to art selection panels, improvements might clarify a commitment to public input in the selection process, share benefits of public engagement, clarify how diverse community representatives will be identified and included in the selection process and ensure criteria are in place which values both arts experts and community representation.
ACTION ITEMS
3. Participatory Creation
Certainly one of the most exciting aspects of participatory public art is the trend towards engaging the public directly in the creative process. There are three primary models for participatory arts creation: collaborations in which the public works closely with the artist to inform development of the artwork; projects in which the public directly participates in creating the artwork; and projects in which the artwork is only realized through public interaction. Participatory creation is not new, but it is an area of rapid expansion in public art. Public art programs are stepping up to promote and facilitate public engagement, rather than merely relying on the artist to conduct community outreach and research to inform their public art proposal or project.
4. Participatory Maintenance
Maintenance of public artworks is a fourth opportunity for public participation. Public art staff are often challenged to monitor the condition of large public art collections distributed throughout a city, region or state. Programs can benefit by facilitating participatory monitoring and data collection. Seattle’s Office of Cultural Affairs Public Art Program maintains a tip line to report works in need of repair and offers workshops in artwork stewardship for interested volunteers, guiding them in inspection, reporting and some routine cleaning. By offering proactive workshops, the Public Art Program hopes to discourage well-intentioned, but often damaging attempts by the public to remove tagging from artworks.
ACTION ITEMS:
5. Participatory Collective Appreciation
A final area for participatory public engagement is through activities and events that promote collective enjoyment of the artworks and use them as a platform for community-building. “More than ever before, public artworks are stimulating and inviting active dialogue rather than just passive observation,” notes the Project for Public Spaces, “thereby fostering social interaction that can even lead to a sense of social cohesion among the viewers.”
One aspect of collective appreciation is to drive understanding of artworks and how they reflect neighborhood culture and history.
Public art programs don’t stop once an artwork is installed. The public needs education and opportunities to appreciate the artworks, particularly as a community. You might draw inspiration from this National Arts Marketing Project video How to Look at Public Art: A Six-Year-Old-Explains.
Conclusion
Participatory approaches can increase the appreciation and impact of public art, honor the history and culture of neighborhoods, provide collective cultural experiences and build residents’ sense of ownership and pride.
But participatory public art only works effectively when it is broadly and inclusively participatory. Public art programs can fall prey to including a few “usual suspects” and fail to reach and include audiences who are currently disengaged. Participatory public art is also only one small component of community-building.