Thanks for this great topic.  In Laramie we have a great mural project that has been going on for 6 years now.  It started grassroots style with artists and community members making it happen.   The Laramie Mural Project artists have stayed together and continue to meet regularly, help each other and critique each others proposals.  It has been a supportive and fruitful environment that has allowed artistic freedom and thus quality murals go up.  At some point the artists realized we needed more artists so that all the murals were not by the same artists.

In the past few years the mural project administrators tried to use best public art practices and hold RFQ calls.  For experienced artists it worked, but it has been hard to get new local artists applying for murals through the typical RFQ process, in part because new artists were not comfortable with the formal process.   When the mural project got a chance to expand an existing group mural (Gill Street) in which a group designed and painted the background and individual artists got to design their own fish and then the group worked together on overall design, they decided it was a good chance to get new artists involved.

The mural project artists decided to combine the old informal group style with a call process recently held a call for artists who had not done a mural yet to submit individual fish designs.  Then the experienced mural artists would be there to help the new artists with their fish, and work on the back ground, etc.  It did work, as we got 13 new artists in this mural.  There were also learning opportunities about how we would do it differently next time.  Overall it did get more new artists involved.  Some of which know they do not want to do large murals and some of whom do want to apply for future calls.

Personally I have realized that equity for our community is not only an issue for people of color, or queer communities, but it is an income and life experience issue as well.  We have many artists here who have not gone to art school or come from art families and have to work full time jobs and support their families.  So we are looking at things like making the application process simpler for some calls (like the above example- they only had to submit a design for the fish and the jury was blind and selected the designs they liked best- there was no resume or previous work.  This mostly worked out, but we did get a few who were probably not experienced enough, but then the other artists stepped up to help.).  Also we try to have meetings where kids are welcome, and have them at times before or after normal work hours.  We also post flyers around town at the non-typical art venues, such as laundry mats, community centers, feed stores.  I can't say how many we get from these flyers, but it's an effort to get out of the same circles.

We are looking at starting an artist registry in which artists submit/upload their images and thus all people looking are looking at work on the same platform.  Thus, those with nice websites don't have an advantage over those can't afford the time or money to make a nice website.

Another idea I have been playing with is doing projects in which experienced artists get teamed up with emerging artists to do a public art project.  And possibly bringing in experienced artists of color to work with artists in our community, of any race.  This works to battle the myth that artists of color are not widely successful, as well as provide opportunities for our artists and the visiting artist to expand their worlds.

I also eventually want to hold calls that are open to artists who have not done public art before (here the mentor idea could come into play), or have not received commissions in Laramie before.  I also think opening calls up across state lines would help with all of this.  Would CO consider doing this?  Actually, I attached a call we have out now.  The budget is small but it's all the business could do.  Please share with anyone you think is interested.  We don't a budget to use CAFE yet, thus I'm just posting it many places.

Sorry for the long ramble.  I could talk a lot about this.  Let me know what you all come up with!

Thanks,

Meg