Tammy:

 

Great job on the outreach!  Your results definitely show the importance of all your efforts. 

 

Your thank you all who provided advice and assistance was a nice grace note!

 

 

Regards, 

 

John

John E. Coraor, Ph.D.
Director of Cultural Affairs
Town of Huntington
100 Main Street
Huntington, NY   11743-6991
631-351-3099
FAX:  631-351-3100
jcoraor@HuntingtonNY.gov

 

From: Tammy Chan [mailto:Tchan@GPTX.org]
Sent: Friday, January 05, 2018 10:59 AM
To: Julia Muney Moore
Cc: public_art_network@americansforthearts.simplelists.com; John Coraor; Pax; Debra Alleyne; dglickman@cityofpalmdesert.org; Patricia Walsh; Sarah Dresser; Lauren Greenfield; Carlson, Haley; Carrie Geraci; Amara Geffen
Subject: RE: Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness in the Public Art process

 

Thank you Julia!

 

We were originally going to seek only painters for our TSB art project, but we decided to open it up to include graphic designers/illustrators and photographers to give those artists more opportunities to participate in the Public Art process and to identify more artists with those skills.  Although we didn’t think about them being more demographically diverse than traditional fine artists, we did believe they are artists who are often overlooked for Public Art projects and they definitely have the skills.

 

I should have included those listings in my outreach list.  They include invitations sent to the following groups:

 

-        The Texas Chapters of the AIGA (professional association for deign)

-        The Texas Professional Photographers Association

-        All Texas-based Camera Clubs we could find

-        Texas Authors and Illustrators Round Table

-        Dallas Society of Visual Communications

 

 

 

All though we had many entries from these organizations, out of the winners we had the following:

 

-        1 photographer (member of the Dallas Camera Club)

-        1 photographer (RAW artist who we contacted via Instagram)

-        2 computer-based graphic design winning entries

 

I don’t think our traditional methods of issuing our Calls to Artists would have reached those individuals above.  Their entries are beautiful!  They are excited and so are we.

 

We were very intentional with our efforts to be as inclusive as possible.  It’s been interesting and wonderful!  I will say that being able to share about our intentional inclusivity feels good and when the community hears about these efforts, they all seem very pleased.  It’s definitely worth the effort.

 

One interesting thing we didn’t expect, but it seems to be working, is some of the painters we reached had existing works they wanted to submit, so they shot high-resolution photos of their works which will be enlarged to be wrapped rather than painted.  We had to think about that and consider copyright and reproduction concerns, but we found a way. 

 

Below is an example of such an entry.  It’s not been wrapped yet, but our wrapping vendor has the photos and thinks it will work. 

 

This is just the proposal…

 

 

 

Tammy Chan

Public Art Coordinator

1102 MacArthur Blvd.

Grand Prairie, TX  75050

972-237-8159 Office

214-212-7958 Cell

tchan@gptx.org

 

From: Julia Muney Moore [mailto:jmoore@indyarts.org]
Sent: Friday, January 05, 2018 9:17 AM
To: Tammy Chan
Cc: public_art_network@americansforthearts.simplelists.com; John Coraor; Pax; Debra Alleyne; dglickman@cityofpalmdesert.org; Patricia Walsh; Sarah Dresser; Lauren Greenfield; Carlson, Haley; Carrie Geraci; Amara Geffen
Subject: Re: Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness in the Public Art process

 

Great moves, Tammy!  I particularly love that you have 14 "new" artists that you have the opportunity to groom towards bigger public art projects. 

 

Keep us informed--it seems you have created a model process for inclusivity.  We also see traffic signal boxes as a great entry point for public art work, and have discovered that graphic designers and illustrators are a perfect target group for such projects--they tend to have the necessary skills and are more demographically diverse than traditional fine artists.  Our next move will be to target the professional societies of graphic designers and illustrators more heavily to recruit for our program.


Julia Muney Moore

Director of Public Art

Arts Council of Indianapolis

 

924 N. Pennsylvania St.

Indianapolis, IN  46204

(317) 631-3301 x 240

(317) 332-8382 mobile

 

 

On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 6:09 PM, Tammy Chan <Tchan@gptx.org> wrote:

Preface:  If you’re copied on this e-mail, I have a “Thank You!” for you below. 

 

Michael,

 

The City of Grand Prairie Public Art Program recently hosted our first Traffic Signal Box (TSB) Public Art Project.  As part of this project, we endeavored to be as inclusive as possible.  These are the steps we took…

 

-          We simplified our TSB Public Art Project Call to Artists so that emerging artists could participate.   By that I mean, we didn’t require a resume or CV, we only required a brief statement of their art experience.

-          We had Spanish communications available as requested.

-          We sought out all Junior College art programs in Texas, personally e-mailing the staffs of all the departments.

-          We invited VSA Texas – The State Organization on Arts and Disability to forward the call to artists to all of their participating artists.

-          We researched minority art groups in our region and sent e-mails directly to every single artist on the webpages. 

-          We sent e-mails to every single visual artist on the on the RAW lists for all cities in Texas.

-          We sent Instagram messages to those RAW artists who did not include an e-mail on their listing.

-          We sent e-mails to all artist registries we could find in Texas.

-          We communicated about our Call to Artists via all avenues of social media in which the city participates. 

-          We created a video inviting all residents to apply to “become a Traffic Signal Box artist.”  That video was a big hit (for us) garnering more than 190K views and more than 2,350 shares and more than 800 positive comments – The most ever for any City post of any kind.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJOWRlGsOHI

 

All of those individual outreach efforts took about four hours a day for a week and a half.  We were hoping to get at least 40 entries, but were very excited to get 161 entries!

 

We also endeavored to be inclusive when developing our TSB Art Selection Committee for this project.  We invited local and regional artists, intentionally inviting minority artists and local artists to serve on the art selection committee.  There were 7 artists on the committee and only one of whom had ever participated in a Public Art Project.  Thus we hosted the Art Selection process as a training event to help them get a better understanding of the public art process as it related to this particular project. 

 

We also invited residents who live near each of the 20 TSBs that are in Phase 1, as well as representatives of businesses to serve along with key staff and two Council Members on the TSB Art Selection Committee.  All totaled 36 people were invited to serve on the TSB Public Art Selection Committee.  Twenty two people actually came.  It was great!  With each of the 161 artists submitting 3 sample art pieces, their proposals and the required paperwork (3 pages each), the committee ended up reviewing more than 720 powerpoint slides and scanning more than 5,000 double sided  documents as a group.  We did it somehow. 

 

Our TSB Public Art Selection Committee was comprised of:

-          5 people over 60 years old

-          6 African Americans

-          3 Hispanics

-          13 Whites

 

Here’s a photo from the judging.  A couple of people had stepped out when this photo was taken.

 

 

We had to have an auditor review our scoring forms for accuracy.  In the end, the committee selected the winning artists, which included:

 

-          9 male artists

-          11 female artists

-          14 White artists

-          5 Hispanic artists

-          1 Asian artist

-          1 disabled artist

-          An 81 year old photographer

-          A 13-year old student from the Grand Prairie ISD Fine Arts Academy

-          14 artists who have never before received a Public Art Commission

 

Our community is excited about this project and we look forward to seeing the art on the Traffic Signal Boxes this spring. 

 

It was a lot of work to be intentionally inclusive, but it was worth every ounce of effort!

 

I’ve attached our Call to Artists in case you would like to see it.  I wish to thank the following people for helping by sharing their knowledge and experience with us in response to an earlier list server inquiry.  Your help has been invaluable!...

 

Brianna McLean – Public Art Coordinator - Arts Missoula, MT

Kathi Olson – Berkshire Hathaway – Missoula, MT

John Coraor, Ph.D.  – Director of Cultural Affairs, Huntington, NY

Julia Muney Moore – Director of Public Art, Arts Council of Indianapolis, IN

Pax Bobrow – Project Manager, Greater Augusta Arts Council

Haley Carlson – Atlanta, GA

Deborah Clickman – City of Palm Desert, CA

Amara Geffen – Professor of Art, Allegheny College

Lauren Greenfield – Longmont, CO

Carrie Geraci – Director, Jackson Hole Public Art

Debra Alleyne, Arts and Cultural Affairs Coordinator, City of Dubuque, IA

Patricia Walsh – Americans for the Arts Staff

Elia Quiles – Up Art Studio, Houston

Sarah Green – Public Art Coordinator, North Richland Hills, TX

Sarah Dresser – Program Specialist – Office of Cultural Affairs – City of Columbia, MO

Catherine Campbell – Project Lead, Outside the Box StreetARToronto (StART)

 

Tammy Chan

Public Art Coordinator

1102 MacArthur Blvd.

Grand Prairie, TX  75050

972-237-8159 Office

214-212-7958 Cell

tchan@gptx.org

 

From: public_art_network@americansforthearts.simplelists.com [mailto:public_art_network@americansforthearts.simplelists.com] On Behalf Of Michael D Mowry
Sent: Monday, December 11, 2017 5:56 PM
To: public_art_network@americansforthearts.simplelists.com
Subject: Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness in the Public Art process

 

Greetings Public Art Community –

 

                The public art policy group for Denver’s Commission on Cultural Affairs is interested in learning about and exploring efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusiveness for the city’s public art process. If you have any examples to share, stories to relate, or advice to give on public art efforts you’ve undertaken in your communities to increase participation by traditionally under-represented populations, we’d love to learn more, and are happy to share what we gather. Thank you in advance!

 

We in Denver are looking forward to sharing our city with all of you at the convention in June!  

 

Best -

Michael Mowry

Cultural Affairs Commissioner

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