Happy New Year all, Excellent topic. We teach Public Art trainings for artists so they can come up with stronger applications, and have a 2 day and a 5 day training. We presented a five day training a few years ago for a city that had a program to pair a professional public artist with an emerging public artist, all the emerging folks had completed the training and had been admitted into their qualified pool. I love the Laramie idea to use this process to build diversity and to connect artists. Do check out the New England Foundation for the Arts artist registry Creative Ground for a rather substantial example, https://www.nefa.org/creative-economy/creativeground. Dee Dee Boyle-Clapp Director Arts Extension Service University of Massachusetts Amherst 217 Hampshire House, 131 County Circle Amherst, MA 01003 www.artsextensionservice.org www.umass.edu/aes 413-545-5241 direct line 413-545-2360 office dboyle-clapp@acad.umass.edu On 2018-01-04 15:40, Laramie Public Art Coalition wrote: > Michael, > > 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 > > On Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 4:56 PM, Michael D Mowry > <mdmowry@mowrystudio.com> wrote: > >> 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 >> >> To unsubscribe from this list please go to >> > http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=v3r3szhm98eUhyGtO7hYEulKk9RkfqTX >> [1] > > -- > > Meg Thompson Stanton > Coordinator > Laramie Public Art Coalition > laramiepublicart.org [2] > 307-223-LPAC (5722) > > To unsubscribe from this list please go to > http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=ksVIvpQWRUtCaWJmiRJHygDjfzwwbuLP > > > Links: > ------ > [1] http://archives.simplelists.com > [2] http://laramiepublicart.org
