Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness in the Public Art process Michael D Mowry (11 Dec 2017 23:56 UTC)
Re: Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness in the Public Art process Laramie Public Art Coalition (04 Jan 2018 20:40 UTC)
Re: Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness in the Public Art process Diana Boyle-Clapp (04 Jan 2018 21:16 UTC)
Re: Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness in the Public Art process Julia Muney Moore (04 Jan 2018 21:16 UTC)
(missing)
Re: Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness in the Public Art process Julia Muney Moore (05 Jan 2018 15:17 UTC)

Re: Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness in the Public Art process Diana Boyle-Clapp 04 Jan 2018 21:16 UTC

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