Not all M/A partnerships are alike. They are formed for different reasons, have different scopes and scales, different administrative structures, and may involve additional partners. This section lays out some of the variables to consider when structuring a partnership.
“You can’t generalize...It’s not like Frankenstein where you just throw the parts together.”
D. A. Bullock, Artist, Creative CityMaking, Minneapolis
The vision for an M/A partnership can begin with a range of municipal or arts workers. They create momentum that grows as additional people sign on to the idea. These advocates include:
A mayor, city council member, or other elected official can be influential in getting an M/A partnership off of the ground. For example, mayoral initiatives in Seattle and Minneapolis to address racial inequity led to programs that embed artists in city agencies.
“[If not] for [Mayor Walsh’s] overall support for the arts, I doubt we would have had the support for Boston AIR [or even for] exploring this kind of thing.”
Julie Burros, former Executive Director, Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, Boston
Leaders and staff within municipal agencies can initiate partnerships that relate to their mission and programs. They are also key in navigating municipal policies to successfully integrate artistic practices.
Local arts agencies such as a Department of Cultural Affairs are already a bridge between government and local artists. They can play an important role in coordinating M/A partnerships, like the City of Los Angeles.
Los Angeles, CA
Creative Catalyst Program
City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Department of Transportation & local artists
Alan Nakagawa’s project Street Haikus featured poems by participants, produced as street signs.
Photo: City of Los Angeles Departments of Transportation and Cultural Affairs
Alan Nakagawa’s project Perfume Bus Stop featured three scents on a rotating basis. Photo: City of Los Angeles Departments of Transportation and Cultural Affairs
Alan Nakagawa’s project Perfume Bus Stop featured three scents on a rotating basis. Photo: City of Los Angeles Departments of Transportation and Cultural Affairs
Alan Nakagawa’s project Street Haikus featured poems by participants, produced as street signs.
Photo: City of Los Angeles Departments of Transportation and Cultural Affairs
Alan Nakagawa’s project Perfume Bus Stop featured three scents on a rotating basis. Photo: City of Los Angeles Departments of Transportation and Cultural Affairs
Creative Catalyst is a collaboration between the City of Los Angeles’ Department of Transportation (DOT) and Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA). This program is part of Vision Zero, a City initiative to reduce or eliminate traffic fatalities by 2025. The program invites an experienced cultural producer such as an artist or curator to be in residence at DOT. The artist, who is contracted for two one-year periods as a part-time staff member, is selected with a focus on their ability to bring new ideas to departmental goals, develop and carry out projects; and make inroads in changing internal DOT culture and external policies. DOT hopes to “shift public perception, attitudes, and behaviors towards our transportation system.”
The first Creative Catalyst, sound artist Alan Nakagawa, felt that DOT was missing “a sense of narrative. Many of the staff felt the same way. Specifically, at that time, the Vision Zero team was basing its direction, primarily on traffic data, which makes total sense from an engineering standpoint but if we were going to change the hearts and minds of the City, then the stories behind the number needed to rise to the surface as well.” With the support of DOT, Nakagawa interviewed current and retired staff and crafted a podcast, a zine, a ghost bike project, and public installations. His work helped to surface the human story of Los Angeles transportation.
Artists who want to connect their vision and practice to an issue or opportunity facing a community can seek out municipal allies. Artist-driven partnerships often evolve from a previous relationship or work within a city, such as in Richmond, VA or in Maine.
Richmond, VA
Performing Statistics
Art 180, Mark Strandquist & Richmond Police Department
Photo: Mark Strandquist, courtesy of Performing Statistics and ART 180
Performing Statistics was initiated in 2014 by artist/activist Mark Strandquist and Trey Hartt of Art 180, a non-profit organization that provides art programs for youth “living in challenging circumstances,” in collaboration with the Legal Aid Justice Center. In 2019 Performing Statistics became an independent non-profit.
Performing Statistics is a youth-centered cultural organizing project. It works with youth who are incarcerated or otherwise involved with the juvenile justice system to use creative expression as a way to reimagine the system. Key goals are to reduce police interactions and arrests, and to work towards police-free schools. Some of the many projects created by youth over the past five years include art works such as self-portraits and protest posters; radio spots featuring the voices of incarcerated youth; a justice parade; a number of exhibitions; and an educator curriculum.
The Performing Statistics team used these art projects to create a training workshop for Richmond Police officers, in collaboration with former Chief of Police Alfred Durham. The training includes activities that promote empathy building, trauma-informed approaches, family perspectives, and ideas for how police officers can reduce negative interactions with youth and disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. The training was given to new recruits, seasoned police officers, and school resource officers. Due to its success, it is now required for all 700 officers in the Richmond police force. See this blog post for a description of one training.
Some of the structural factors at the heart of this partnership include:
Alignment of project goals with Police Department policies, including an emphasis on community policing, a departmental focus on youth engagement, and a Police Chief who actively sought new strategies to improve police-community relations.
Building relationships with decision-makers.
“Reaching the personal level has built the structural relationship for the project. If it wasn’t for our Police Chief coming to our exhibition and being moved by the words of the youth, then spending time [after] time talking with him, we wouldn’t be training police.” Trey Hartt, Project Director
Scaling up a grassroots, arts-based, community organizing model.
Nonprofit arts organizations can initiate a project and also serve as intermediaries between municipal agencies and artists. You can read more about how this happened in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia, PA
Porch Light
Mural Arts Philadelphia, Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, & local artists
The Porch Light program is a collaboration between non-profit Mural Arts Philadelphia and the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services. It is a dedicated program at Mural Arts with its own staff and outreach strategy. The program revolves around a community-created mural that illustrate themes around wellness and mental and behavioural health issues. These include issues that have had visible effects on the community, such as mental health, substance use, spirituality, homelessness, trauma, immigration, war, and neighborhood safety. Porch Light programs occur in lower-income communities in which transforming a public space will have a significant impact.
Each mural is created during a months-long program in partnership with a neighborhood public health organization and local artists. The partner organization hosts the project at a community site, and Porch Light works with staff (such as therapists) to refer clients to the program. Mural projects start with weekly artist-led creative workshops and dialogues about health for a core group of participants. Monthly open studios invite the entire community in. The lead artist creates a mural image from the output of the workshops, and the larger community helps to paint it during “Community Paint Days.”
Porch Light’s work promotes both community resiliency and recovery and public health. Their goals for the program include to: increase awareness about mental health; promote social inclusion; increase access to mental health resources; and develop cognitive skills related to art-making (i.e. abstract thinking, problem-solving, esteem-building). Outcomes include improving the physical environment, new opportunities for social connections, and greater understanding between neighbors.
The Porch Light program is a collaboration between non-profit Mural Arts Philadelphia and the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services. It is a dedicated program at Mural Arts with its own staff and outreach strategy. The program revolves around a community-created mural that illustrate themes around wellness and mental and behavioural health issues. These include issues that have had visible effects on the community, such as mental health, substance use, spirituality, homelessness, trauma, immigration, war, and neighborhood safety. Porch Light programs occur in lower-income communities in which transforming a public space will have a significant impact.
Each mural is created during a months-long program in partnership with a neighborhood public health organization and local artists. The partner organization hosts the project at a community site, and Porch Light works with staff (such as therapists) to refer clients to the program. Mural projects start with weekly artist-led creative workshops and dialogues about health for a core group of participants. Monthly open studios invite the entire community in. The lead artist creates a mural image from the output of the workshops, and the larger community helps to paint it during “Community Paint Days.”
Porch Light’s work promotes both community resiliency and recovery and public health. Their goals for the program include to: increase awareness about mental health; promote social inclusion; increase access to mental health resources; and develop cognitive skills related to art-making (i.e. abstract thinking, problem-solving, esteem-building). Outcomes include improving the physical environment, new opportunities for social connections, and greater understanding between neighbors.
A funder with a particular grant or agenda can spark a partnership. This can be a private foundation, a public grantmaker such as the NEA, or a grantmaking program within a local arts agency. See this section for more on funding.
No matter who initiates, most M/A partnerships build in ways to gather early and timely public and stakeholder feedback, such as advisory groups.
Partnership Scale and Scope
A partnership can be structured at a number of scales and scopes within a municipal framework.
Single Project: The artist works with municipal and community partners on a finite project or initiative. Projects may range from long-term and large-scale or short-term and small-scale. The artist often works closely with a department liaison whose work aligns with the project.
Agency-at-large: The artist is invited to partner with a municipal agency and its work at large. Even though the artist may engage with multiple divisions and staff, it’s important to identify a staff liaison who can facilitate these connections and ensure two-way communication with agency leadership.
Systemic or City-wide: The artist/s works across a municipal geography or with multiple agencies. This is perhaps the most complex scope, so you’ll need to create an administrative and creative infrastructure that is sustainable over time.
Minneapolis, MN
Creative CityMaking
Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy; other City departments & local artists
The Equity Pulpit, part of a project by D.A. Bullock and Ariah Fine, in collaboration with the Neighborhood and Community Relations Department.
Photo: Alizarin Meninnga, Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy, City of Minneapolis
Part of a creative asset mapping of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood by artists E.G. Bailey and Shá Cage.
Photo: Justin Sengly, Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy, City of Minneapolis
Part of a creative asset mapping of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood by artists E.G. Bailey and Shá Cage.
Photo: Justin Sengly, Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy, City of Minneapolis
Tenants participating in a “Hearing Tenant Voices” workshop with artists Mankwe Ndosi and Reggie Prim, in collaboration with the Regulatory Services Department.
Photo: Rebecca Crisanta de Ybarra, Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy, City of Minneapolis
Housing inspectors participating in a “Hearing Tenant Voices” workshop with artists Mankwe Ndosi and Reggie Prim, in collaboration with the Regulatory Services Department.
Photo: Rebecca Crisanta de Ybarra, Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy, City of Minneapolis
Minneapolis’ Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy (ACCE) leads the Creative CityMaking (CCM) program since 2013. CCM advances the City’s goal of improving economic and racial disparities through systems change, and by creating better engagement and services for communities. CCM places experienced community artists into collaboration with staff in City departments which have included Community Planning and Economic Development, Regulatory Services, Information Technology, Neighborhood and Community Relations, City Clerk’s Office, Public Works, and the Office of Sustainability. Projects have focused both on internal concerns, such as transforming agency culture, and on agency work within communities.
CCM is grounded in ideas of equity. Teams have participated in dialogue that included deep personal reflection and often emotional conversations about the City’s and departments’ historical and current patterns of inequity. They have worked to understand the specific contexts of the department and the community that they engage. Artists have been particularly adept at identifying disconnects between the departments’ intentions for community engagement, and the reality of their practices. These conversations, though difficult at times, created a space for both team and project growth.
Three structural aspects of CCM were key to its continued success:
A strong third-party partner was critical to establishing CCM. Nonprofit Intermedia Arts (now defunct) partnered with ACCE to initiate the program, which was funded by an Art Place grant. Intermedia Arts (IA) was the grant recipient in order to have outside control of resources and safeguard against any potential political interference with the program. IA and ACCE collaboratively designed and launched the program with the intention that ACCE would assume administration of the project. IA served as intermediary between artists and City departments.
ACCE engaged an outside evaluator, Rainbow Research, to produce a Developmental Evaluation of CCM. The evaluators were “embedded” early on and provided ongoing feedback and reflection to teams so that projects could adjust in real time to get the best results. For more on this, see the Evaluation in Action profile.
ACCE developed a plan to sustain the program. While the Art Place grant stretched over the three year pilot phase, ACCE contributed departmental matching funds for the second and third years. They then secured an NEA grant to match those funds. ACCE also hired a program manager to support the partnerships and ensure future capacity for CCM.
The timeframe of a partnership depends on mutual goals and what resources are available. Typical partnerships work within these timeframes:
Less than a year: Short-term partnerships can respond well to a time-sensitive issue or a very focused project scope. These can also be useful to prototype an idea or gauge the potential for partners to work together on a bigger project in the future.
12 to 18 months: The length of standard municipal contracts and budget/funding cycles can dictate this common timeframe. However many partnerships caution that this can limit the time for relationship-building and project planning. Learn how NYC does it.
Multi-year or ongoing: Partnerships that aspire to create systemic or significant change need long-term investment from both municipalities and artists. These projects can require an artist to be embedded in an agency or other municipal structure, and contracted for a longer period or with renewable contract terms. St Paul and Portland ME both use an ongoing partnership model.
Saint Paul, MN
City Artist
Public Art Saint Paul, City of Saint Paul & local artists
Amanda Lovelee’s Urban Flower Field transformed a vacant lot with a spiral plot of flowers that remove contaminants from the soil.
Christine Baeumler’s project Bee Real Bee Everywhere created “high rise” sculptural homes for bees; and gives out pollinator seeds and education at local parks.
Christine Baeumler’s project Bee Real Bee Everywhere created “high rise” sculptural homes for bees; and gives out pollinator seeds and education at local parks.Credit: Carrie Thompson
Amanda Lovelee’s Pop-up Meeting offers popsicles in exchange for thoughts and feedback about the City.
Photo: Colleen Sheehy
Amanda Lovelee’s Pop-up Meeting offers popsicles in exchange for thoughts and feedback about the City.
Created in 2005, the City Artist integrates artists into the daily and long-term workings of the city. Program goals are to shape public spaces, improve city systems, and deepen civic engagement. Artists advise on major city initiatives and lead their own artistic and curatorial projects.
City Artist is a partnership between the City of Saint Paul and non-profit organization Public Art Saint Paul (PASP), which oversees public art programs for the city. Artists are part-time employees of PASP, and receive health and retirement benefits. This also allows for a more open-ended tenure for the artist rather than one that is restricted by the City’s time-limited contracts. This has proven valuable in terms of artists having extended time to build relationships, gain understanding of department opportunities and systems, and to develop projects with sufficient time to ensure impact.
Artists are embedded in City Hall and have dedicated work space within the Department of Public Works. In this way they can collaborate across city agencies. In addition to their own creative work, they advise on everything from city initiatives, planning studies, and capital project design, to ongoing street and sidewalk maintenance. Projects have included poetry stamped into concrete sidewalks, a vacant lot transformed by spiraling plots of flowers, and a civic choir.
There are many ways to structure an artist’s relationship with a municipality. Some things to consider:
How integrated into or independent of the municipal agency is the artist?
If the artist is more integrated (or embedded), they spend significant time in the agency, building relationships and becoming part of the team. They might shadow staff, or attend meetings and programs. Integrated artists get an insider view into the agency’s work and culture. Being part of these day-to-day conversations deepens understanding of how each partner thinks and works and can provide greater access to agency expertise, resources, and supports for the artist. St Paul and New York City use this model.
Saint Paul, MN
City Artist
Public Art Saint Paul, City of Saint Paul & local artists
Amanda Lovelee’s Urban Flower Field transformed a vacant lot with a spiral plot of flowers that remove contaminants from the soil.
Christine Baeumler’s project Bee Real Bee Everywhere created “high rise” sculptural homes for bees; and gives out pollinator seeds and education at local parks.
Christine Baeumler’s project Bee Real Bee Everywhere created “high rise” sculptural homes for bees; and gives out pollinator seeds and education at local parks.Credit: Carrie Thompson
Amanda Lovelee’s Pop-up Meeting offers popsicles in exchange for thoughts and feedback about the City.
Photo: Colleen Sheehy
Amanda Lovelee’s Pop-up Meeting offers popsicles in exchange for thoughts and feedback about the City.
Created in 2005, the City Artist integrates artists into the daily and long-term workings of the city. Program goals are to shape public spaces, improve city systems, and deepen civic engagement. Artists advise on major city initiatives and lead their own artistic and curatorial projects.
City Artist is a partnership between the City of Saint Paul and non-profit organization Public Art Saint Paul (PASP), which oversees public art programs for the city. Artists are part-time employees of PASP, and receive health and retirement benefits. This also allows for a more open-ended tenure for the artist rather than one that is restricted by the City’s time-limited contracts. This has proven valuable in terms of artists having extended time to build relationships, gain understanding of department opportunities and systems, and to develop projects with sufficient time to ensure impact.
Artists are embedded in City Hall and have dedicated work space within the Department of Public Works. In this way they can collaborate across city agencies. In addition to their own creative work, they advise on everything from city initiatives, planning studies, and capital project design, to ongoing street and sidewalk maintenance. Projects have included poetry stamped into concrete sidewalks, a vacant lot transformed by spiraling plots of flowers, and a civic choir.
If the artist works more independently, they spend more of their time outside of the partnering agency, doing project work within a community or with outside partners. The artist spends time at the agency only for key meetings and project administration. The Detroit City Storyteller program uses this model.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan created the Chief Storyteller position because he wanted to “remodel the narrative” of a city that suffers from persistent negative mainstream media portrayals. Detroit is 83% African-American but many black residents feel left out of media coverage. The Mayor chose journalist Aaron Foley as Chief Storyteller to bring balance to how Detroit is portrayed, and to highlight positive stories centered in communities of color. Foley is a full-time employee of the City, and reports to the Mayor’s Chief of Staff. However the Chief Storyteller intentionally works independently from the Mayor’s Office, in order to create a new narrative of self-determination for the city.
Foley hired a small team of journalists and videographers that work independently from the city, to create media pieces for The Neighborhoods website and local cable news channel. There are currently over 200 stories on the site, fulfilling the intent to present a more diverse and nuanced portrait of Detroit and its people than is available through the popular media. The website also includes events and happenings, resources for families, information about block clubs, neighborhood organizations and volunteer opportunities, and information about the people and businesses that make Detroit home.
With an open-ended structure, an artist does not come into the partnership with a specific project. Instead, the artist has a set period of time to do research and develop a project idea. This phase includes engagement with the agency partner, stakeholders, and/or community members to inform the project concept.
Sometimes a specific issue or problem to be solved, opportunity, or initiative, or program will suggest a particular direction or focus for the artist’s work. Often the artist makes a project proposal first and then carries the work out.
How should the legal relationship between the artist and municipality be structured?
The legal relationship is framed by government hiring and contracting policies as much as by agreement about what will best support the artist’s role in the partnership. Creative maneuvers within the system are sometimes required. Relationships are typically structured in these ways:
Artist as independent contractor: This is the most flexible way that municipalities can bring on outside expertise. However, the limitations of contracting can create challenges to structuring a relationship that accommodates a longer timeline, how the artist works, and the nature of deliverables.
Artist as lead: An artist or arts organization may secure funding for and initiate a partnership project. Holding the purse strings may give the artist some control in negotiating the terms of the partnership or in decisions about how resources are used. However, this doesn’t guarantee access to municipal partners and resources, and may even make municipal buy-in more difficult to secure.
Artist as employee: This can be an ideal arrangement when agencies want to integrate artists into their everyday or long-term work, when the project timeline is ongoing, or when work on systemic issues requires consistent collaboration between the artist, the agency staff and constituents. However, the independence afforded by the contractor model may be lost, and not all artists want to become city employees.
Example
St Paul’s City Artist program uses a non-profit intermediary to employ artists, which allows them to work with more autonomy— although the City then plays a more limited role in funding the program.
Saint Paul, MN
City Artist
Public Art Saint Paul, City of Saint Paul & local artists
Amanda Lovelee’s Urban Flower Field transformed a vacant lot with a spiral plot of flowers that remove contaminants from the soil.
Christine Baeumler’s project Bee Real Bee Everywhere created “high rise” sculptural homes for bees; and gives out pollinator seeds and education at local parks.
Christine Baeumler’s project Bee Real Bee Everywhere created “high rise” sculptural homes for bees; and gives out pollinator seeds and education at local parks.Credit: Carrie Thompson
Amanda Lovelee’s Pop-up Meeting offers popsicles in exchange for thoughts and feedback about the City.
Photo: Colleen Sheehy
Amanda Lovelee’s Pop-up Meeting offers popsicles in exchange for thoughts and feedback about the City.
Created in 2005, the City Artist integrates artists into the daily and long-term workings of the city. Program goals are to shape public spaces, improve city systems, and deepen civic engagement. Artists advise on major city initiatives and lead their own artistic and curatorial projects.
City Artist is a partnership between the City of Saint Paul and non-profit organization Public Art Saint Paul (PASP), which oversees public art programs for the city. Artists are part-time employees of PASP, and receive health and retirement benefits. This also allows for a more open-ended tenure for the artist rather than one that is restricted by the City’s time-limited contracts. This has proven valuable in terms of artists having extended time to build relationships, gain understanding of department opportunities and systems, and to develop projects with sufficient time to ensure impact.
Artists are embedded in City Hall and have dedicated work space within the Department of Public Works. In this way they can collaborate across city agencies. In addition to their own creative work, they advise on everything from city initiatives, planning studies, and capital project design, to ongoing street and sidewalk maintenance. Projects have included poetry stamped into concrete sidewalks, a vacant lot transformed by spiraling plots of flowers, and a civic choir.
Artists have a desk or space in a municipal office. TThe benefits are face-time with staff, exposure to the daily workings of government, and access to phone, email, and support systems that are helpful for the project and create credibility for the artist within and outside of the agency.
“Our hard power is our city phone number and city email address! With it, I’m seen as staff.”
Amanda Lovelee, City Artist program, Saint Paul
The municipality provides studio space for the artist.
The artist is based outside of the municipal agency and works independently from a home studio and/or office.
The artist spends the majority of their time working at a community site. This could be a municipal site such as a library, park, or school, or at a local organization.
The artist does not have a fixed workspace and instead is mobile, working flexibly in multiple project locations.
Working with Third-Party Partners
Many partnerships benefit from a third organization that helps structure, administer, and facilitate partnerships, and can function in bridging, translating, and coordinating between the partners. Third party partners can include: local arts agencies; nonprofit arts and civic organizations; or even place-based funders. Part of the work is figuring out how these intermediaries are positioned in relation to the municipal agency.
Local arts agencies (LAAs) like arts commissions or councils are the most common type of third-party partners, and are typically a department of municipal government. Other LAAs may be nonprofit, for-profit, or hybrid organizations. Among their many functions, local arts agencies make grants, manage public art programs, provide training to artists, and promote the role of arts and culture in other sectors. Their mission is to make arts and culture accessible to many people in civic life, enhancing what the city offers to its residents while creating opportunity for artists to contribute to the public good.
An LAA’s role in a partnership is often described as intermediary, but can be more involved than the title suggests. They can initiate, conceive, and administer programs, and negotiate dynamics and complexities of partnerships. They importantly can provide continuity in programs when there are changes in municipal leadership. Note that not all local arts agencies will be able to take on this role.
Challenges can arise for third-party partners in balancing the administration of an M/A partnership with other organizational priorities. An LAA which is part of municipal government may experience less leverage or negotiating power in comparison to other departments. Ultimately, city and department leadership needs to want, own, manage, and resource M/A partnerships to ensure their effectiveness and sustainability.
Artist Karen Young and artwork for her project Older and Bolder at the Boston AIR showcase, 2018. Photo: Ryan McMahon.
The Oral History Phone Booth, part of Daniel Johnson's project We Are Boston: Stories of Hope, Struggle, and Resilience, at the Boston AIR showcase, 2018.
Photo: Ryan McMahon
AIR Nakia Hill leading a writing workshop. Photo: City of Boston
Karen Young performing with Older and Bolder at National Night Out in Dorchester. Photo: City of Boston.
Steve Locke's Love Letter to a Library, at Central Branch of Boston Public Library. Photo: City of Boston
Nakia Hill leading a writing workshop with senior women, whose stories were featured in her intergenerational anthology I Still Did It: Stories of Resilience.Photo: City of Boston
The Boston Artists-in-Residence Program (Boston AIR) began in 2015, and was developed alongside the the City’s ten-year cultural strategic plan, Boston Creates. The AIR program positions social practice as an important part of government work and community engagement. Artists can help the city approach challenges in new ways, and lift up voices that are less often heard. The program aims to provide communities with more pathways to become active in shaping and understanding the policies that influence them.
Artists work with specific departments, neighborhoods, and/or within city programs such as after-school programs. As of 2019, 20 artists have participated. The AIR program uses a cohort model, in which multiple artists are working in the same year, and also convene for workshops, lectures, and to learn from each other. Cohorts may work with themes—for example the seven 2018 AIR projects were framed through a lens of Resilience and Racial Equity. For the first four months, the artists researched related City policies and practices such as climate change and aging. They then spent a year collaborating with community members and City officials on art projects that reframed public conversations around the issues. You can see some examples of the AIR cohort’s work in this video.
Created by the LA County Board of Supervisors in 2017, the Creative Strategist program embeds artists who represent diverse communities in year-long, paid positions within county departments. The goal of the program is to develop and implement artist-driven solutions to civic challenges, and in the process improve how participating county agencies do their work.
The artist works alongside staff, project partners, community stakeholders, and other artists in a collaborative process to strategize, promote, implement, document and evaluate artist-driven solutions. Participating county departments include Mental Health, Parks and Recreation, Public Health, Library, and Registrar-Recorder.
The Restorative Arts program is a partnership between Nashville’s Office of Arts and Culture (Metro Arts), the Juvenile Court, and the Oasis Center to create an arts-based intervention system for court-involved youth. Research shows that youth engagement with the arts results in more investment in education, greater community engagement, and better self esteem and social skills. The program provides arts workshops, performances, and other arts experiences for youth in juvenile detention, and for families and youth who are otherwise court-involved.
Metro Arts and the Oasis Center trains teaching artists and partner organization staff in restorative practices, understanding systemic racism, trauma-informed care, positive youth development, non-violent communication and storytelling. This equips artists to be effective front-line service providers for youth. Teaching artists introduce participants to art forms including spoken word, storytelling, theater, creative writing, beat making, music production, dance, visual art, yoga, and drumming.
Restorative Arts is intentional in its commitment to equity because social, structural, and systemic inequities are at the core of trauma experienced by many young people who end up in the juvenile justice system. Before creating the program, Metro Arts staff worked to understand the oppressive structures that exist in its own agency work, in the systems in which it interacts, and in its partnership with Juvenile Justice Center. Only by analyzing inequity, could it devise the program that could help break down barriers.
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