Artists and municipalities provide each other with skills and resources that exceed, contrast with, or complement what each can do on their own. They can share the same goals even if they have different perspectives and access points. M/A partnerships can also be strategies for creatively addressing an important community issue, or adding value to a cross-sector funding initiative.
“Jennie invited...staffers to play a little, laugh a little. People let down their guard and brought a new level of energy and imagination. They felt allowed to be more whole.”
Stephanie Gilbert, Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry
“[Stephanie] encouraged people...to see that experimenting with the arts brings them good, meaty content and new ideas that add to their area of expertise.”
Jennie Hahn, Artist
Municipalities seek artist partners because they approach issues in open and creative ways. Interest in working with artists often comes from specific agencies or departments within a municipality. They may seek help from artists to tackle:
External goals, to address issues in the public realm that the agency is tasked to address. These might include material projects like improving infrastructure or economic development; community concerns like increasing public safety; or specific challenges, like facilitating cross-cultural relationships.
“We have a construction management mindset. How do we allow for creativity?”
Nicole Crutchfield, City Planner, Fargo
Internal goals, to engage the agency’s internal needs directly and may focus on everyday issues like staff development, agency processes and systems, and organizational culture, and outreach strategies.
Municipalities often seek artists to:
Increase and Enhance Civic Participation
People from historically marginalized communities often have barriers to participation. Because of this, their voices are less often heard, and their needs are less often met. Integrating artists’ practices into civic participation can make people feel more welcome, make meetings more enjoyable, lead to a more level playing field, create safe spaces for those who have historically been left out or disenfranchised, and help sustain engagement for long planning processes.
Blacksburg, VA
Building Home
New River Valley Regional Commission & Department of Theater and Cinema, Virginia Tech with local artists
Actor Anna Roberts-Gevalt engages with audience members during a performance based on the town meetings.
Photo: Bryanna Demerly
Members of a local NAACP chapter play a board game on the planning process, during a Building Home workshop.
Photo: Kevin Byrd, NRV Regional Commission
In 2010, the New River Valley Regional Commission, an independent planning agency in southwestern Virginia funded by local governments in combination with state and federal moneys, partnered with university theater professor Robert Leonard and some of his students from the Department of Theatre and Cinema at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. The goal was to use the arts to increase and diversify public participation in developing a comprehensive regional plan. The plan was intended to address all essential elements of the community--housing, jobs, infrastructure, transportation, etc. Working with community artists, actors, and musicians as well, Leonard and his students used storytelling and theater-making techniques to facilitate and stimulate public conversation about the future of their communities in the New River Valley. These included Story Circle techniques, group sings, and Augusto Boal’s Image and Forum Theater.
Leonard writes this about the project:
“In the four weeks since the [first] storytelling session, those most resistant experienced a profound turn around, realizing they had made unvarnished statements, expressed passionately held values, and recognized important realities that they thought they would never reveal in public. They praised the experience because they could see the complexities of the situation through hearing different perspectives and needs. They recognized that sharing and hearing these perspectives contributed to an essential public conversation. [This experience was in sync with] a comment [I later heard] by [theater maker] Brent Blair, that art-making in public provides "a container for complexity" that is rare and vital for healthy civic discourse.”
The artists’ innovative use of performance and storytelling facilitated community engagement with participatory democracy and civic practice. By telling and hearing stories of local places they valued, residents felt able to participate and also got to know one another better. The agency had the means to bring some of the ideas from these conversations into planning decisions to everyone’s benefit.
Artists are skilled at creatively reframing issues in ways that resonate with specific communities, capture public attention, express urgency or motivate people to action. Artists can bring authenticity and credibility to this work especially when they are part of the community that’s being reached out to.
Think Outside the Box
An artist can be both a collaborator and a “disruptor” who can take risks and shake up typical approaches and systems, while still working within the context and spirit of the municipality.
“Sometimes a manager with artistic knowledge who connects diverse artists to neighborhood-specific projects is a better choice than one artist who drops into a neighborhood they aren’t a part of.”
Joe Smoke, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs
Promote Under-funded Municipal Resources
Artists can work with agencies and residents to raise awareness of underfunded municipal programs, to amplify their value and mobilize for budget increases.
Austin, TX
My Park, My Pool, My City
Forklift Danceworks & Parks & Recreation Department’s Aquatics Division
Austin-based Forklift Danceworks activates communities through a collaborative creative process. Forklift’s performances are typically large-scale, site-specific civic spectacles that create deeper understandings of the jobs essential to urban life, more informed civic dialogue, and greater connection between citizens and across communities. My Park, My Pool, My City is a three-year artistic residency in partnership with the Austin’s Parks and Recreation Aquatics Division which began in 2017, activating and amplifying civic engagement around the future of Austin’s city pools. It was conceived of after a successful collaboration between Forklift and Austin’s Urban Forestry Program.
From 2015-17, Forklift Co-Directors Alison Orr and Krissie Marty participated in conversations and planning meetings with the Director and staff of the Parks & Recreation Department and neighborhood leaders. They came to more fully understand the importance of pools as public gathering spaces and the challenges Austin’s pools face. Austin’s 45 aquatics facilities are on average 50 years old, and many need more repairs than the city can afford. Conditions are particularly acute in the historically marginalized neighborhoods of East Austin.
As these neighborhoods expand and their demographics shift, My Park, My Pool, My City is, in part, an opportunity to celebrate and maintain the vibrant histories of these communities, and to bring Austinites together at the pool. For each of the three years, My Park, My Pool, My City centered on a different East Austin pool, creating summer performances in collaboration with aquatics maintenance staff, lifeguards, and neighborhood residents. Forklift also hosted and participated in community meetings and pool parties leading up to and following each show. The Aquatics Division provided access to city facilities, paid performing employees for their time, and informed the issues the project addresses. Through a process of deep listening and collaborative creation, Forklift artists invited staff and pool users to share their stories, and invited audiences to bear witness to the people whose labor supports life in Austin.
Deepen Understanding of the Community and Identify Ways Forward
Example
The Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture asked designer Rosten Woo to create a “visioning tool” that could be used to help residents of Willowbrook, Los Angeles, participate in a major re-planning effort for the community. Woo spent a year on the ground in Willowbrook, learning about it from the people who live there. He produced a community festival and a photo book about local creativity that celebrated Willowbrook’s vision of itself, and helped both residents and outsiders appreciate the community in a new way. The County government implemented a similar form of community-centric “asset mapping” in subsequent planning processes.
“Rosten Woo challenged our original concept of community visioning, [going beyond] lip service to community, like making plans not enacted...Instead, he implemented a community-driven, community asset mapping effort that put the creative collections, hobbies and accomplishments of individual community members at the forefront.”
Leticia Rhi Buckley & Pauline Kanako Kamiyama, Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture
Improve Workplace Culture
“Most of the issues that municipal governments deal with internally won’t be solved by an employee barbecue.”
Marty Pottenger, Artist
Artists can help address challenges for municipalities around workplace culture, morale, team building, and race relations. Participatory arts practices can break down barriers, equalize power dynamics, stimulate natural creativity, and add an element of fun to working through challenging workplace issues.
Example
Artist Marty Pottenger assembled local artists to work with Portland, ME police officers in poetry and photography workshops. Officers initially resisted the activities, but grew to appreciate the creative way to express their work challenges. When some of their output was shared with the community in the form of a photo calendar, public readings and other events, community perception began to change. The project facilitated appreciation of each other beyond the uniform and extended into the community.
Many artists are committed to applying their creative energies to improve social issues and community health. Artists who collaborate with municipal agencies have the opportunity to be immersed in community planning and action. Agency staff have technical expertise themselves, access to more from other partners, and an understanding of existing resources – to which they don’t always have access themselves. Municipalities have access to technical expertise and other resources, and connections to community leaders and constituents. These partnerships are invaluable for artists to:
Magnify impact
Artists working with municipalities can expand their reach far beyond what they could do on their own or through working with individual schools, community centers, prisons, etc. Their work can have visible impact on a larger public as well as critical community issues.
Example
Artists Manke Ndosi and Reggie Prim worked with Minneapolis’ Regulatory Services Department to change agency culture and build awareness about housing inspectors’ unconscious biases that affected their interactions with and outcomes for low income tenants.
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.
Contribute to an issue or community with which they identify
Artists who see themselves as part of a community, whether because of geography, core identity, or tradition, may want to contribute directly to the community’s health and wellbeing.
Learn how systems work from the inside
Artists who are organizers value ways to work with and through systems to affect policies. Such partnerships can provide insights into how systems work in order to build impactful creative strategies.
“We serve on Richmond’s Juvenile Justice Collaborative, with organizations that play a role with young people in the system. We’ve learned that the Juvenile Justice system…[isn’t] funded to do preventative work, even if they personally agree that’s important. That’s a structural issue-- these are good people. Getting to know where the city is operating from allows us to get somewhere.”
Mark Strandquist, Artist/Community Organizer, Performing Statistics
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.
Artists’ many skills are directly applicable to municipal issues. An M/A partnership can be a good way to support their practice, build their civic reputation, and earn a living. One partnership opportunity can lead to others.
“I'm trained to support racial justice in government and as a visual artist and performer. I wanted to integrate creativity more into my government work. Now I'm bridging between the Office of Arts & Culture and Office for Civil Rights in a new role that really brings together my passions.”
Diana Falchuk, Creative Strategies Initiative Manager, City of Seattle Race & Social Justice Initiative, Office of Arts & Culture and Office for Civil Rights
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