Creative Citymaking, which is a collaboration of the city of Minneapolis and
Intermedia Arts, recently received $325,000 from the national
ArtPlace consortium for a project that gets artists involved in city planning.
It’s one of four local art projects for which ArtPlace is granting $1.3 million, according to city information.
Separately, ArtPlace also backed
Irrigate Arts, which is an artistic place-making project that’s underway along the coming
Central Corridor light rail transit line.
As a part of Creative Citymaking, four artists will be “embedded” in the city’s planning division next year. Over the course of a yearlong timeframe, they’ll work with the city’s planners on certain transportation, economic, environmental and social issues, according to Theresa Sweetland, who leads Intermedia.
Although the project’s details are still being fleshed out, the resulting work will get exposure throughout the year at various community events, including a final exhibit and forum at Intermedia.
The project builds on Intermedia’s work on cross-sector leadership training and its co-working space for artists, organizations and community organizers, she says.
It dovetails with the city’s Plan for Arts and Culture, which the arts commission put together a handful of years ago. The idea is for the city and artists to come together to “explore creative ideas for addressing city problems.”
It helps that right now, “Many artists are initiating discussions with community members around key civic issues,” she says.
Thinkers like
Ann Markusen,
Charles Landry and public artist
Candy Chang have led the way with their philosophies “centering on the impact of people-oriented planning and the role of the arts and the creative process on developing vibrant urban places.”
One of the project’s goals is to bring more diverse communities into the fold.
Gulgun Kayim, who works on the city’s side of the project, says that both artists and city planners will get training on this process. It’s not about making public art, but bringing more social capital to the planning process, she says, adding, “It needs to be done in an intentional way.”
‘We think it brings creative assets to the table,” she says. “The process of planning and art-making is similar,” she says. “Hopefully we get that crossover intelligence, and it makes us smarter.
Source: Theresa Sweetland, Intermedia Arts, Gulgun Kayim, city of Minneapolis
Writer: Anna Pratt