Liesel Fenner
The National Endowment for the Arts Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD25) program recently awarded 21 grants totaling $3 million to support “creative placemaking projects that increase the livability of communities and help transform sites into lively, beautiful, and sustainable places with the arts at their core.”
Substantial grant amounts of $25,000–$250,000 will address the budgets and scales at which communities are creating successful places where we live, work, and play. Many public art projects will be funded through the MICD25 grants including the City of Phoenix’s Gimme Shelter, a project within a larger work, Connected Oasis. Phoenix has an outstanding portfolio of public art projects many of which specifically address environmental issues. The recent 2010 Public Art Network Year in Review awards recognized Habitat by Christy Ten Eyck and Judeen Terrey, a garden habitat nourished by water from the Convention Center’s air conditioning systems.
Air conditioning—the panacea for the record-breaking heat much of the country has experienced this summer, however AC cannot always cool us as we navigate our daily routines. I have mapped out the shadiest routes to get to and from work. This summer’s weather has proven that cities must reduce the heat island effect of a rapidly changing climate. Thank you to the NEA for including sustainability as a goal in the MICD25 grant program! There is no better solution than public art and design to build sustainable creative places such as Gimme Shelter, which will provide shaded sidewalks, streets plazas, and open spaces.
Public art is just one of many components that comprise creative placemaking.
Public art is not merely an object, but includes a diverse array of creative form in public spaces indoors or outdoors, temporary or permanent. Works include a myriad of materials and makers. Phoenix serves as a model focusing on multiple urban components, creating connections within the city that include public art. Multiple-component solutions combined with art and design excellence can create sustainable environments that through their success become examples of creative placemaking.
Creative Placemaking happens through teams, including the development of public art.
Multiple component solutions are developed by teams including public art works. Phoenix will designate the artist lead the process, one of many working in collaboration creating work for the public realm. The grant will support the redesign of Pierce Street in front of a market (another excellent component of creative placemaking) which is becoming a new gathering place and commercial area. This creative placemaking functionally works due to the economic equation of public-private partnerships. Let us emphasize the many jobs that public art projects support. From the administrators, artists, designers, planners, engineers, to the fabricators, material suppliers and installers – there is a long list of participants that bring public art to realization. The economic benefits of the NEA MICD25 grants will go deep, and the delight (not the devil) will be in the details.
Public art can (and dare I say should) address the environment, creating sustainable and creative places for all.
Public art is inherent to the urban fabric. Gimme Shelter reconfigures the street, reducing car lanes and widening sidewalks, integrating built and living shade components to enhance pedestrian comfort. So, “what is the art?” you might ask. Let the design process commence – the ideas flow – the possibilities are endless. The MICD25 grants will enable cities to get to work developing creative placemaking solutions that will sustain the communities where we live, work and play, long into the future.
Arts Watch is a weekly cultural policy publication of Americans for the Arts that covers news in a variety of categories related to cultural policy including Culture and Communities, Arts Education and the Creative Workforce, Public Investment in Culture and Creativity, and Philanthropy and the Private Sector. The newsletter also features an Arts Watch Spotlight item and Arts Canvas – News from the Field, a short piece written by a different Americans for the Arts staffer each week.
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