Calgary Journal Online Print Issue

Community involvement in Calgary’s Public Art Program

Charles Burgess, chairman of Calgary’s Public Art Board, was at the 2011 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention last month.

Charles Burgess, Public Art Board chairman, said that he wants public art to engage everyone in the city. Whether you like an art installation or not he hopes it will make you think. “You’ll have a comment, you’ll have a thought, you’ll have an opinion and that’s what’s really cool,” he said.

Photo: Sean Sullivan/Calgary Journal

Burgess said it was recognized because of how many people came out to be a part of it.

“They found it to be a really unique way to engage the community,” he said, “and they loved that.”

Rachael Seupersad, superintendent of Calgary’s Public Art Program, said that engaging the community and making them feel a sense of ownership makes a public art project truly successful.

In her opinion, the most successful project to date is the McKnight-Westwinds LRT station.

“We involved the community, we engaged them, they participated, they’re now reflected in the project itself,” Seupersad said.

The Public Art Program is now looking towards other projects that will involve the community.

When City of Calgary Parks was planning a new park in the Beltline, on 12th Avenue and Ninth Street S.W. they asked for the community’s input. Seupersad said the community wanted public art.

“It’s the first project where we actually have the opportunity to do community cultural development alongside the public artwork,” Seupersad said. She wants the community to participate in the process and actually be a part of the experience of creating the work itself.

However, opportunities like the Beltline project have not been very common for the Public Art Program.

Seupersad said they are not always able to put money towards community programming because it is not part of the infrastructure. Because most of the Beltline project is being funded through City of Calgary Parks, the Public Art Program can “dig in and do that work with the community.”

Money Matters

Burgess said that most of the program’s funding comes out of the Municipal Sustainability Initiative that funds municipal infrastructure projects. One per cent of the cost of any municipal infrastructure project over $1 million goes to commissioning public art.

“The problem with that is that the one per cent of that money which would go into the Public Art Program needs to be embedded in the infrastructure that’s being funded,” Burgess said.

Burgess said that they had a meeting earlier this year with various stakeholders and asked them where they would like to see public art going in the next three to five years and its role in Calgary’s growth and development.

“As opposed to huge sculptures, people are interested in seeing more public art integrated in the city — in things like bike racks, picnic benches, park benches and garbage cans,” Burgess said.

“As opposed to huge sculptures, people are interested in seeing more public art integrated in the city — in things like bike racks, picnic benches, park benches and garbage cans.”

– Charles Burgess;
Public Art Board chairman

He said that people were also interested in “gateways features,” which are pieces of art that mark things like someone’s arrival in Calgary or their entrance into the downtown core.

“One of the things we did this year that we hadn’t had before was we initiated a public art reserve fund,” Burgess said.

Now the Public Art Program can start “trickling” money into the reserve fund to be used on other art projects like integrated art or on temporary art installations.

Approving Art Projects

Neither the Public Art Board nor the supervisors of the Public Art Program decide what art gets produced for infrastructure projects around the city. Instead, there is a jury made up of three arts professionals, one community member and one commissioning organization member that select artists for these commissions.

“I think that’s one thing that sets the Calgary program apart from many other municipalities in the creation of an autonomous jury,” said Tom Tittemore, the past chair of the Public Art Board.

In addition, Tittemore said the board has discouraged representatives of the client or the architect from sitting on the jury.

The Public Art Program selects the jury and provides their credentials to the Public Art Board.

“They’re making sure that we’ve involved the public,” Seupersad said. “That we’ve involved people that actually will have the expertise and the knowledge to make decisions on behalf of Calgarians.”

The jury sees artists up to three times during the course of developing a piece of public art.

“The first round, the jury selects an artist on qualifications,” Seupersad said.

The jury can either select an artist outright or create a short list of three or four artists. Those artists are then asked to develop a concept that they present to the jury. The artist selected for the job then develops a detailed design that will be brought back to the jury before the project begins.

Seupersad said that public art is unique to the space it was created for and could not exist as intended outside of it.

“The artist has to visit the space,” Seupersad said. “They have to learn about the community, they have to learn about the history of that space, they have to live with those people for a little while.”

From that they develop a work of art meant for that space.