This site introduces neighborhoods to art and artists as a means for addressing issues, solving problems problems and creating connections within their communities.
On this page we will add steps, methods and resources for finding artists and beginning a community based project.
We believe that artists think about many issues differently than non artists. This does not mean that they are better, simply that they often have a non standard way of approaching all kinds of things, not only art making. To quote the Austrian based interventionist group, Wochenklausur,
"Artists' competence in finding creative solutions, traditionally utilized in shaping materials, can just as well be applied in all areas of society: in ecology, education and city planning. There are problems everywhere that cannot be solved using conventional approaches and are thus suitable subjects for artistic projects. Theoretically, there is no difference between artists who do their best to paint pictures and those who do their best to solve social problems with clearly fixed boundaries. The individually selected task, like the painter's self-defined objective, must only be precisely articulated. Interventionist art can only be effective when the problem to be solved is clearly stated."
Who should can post a request/propose a project?
On this site we want to limit who can post a request for a project to an neighborhood/community organization rather than individuals. This allows the artist to leverage the resources of the organization thereby extending their capabilities.
While we primarily intend this site to work for students at the University who identify as artists (you don't have to have a degree or even art classes, just ability) we are open to artists outside the University community proposing projects. Our primary goal is to see art integrated more fully into communities and utilized as a tool for solving problems.
1. What is the issue?
Identify the issue your neighborhood wants to address. This could range from a desire to get community members to meet each other to presenting a land use plan to informing residents about the history of their neighborhoods to trying to reduce crime in your neighborhood. It could be a simple one time event or activity or a project requiring a longer term for development and implementation. This is the important part, you don't need to know how the issue might be addressed by an artist but specifically what you want to address and achieve.
2. What do you want to achieve with the result?
If your issue is 'reduce crime in our neighborhood' the obvious answer would be 'less crime'. However there are a host of results that would be essential to that issue being solved, such as neighbors getting to know each other, more personal contact and trust with police, engagement in the Neighborhood Group, &c. All of these are the things that are essential to achieving the result of the artistic project.
3. Documentation.
It is very important to document the project that takes place, with photos, video and written feedback. Media attention can do an immense amount towards gaining resources to address your issue, compelling images can go a long way towards getting people excited about your project. Examples of documentation can be found on this site, a slide show of images is sufficient, the more you documentation you collect the better.