The Importance of Community-Engaged Public Art

1996: Emily van Lidth de Jeude working with children to cover a formerly-neo-nazi-decorated wall in the Netherlands with a kid-designed mural. The child in this photo is now a professional artist living in Gibsons, BC, and still makes meaningful public art to improve her community.

Open letter to Bowen Island Municipal Council, Mayor and CAO:

Dear Mayor, council members, and CAO, 

I write in response to the voiced concern about our "art fund". This relatively small fund is an essential aspect of our community's future prosperity.

First of all, to get the obvious out of the way, the commonly-held belief that artists should volunteer their time (and often materials) to produce public art is absurd, for the same reason we'd never expect contractors to build our public buildings without pay, and donate supplies. Artists have bodies and families that need to be fed and housed just like the other contractors who build our infrastructure.

Secondly, and most importantly, art needs to be recognized as essential to our community prosperity. The aesthetics of any community space greatly affect the way it is used. Is it practical? Is it comfortable? Is it conducive to peaceful community gathering, and a feeling of safety for users? Does it represent the community we want to build, both visually and aurally? If we want the whole community to feel not only welcome in the space, but also represented by the space, then great thought needs to be put into the way the space speaks to visitors, and that thought is the professional practice of public artists... who deserve to be paid for their work.

Consider Mt Pleasant, in Vancouver. When my mother ran the Playbus there, in the 70's, it was a destitute neighbourhood full of hungry wandering children, who she would welcome onto her big bus, that was outfitted inside like a preschool, and provide some song, story, crafts, snacks, and safety to. She was just one preschool teacher, funded by the Jewish Women's Society, but a glimmer of creative hope in what was a the time, a bleak, impoverished community. If you go to Mt Pleasant, today, you'll find a much happier neighbourhood that is not only bustling with people, but vibrant, partly due to the many gorgeous murals that cover its once-sad-looking buildings. Art changes a community. It gives it hope.

Lastly, I want to speak about engagement. When a diversity of community members is engaged in creating the spaces we share, we feel ownership. We feel a desire to keep it up; to appreciate and celebrate it--and us. If you walk down to the ferry you can pass the work of a whole diversity of local artists--on the same wall that previously was adorned with the work of our children, who, as they grew up, walked by their childhood art pieces, and felt a sense of belonging in this community. BICS also once had a mural program, where students painted the walls of the under-cover area, and various artists have gone into BICS over the last 45 years to engage with the students in creating part of their space to be theirs. The crosswalk-art competition is another great example of community-engaged public art. Our island already has a history of doing this work.

This is a kind of work I am personally familiar with, as I've led such programs in the Netherlands and Burnaby. When you give people the agency to design and beautify the spaces they share with the rest of their community, you give them connection to their home, and a reason to maintain and celebrate it. Every community needs the engagement of its citizens of all ages and backgrounds, if it is to prosper. We all need to look around as we go through our daily activities and feel proud to call this our home. Public art is how we make that happen.

Nexwlélexwem/Bowen Island is a community of artists, having at one point in recent history had the second-highest number of artists per capita in Canada. We have every opportunity to not only celebrate that fact, but to use our tremendous creative resource to make our community a beautiful place where we all can feel safe, seen, and supported. The small annual contribution to the public art fund (and the eventual use of the fund to create joyful, community-led public art that unites our population) is a crucial part of our island's prosperity-building. 

Sure, there will be people who do not understand this. So we can educate! Spread the word about the benefits to be had from public art, and get these people involved in making it. I implore all of you responsible for the decisions that govern our community to use this money wisely, and hold us together in prosperity.

Sincerely,
Emily van Lidth de Jeude