The Civic Subversion of Artistic Collaboration with Government

The Civic Subversion of Artistic Collaboration With Government

The Civic Subversion of Artistic Collaboration with Government: A Participatory Evaluation of the Boston Artist-inResidence Program

RESEARCH TEAM

Melissa Q. Teng

Karin Goodfellow

Sharon Amuguni

Azia Carle

Marissa Cote

Thank you to our incredible supporters:

CREATIVE PARTNERS

Sabrina Dorsainvil

Rashin Fahandej

Debs Johnson

Lori Lobenstine

Kim Lucas

Nigel Jacob

Heang Rubin

Stephen Walter

CONVERSATION PARTNERS

Heloiza Barbosa

Pat Falco

Erin Genia

Lina Giraldo

Jaronzie Harris

Kathleen Hart

Alvaro Lima

Ashton Lites

Maggie Owens

Wandy Pascoal

Ellice Patterson

Kristina Ricco

Anthony Romero

Jacob Wessel

Lily Xie

Victor Yang

Karen Young

Our class, Organizing From Within, was generously hosted by the Design Gym, a new civic space created by the DESIGN STUDIO FOR SOCIAL INTERVENTION in Uphams Corner.

We are based in the CITY OF BOSTON’S MAYOR’S OFFICE OF ARTS & CULTURE , and are inspired by the vision and warmth of

Alene Burroughs

Morgan Clark

John Crowley

Kara Elliott-Ortega

Naida Faria

Samuel Fidler

Melodi Greene

Tom Johnston

Kenny M. Mascary

Kristina McGeehan

Melissa Meyer

Anita Morson-Matra

Sarah Rodrigo

Samantha Rose Hale

Julia Ryan

Jared Stanley

Billy Dean Thomas

Amber Torres

Thank you to Mayor Michelle Wu for supporting artists in government.

1916, National Park Service founded its artist residency program to influence conversations about preservation, environmental issues, and park resources.

Artists for, as, with government

1962, federal NASA Art Program launched, with commissioned artists like Norman Rockwell and Laurie Anderson .

1965, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) & National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) established.

1940

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

USA Federal Program

1935 - 1943

Responding to the Great Depression and widespread unemployment, Roosevelt’s New Deal made a major investment in the arts and artists, partly inspired by the Mexican Muralism movement in the 1920s. The WPA funded 10,000+ artists, offering work & exhibition spaces.

1960

1978, Mierle Laderman Ukeles in NYC Dept. of Sanitation is perhaps the 1st artist residency in a non-arts local gov. agency.

1980

Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA)

Participating states throughout USA

1974 - 1982

Responding to a recession and unemployment, Nixon passed CETA which gave city and county gov. funding for workers. San Francisco and many cities funded artists, reaching 10,000+ artists nationwide. The largest artist project, the Cultural Council Foundation in NYC, with 4 others, employed 500 artists, who worked 4 days in community assignments and 1 day in studios a week.

City Artist

St Paul, MN 2005 - Present

City Artist is a collaboration between Public Art Saint Paul and the City. Artists are appointed for multiple years to create art from the city’s life-sustaining systems and advise major city initiatives. Artists have dedicated workspace in the Dept. of Planning & Econ Dev, and can freely collaborate across depts.

2000

Antanas Mockus (Cultural Accupuncture)

Bogotá, Colombia

Terms: 1995 – 1997, 2001 – 2003

As Mayor, Mockus used public art and cultural interventions to exploit cracks in the system and transform city culture, proving that social pressures could be relieved and the impossible dislodged.

Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP)

New York, NY

1997 - Present

Created by arts, design, policy, advocacy collaborators, this non-profit makes policies accessible through graphics, documentaries, publications, and community education programs, to improve civic participation.

Boston Artist In Residence (AIR)

Boston, MA 2015 - Present

Artist and City Partners collaborate on a community-engaged cultural project that advances social justice and explores more vibrant, healing, and caring approaches to City processes, policies, and practices.

2021, Civic Artists In Residence (CAIR) Lab is created by former artists-in-residence, a consultancy supporting collaborations between artists, government, and communities.

2020

2015, New York Public Artist In Residence (PAIR)

2017, Indigenous Artist in Residency Program, City of Calgary Public Art Program

2017, Artist in Residence Program, City of Austin Cultural Arts Division

2017, Municipal/Artist Partnerships Guide is published by A Blade of Grass & Animating Democracy and shares best practices, artfulness, challenges of these partnerships and resulting projects.

2018, LA County Creative Strategist Program

2019, Cultural Strategists-in-Government, City of Oakland Cultural Affairs Division

Creative CityMaking

Minneapolis, MN 2013 - 2021 [Paused]

Community artists (from underrepresented communities) are paired with City staff to create & advocate for inclusivity and racial equity in City practices.

About the Boston AIR Program

The Boston Artist-InResidence Program (AIR) asks how the work of Boston city departments can be more responsive to the needs, life experiences, and imaginations of its many communities and residents.

As creators, community organizers, teachers, and cultural strategists, artists can be intermediaries between government staff and community members who are all striving for a more just and vibrant city.

AIR is a 15-month residency that embeds artists in a City department with a City partner to collaboratively research, strategize, and create in that Department. It offers a program on civic art practice, a cohort to learn with, funding for materials, and a stipend.

Artists bring their creative approaches and artistic expertise, while the City partners act as subject matter experts and bring their experience working in City systems. Together, they create a community-engaged project that tests more caring approaches to City processes, policies, and practices, while making space to explore entrenched problems and improve City services for people most underserved and underestimated.

This year, the Program included a participatory action research artist-in-residence for the first time, in an effort to evaluate the work of the program to date and potential opportunities for the program in the future.

How do you evaluate artistic collaborations in City government?

From the public health field, a tiered evaluation model helps us see the different levels of intervention. We propose an art-City intervention evaluation model that is rooted relationships and presence.

CO-PRODUCING AN INTERVENTION

What are you making? How is it received by its audiences & is it effective? Does it change perception, reframe questions, energize action or choices that advance social justice and civic life?

PRACTICING ARTISTIC COLLABORATION

Are you trying and learning? Are you showing up and following through for your partner? Are you climbing your own learning curve and making space to listen

THE ARTIST IS PRESENT

The presence of an artist-in-residence in City government, as a paid artist job, is already a new social arrangement that can inspire change. Are you present with the people, building trusting relationships, learning, asking perhaps

deeply to your artist / City partner and their working style? Are you open to trusting, periods of ambiguity, and pivoting? uncomfortable questions? Are you listening, open to teaching, setting boundaries?

8 Years of AIR Program Design

Pilot Artists-in-Residence Cohort 1

An initial cohort of 10 artists and 10 City depts. participated in workshops, offered shadowing, and proposed an artist-City joint project.

A final cohort of 3 artist-City teams were selected.

Selected artists had 6 months to implement their projects.

City partners

Boston Police Dept, Dept of Housing (then Neighborhood Dev), Dept of Parks and Recreation, Mayor’s Office of Recovery Services, Mayor’s Office of Women's Advancement

Learning

Matthew Hinçman (MassArt) and Ceci Mendez (MassArt’s Center for Art and Community Partnerships (CACP)) led social practice art and civic workshops and trainings, attended by all potential City depts. and artists.

Design and Leadership

Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture (Karin Goodfellow, Chris Guerra) and Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM) (Michael Evans).

Learned importance of cohort dynamics and community building, as well as challenges with press narratives (”art-washing”).

Documentation

Artist (Rashin Fahandej) was hired to create videos of each process.

Evaluation

Pam Korza (Animating Democracy)

Artists-in-Residence Cohort 2

A cohort of 10 artists were directly chosen for better community-building and less competition, based on feedback.

Artists had 9 months to work, later extended by 3 months.

City partners

Artists were paired with a City-run neighborhood center called Boston Centers for Youth & Families. Many artists centered arts programming at their BCYF.

2 artists connected with the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Advancement and Dept of Parks and Recreation.

Learning

Former artists-in-residence in City gov (Marty Pottenger, Tania Bruguera) led workshops with artists and BCYF partners.

Design and Leadership

Arts & Culture (Karin Goodfellow, Chris Guerra); a program assistant was hired (Sharon Amuguni).

Learned the distinction between public and participatory processes with community, as well as the importance of having City depts to help artists get into decision-making spaces and make structural changes.

Documentation

The City’s new Digitial Storyteller (Darren Cole) created videos for each artist.

Evaluation

Lori Lobenstine (DS4SI)

Artists-in-Residence

A cohort of 7 artists rather than 10 for Artists had 12 months

Leased a space in Corner neighborhood, feedback. One artist mural there. It was with neighborhood used by a few artists.

City partners

Artists were paired were supported in with City depts, including:

Age Strong Commission ly Comm.), Dept of Archives and Record Dept, MONUM, Arts

Learning

Civic artists (Juan MONUM, professors workshops. Artists guest speakers, open Mayor’s Office of Resilience Equity shared research.

Design and Leadership Arts & Culture (Karin Sharon Amuguni).

Learned importance skillset (community vating, mobilizing as well as laying clear leadership expectations.

Documentation Digital Storyteller supported Arts & Culture.

Evaluation

Danya Sherman and Montgomery (Sherman Strategies)

2020 2019 2021 2022 2023

Artists-in-Residence Cohort 3 artists were selected, staff capacity. months to work.

Artists-in-Residence Cohort 4

Artists-in-Residence Cohort 5

the Uphams neighborhood, based on artist painted a was programmed neighborhood events, but only artists.

paired with a BCYF, but in freely connecting including:

Commission (then Elderof Transportation , Record Management Arts & Culture

Obando, DS4SI, professors + fellows) led Artists led events and open to public. Resilience and research.

Leadership (Karin Goodfellow, Amuguni).

importance of organizing (community building & actimobilizing different groups), clear program expectations.

A cohort of 5 artists were selected, for greater individual support. Artists had 12 months to work, later extended 3, and higher payment.

City partners

Boston Public Health Commission (Youth Organizing Institute), Mayor's Office of Women's Advancement, Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture, Office of Emergency Management, Mayor's Office of Immigrant Advancement, Dept of Housing (Boston Housing Innovation Lab)

Depts applied to be City Partners.

Hosted 2-3 City Partner meetings, facilitated by Sherman Cultural Strategies, to process and talk integrating projects into workflow.

Learning

Planned curriculum and workshops for artists. But learned to hold space for flexibility, accessibility, honesty, and care during the pandemic and mass mobilizations.

Design and Leadership

Arts & Culture; AIR program manager role became part of Arts & Culture’s staff budget, not grant-funded or part of program operations budget.

Documentation

Hired a Communications Fellow (Veronica Wells), who expanded process documentation (podcast, videos, blogs) and engagement through virtual events.

City Partner

Boston Planning + Development Agency (Planning & Research Divisions), Environment Dept, Dept of Transportation, Dept of Parks and Recreation, Mayor's Office of Arts & Culture (AIR Program)

Depts apply to be City Partners, with more expectation-setting around communicating capacity and making time.

Learning

Dedicated monthly City Partner Sessions to build cohort, process, discuss integrating into workflow and leveraging policy windows.

Dedicated monthly Artist Sessions for artists and Partner Circles for all artist-City teams. Established program phases (e.g. Research Phase) to guide process, meetings with the Mayor’s team and Arts & Culture teams.

Design and Leadership

Arts & Culture; AIR program manager contracted part-time after leaving full-time with hope to help onboard. Processing and posting the job took almost 1 year.

Learned the necessity of a team and central role of care labor & compensating it fairly.

A cohort of 6 social practice / civic / community organizer artists were selected, and given 15 months to work. made videos and Culture.

Documentation

and Deidra (Sherman Cultural

Arts & Culture (Communications team for the Office)

Evaluation

Melissa Q. Teng (Participatory Action Research AIR)

— Some of City Hall’s cultural obstacles

Where could we intervene?

The Process of Collaborative Creative Intervention

Creating a project between an artist and City staff member is challenging in part because of sometimes very different life experiences and working styles. This partnership requires a commitment to presence and the emotional and uneven labor of teaching, translating, and protecting one another.

Maggie Owens: Would you say you’ve had to do a lot of labor to educate me on everything, from dance to culture to what it means to be an artist? From my perspective, it seems like I’ve required a lot of assistance to bring me … a little closer to understanding.

Ashton Lites: [And] vice versa. We have to break down every meeting and you got to decode the language because the people around [within my business and the people I work with], we don’t talk in codes. … You say what you got to do. ‘We need to do [this].How we need to do this thing?’

MO.: … I think that’s an interesting contrast—the labor to understand the arts, to better understand Black culture, to understand resident experience, like all the different layers of identity. That is a worthy endeavor. The labor to understand government and all of its functions is something that I feel conflicted on. There is some value … but how much should community members really have to know about the dirty details in order to be successful?

In that first year [2015], … we could shadow any department … [so] I spent a lot of time in the Police Department, in the Family Unit, in the Gang Unit. … I found that time to be the highlight of what could be: allow[ing] people from different departments to come around, sit with artists of multiple disciplines, and just have the time to process and discover and understand each other from different points of view. …

We were reading things together, we were discussing things together. There’s an actual dialogical effort to try and make it.

Rashin Fahandej

The place where I see a lot of opportunity is actually internal to the [department], because I’m here, I’m embedded in the organization, I’m not being paid by them. …

[I feel like] there’s a lot of room for us to be disruptive and try to shake up … how people are thinking about stuff and ask uncomfortable questions and spark uncomfortable moments.

Artist-in-Residence

adrienne maree brown describes moving at the speed of trust with communities, especially with groups who have experienced collective trauma. This pace and way of moving invite tension in the environment of City government, which so often prioritizes efficiency, predictability, protecting against liabilities, and deliverables.

How can I work around this desire on the part of the City for me to be really specific about these funds, when I need to protect the anonymity of this community? I need to be respectful of their rights and their safety and their well-being. Sometimes that can be at odds with the rigid structures of a City bureaucracy.

Anthony Romero

Working with community brings so many challenges, like swimming in the middle of the ocean without knowing where the currents are coming from.

Lina Giraldo

There have been times with [my AIR partner] where I’ve had to reevaluate. … At one point, I was getting hooked on the deliverables aspect of this project. … That was at the same time when I was trying to reevaluate the way I express power and control… And yet, I still was doing things like that.

Maggie Owens

I was very intentional about building leadership in the young people, so I would do everything at the beginning and then bit-by-bit, week-by-week, they would take on more and more of my responsibilities, until I was kind of in the background, more or less. …

I think part of it is when you really, really trust people, and you set them up for success, and you expect a lot out of them. It’s so rare for people in general to be treated that way, and they rise up to the occasion.

Victor Yang

Valuing the Materials and Labor of Social Practice Art in Government

In social practice art, the materials are trusting relationships and the studios are spaces that allow for collective imagination of what the world could be. AIR invites artists with social, civic, and cultural organizing practices. How do we advocate for this value of this form of art within government?

We made a three-minute video about the crosswalk issue and circulated it around the community and City Hall. We attracted the attention of Charlotte Fleetwood from Vision Zero… It was something that just opened up in the last three months of my AIR project, where a clear issue came through, a group had already formed that felt connected, there was an artistic practice that was already in development, and [we had] partnerships with other City agencies and community groups. …

It seems like such a small thing, one crosswalk. But through that process, we learned that the majority of the deaths involve elders over the age of 80. We did a survey where we walked the streets and we pushed all the crosswalk buttons, and we said, ‘This is enough time for you to get across the street.’ It was a pretty engaged process that really was into the neighborhood.

Karen Young

I’ve gotten to interview or be introduced to people within different [department] units, and there’s almost a way that language is used to kind of tiptoe around …

People come in super passionate about making these changes, then they run up against the wall of arrangements and dynamics, and they start dwindling down and getting burnt out. …

It doesn’t create the best space for really positive inspired action or personal community engagement … People are getting into the routine and they’re leaving, trying to replenish, without a lot of space to say: ‘Okay, let’s really tap in with what’s happening out here and figure out what the people need.’

Ashton Lites

AIR has been huge in external validation for an artist to be called an Artist-in-Residence and to have that kind of money and time.

Victor Yang

The thing that was most impactful was the fact that there’s a program where artists can engage with City government. … Artists need jobs. For me, that’s the most important aspect. Then everything else comes from that.

Erin Genia

I’m trying my best to honor the contract, but it’s been difficult. For instance, I couldn’t go to Friday[‘s meeting] because I was literally on a flight at the same time as a meeting, and I had to take this gig because payments that were promised [didn’t] come in.

I’m blessed to have had a little bit of range of savings and have really high credit card limits, but it’s very risky for me, being the sole income for a family to anticipate something and then not receive that.

Ashton Lites

Cultural Obstacles & Opportunities in City Hall

Boston City Hall culture is full of myths, meaningful connections, inspiring and tangible impact, and traumas. This theme explores people’s experiences navigating the culture and trying to affect change from within or without, as well as the structural biases of City Hall culture that exclude and erase entire groups and histories of people.

We’re saying that [creativity is] something that has to be invested in and cultivated in order to actually create change. … For a bureaucracy, that’s a pretty big proposition. …

It helps to emphasize that we’re all just people trying to do the thing, whether you’re a City government worker or an artist.

A lot of the ways that we make change internally and move things forward is not necessarily through topdown leadership… It’s through these side-to-side relationships with staff in other departments, whom we are values-aligned with, or who maybe buy into that proposition, who can help us make something happen.

Kara Elliott-Ortega

I think City Hall is very malleable—you just have to approach it in terms of culture. I think people get obsessed about the rules, but … there’s a difference between the actual hierarchy and the social hierarchy, essentially in terms of how decisions get made. There’s a social overlay on top of City Hall that is far more useful than the actual hierarchy.

Nigel Jacob

I think there are artists who have had much harder times because, you know, how ready is the City for trans women? How ready is the City for Indigenous artists to be centered? How ready is the City to face our history and the development that’s happened here?

Karen Young

The system is making everyone overwork, no matter what area you are. … There is no room for generosity or a culture of giving. … Part of self-care, even scientifically, is to be able to give. Caring and giving is actually a healing process for our body and our mind. … In a system that is so much about capital and ‘what is the gain?’, that aspect of our full humanity or community is taken away. … One of my main [project] parameters is … What does it mean to be generous in this space?

Rashin Fahandej

We did start with something way more subversive, or like an impulse to be way more subversive… because I was ready to provoke…

[But] when we started to do direct engagement with folks and ask them what would be productive to them, there was this big disconnect between doing something that is for the sake of drawing attention to a problem, versus treating it where the pain point is.

Kristina Ricco

I’ve been thinking about taking a sabbatical. … I’ve been doing this for a few years now, and it’s not fun anymore. … I don’t know that I’m super good at that either, like actually taking care of myself.

And I have kids, so I always feel like I have to hustle. But I don’t know. It’s good to have community, it’s good to have the people who can help you be a human being again and not just cog in the machine.

What makes you feel like a human being?

Going to the beach, getting together with friends. Sleep. Time to do nothing.

What are some things that make you feel like you’re part of the machine?

Endless meetings and emails, meetings that are full of conflict and stress. Having to fight for recognition of my own labor and the value of my labor.

Erin Genia

Despite all that wonderful growth, we’re still really underfunded as a city when it comes to arts and culture... We’re also in a really stifled philanthropic and private philanthropy ecosystem. It’s starting to shift, but historically philanthropic dollars have been controlled by very white traditional institutions and families that don’t recognize the investment and value of an exciting BIPOC organization or an organization that is doing social justice work.

It creates a lot of the constraints that I think is what people feel about Boston culturally, even if they don’t know any of that background.

There’s actually a direct connection between how much City or public funding there is for the arts and how much innovation there is, because that money is risk-taking money. That public money is something where you can actually just do something purely artistic, whatever it is that your vision is, without any kind of strings attached.

So when there isn’t a lot of funding in the ecosystem, people wind up having to make money off of ticket sales, which means that they wind up catering to whatever mainstream commercial taste is in the city.

Kara Elliott-Ortega

The other day, we went to the maintenance facility, and we had some really honest conversations about the dynamics between the outdoor workers and the office workers, and how—to put it bluntly—the majority of the hands-on roles … are Black people, whereas you move into the office space and it gets whiter … There’s kind of just an energy at the office, and there’s an energy and culture in the field. …

Sometimes the lines get blurred between what’s policy and what’s people’s personal preference, especially if they’re in a position like ... where you might need more staff, more input, or cultural context. Because … if you don’t understand the culture—the nature of something— how do you evaluate the risk? You’re just making these assumptions about what the risks are, and how people feel about it, and this is coming from you, not these policies or data.

Ashton Lites

It just seems like there needs to be more of that protest work against the City, from both within and without. … A lot of stuff was like: ‘Well, that’s federal, that’s from this policy, or that’s from the ‘80s.’ ...

It’s people’s lives—they’re getting displaced or they can’t afford to stay.

Pat Falco

Image Sources

HISTORY OF ARTISTS WITHIN GOVERNMENT

1. Much of the historical research on artists-in-residence in U.S. government somes from LA County’s Creative Strategist Program Evaluation (Dec 2021), researched and written by Robin Garcia and the LA County Dept. Arts & Culture team. More details: https:// lacountyarts.org/creative-strategistprogram-evaluation

2. “USA Work Program WPA,” by an unknown artist, 1936, Photolithograph, National Archives, Publications of the U.S. Government (Y3w 892 8w89.)

3. CETA demonstration against program cuts, Manhattan (1978) . (Source: Blaise Tobia via Hyperallergic.)

4. One of former Bogotá Mayor Antanas Mockus’ many inspired strategies for changing the mindset – and, eventually, the behavior – of the city’s inhabitants was the installation of traffic mimes on street corners. (Source: El Tiempo via Harvard Gazette.)

5. Sidewalk Poetry is a work that allows St Paul residents to claim the sidewalks as their book pages. 1,200+ poems have

been stamped from a collection including 73 pieces by residents. (Source: Public Art St Paul.)

6. A man sits and waits for his barber as part of the “Haircuts for Change” Creative CityMaking project, which focuses on healing and beauty practices in the South Minneapolis Black community in pop up locations along Lake St. and Chicago Ave. (Source: Pierre Ware via The Kresge Foundation.)

7. Karen Young was an AIR from 2018-2019 and created “Older and Bolder” with elders at the BCYF Grove Hall Senior Center in Dorchester, MA and the Age-Strong Commission. It used Japanese taiko drumming, to build civic agency and bring awareness to a dangerous crosswalk.

8 YEARS OF AIR PROGRAM DESIGN

1. Shaw-Pong Liu was an AIR from 2014-2015 and worked with the Boston Police Dept and the community-based organizations Teen Empowerment and the Urbano Project on “Time to Listen.” They explored collaborative music-

& References

making to create a different time and shared space around gun violence, race, and enforcement practices.

2. Lina Maria Giraldo was an AIR from 2016-2017 and created “Identity Technology Storytelling” through a series of workshop at the Hyde Park BCYF Center, teaching young people and elders how to build their own video cameras. Afterwards they interviewed one another with the cameras they built.

3. Daniel Johnson was an AIR from 2018-2019 and worked with the Curtis Hall Community Center in Jamaica Plain; East Boston Senior Center; Harbor Health in Mattapan; Charlestown Golden Age Center; the Archives and Record Management Dept and Age-Strong Commission. Through workshops across Boston, he created “We Are Boston,” oral histories of elders that traveled via a 1930s-era phone booth.

4. Maria Molteni was an AIR in 20162017, and worked with Perkins Center for Youth & Teens and the Department of Parks and Recreation. ”Hard in the Paint” is a community designed and

produced basketball court mural at Harambee Park, after 11 months of working with young people from the neighborhood.

5. Rashin Fahandej was an AIR in 2016-2017 and created “IN-SIGHT Boston” with the neighbors around the Blackstone Community Center at the South End. She launched three new media programs at Blackstone Community Center and collaborations with universities. The culmination was shared in a participatory media installation at Villa Victoria Center for the Arts.

6. Ellice Patterson was an AIR in 2022-2023 and worked with the Dept. of Transportation. Seeking to increase intersectional disability rights work through more accessible transit projects, Ellice published the “Manifesto Against Defensive Design,” held community conversations, protest crawls, and dance films.

The Civic Subversion of Artistic