Plus A SUCCESSION PLAN FOR WATERSHED+
A CITY OF CALGARY PUBLIC ART PROJECT
Plus
A SUCCESSION PLAN FOR WATERSHED+
Preface We have always struggled with trying to define WATERSHED+ — it’s a plan, a program, an artwork. It is processed-based work, with temporary and permanent work. It is performance and collaborative. It is artist-lead, municipal, internally and externally focused; it is engaging, informing, educational. It is engineering. It is art. It is serious, critical, joyous, challenging, and celebratory. As Lead Artists we were part of The City of Calgary with a studio in the Water Centre, a City email address, and a security pass, but were not employees.
Preface
It’s all of these things, it’s blurry. For some, the inability to compartmentalise it was uncomfortable, disconcerting. For the people who made it together (engineers, strategists, public art administrators, planners, educators, communicators, and artists) it was anything but — it was logical. Engineers, by and large, are not drawn to embellishment or frivolity; they like order, systems, certainties, solutions and efficiency. There is of course a pleasure and beauty in this; to take the world and, with ingenuity and science, shape it to allow us to live is one of humankind’s greatest achievements. Artists will tell you this is not the whole story of living, we like the edges, the accidents, the gaps and disruptions; we relish the “what ifs”, the risks, the unknown. Strange bedfellows it might seem. We have been asked many times why/how does it work? We think this difference is why it works. When two strangers come together to talk about one common subject, with intrigue, trust, respect, and appetite to know more about the other, it makes for the most interesting conversation. Our differences made us interested in each other, in the way we think, work, in our skills and contributions. By working together, we have achieved something that neither of us
could have completed on our own. With the right approach we see both our hands in the outcome, we both have agency and authorship, and we can see it is better for it. (It allows place for egos but not arrogance or ignorance.) This working model doesn’t fit current conventions, working in silos is easier to understand, organise, and plan. However, real life and the environment we live in doesn’t fit simply into individual silos.
WATERSHED+ was far from an attempt at extensive scope creep and anarchy. It was an optimistic gesture, embodying a different mode of operation, a different reality, complimentary, responsive, richer, beyond silos. It works not because of one person. It works not because of one artist team, one extraordinary project manager, visionary leaders, or the hard work, passion and talent of countless City staff, and artists. (Whom we have been extraordinarily fortunate to work with each day.) It works because of the whole, and it works because there is shared appetite; it works because there is a need we all feel. Beyond the works produced, the legacy is the effect it has had on all of those who have been involved (citizens, staff, artists) and the way we each think and feel, the connection we feel to one another’s work, our watershed, our environment, our city. WATERSHED+ is a philosophy that set out a way of working that was collaborative and responsive and then over five years shaped itself through collective experience. Its ultimate conclusion (or in City speak, ‘what success looks like’) will be the day this philosophy is so normal it doesn’t need a name.
1. One and Three Chairs, http://www.moma.org/collection/works/81435
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A chair, as American artist Joseph Kosuth pointed out, can be known in many different ways.1
A word on succession planning
Table of Contents
This is the story of the first phase of WATERSHED+. It catalogues projects, who was involved and the outcomes. It contains people’s opinions and experiences from many points of view: engineers, artists, managers, and critics — many of whom helped shape the program it has become. By its nature it is far from exhaustive or conclusive, rather it attempts to survey the first five year of the program - its pilot period - to inform the program’s future. WATERSHED+ is about embracing a collaborative and responsive approach to the prominent issues, the individuals involved, the specifics of a time and place. With this comes a degree of unknown. Stipulating specific projects, directing the next Lead Artists and the Core Group would be counter to what we have learnt makes the program successful. This makes ‘Succession planning’ a little challenging, the following pages are our attempt. A first chapter, if you like, of what worked and what didn’t between 2011 and 2016, intended for others to build upon.
Sans façon, 2017
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Preface INTRODUCTION Hesse McGraw essay BACKGROUND The Foundation This Place Janet Zweig essay PILOT PERIOD INITIATIVES Fire Hydrant Drinking Fountains Film screenings Forest Lawn Lift Station East Bowmont Park Residencies WATERSHED+ Labs Exhibition Competition (Lost Spaces) Suzan Szenasy Essay Library (Daily pictures) Mentees Talks Water Centre Studio Interviews Tatiana Mellema essay INGREDIENTS Our Lead Artists The Notion of Failure OUTCOMES/RECOMMENDATIONS The Pilot Period in numbers Shauna Thompson essay Outcomes, Observations & Recommendations Diana Sherlock essay Commissioned Writers biographies Acknowledgements Credits
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Introduction
Introduction
Frank Frigo Leader of River Engineering, City of Calgary (CoC) Interviewed by amery Calvelli, 2016
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“Art has a gigantic role to play in helping create the dialogue. It is such a unique thing, we’ve got a city of a million people downstream of what is primarily pristine watershed. How to value that, how to balance that against the municipal function and the human needs that we do have. How to work with that.”
Introduction
â–¼ View from Ralph Klein Park, location of the WATERSHED+ residency artist studio
The vision behind this program is to build a lasting and meaningful relationship between Calgarians and their watershed by developing an emotional connection. Its guiding motive is to embed, not so much the artist, as their creative process within the core activities of a City department – Utilities & Environmental Protection (UEP) – responsible for the well-being and care of Calgary’s water resource. The program created space for longterm, cross-disciplinary relationships and for collaborations to grow, fostering a curiosity about our city while sharing interests and multiple perspectives to explore how people connect to their environment. The complexity and enormity of the business of water management, spanning from the immediacy of a moment to planning fifty years ahead, is not always fully grasped in the context of our physical and psychological connection to the landscape, to nature and to this place. The watershed system, natural and constructed, can be a mysterious force, yet one so intertwined with our everyday lives. Our aim is to reveal the breadth of the program, its effect, and its challenges; to integrate learnings to carry the vision, principles and intent forward, and inspire what comes next.
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WATERSHED+ is about a system, a city, and an emotional connection between citizens and their place in the environment. As one of The City of Calgary projects in their Public Art Program, WATERSHED+ offers complementary ideas about the role of the artist and how artwork can be created, responsive, and embedded.
Introduction
“The aim is to allow the artist team to be involved from the very beginning in a leading role. They get to share their unique knowhow, alongside the unique expertise of planners, architects, engineers, and others tasked with delivering the specific project at hand. The key for a successful commission is the cultural acceptance of the artists within the department and the value that everyone brings to the table, not just the artists themselves.” Dr. Cameron Cartiere About WATERSHED+ in "Beyond Institutional Critique: Artists as Civic Employees", Reclaiming Art / Reshaping Democracy – The New Patrons & Participatory Art, Estelle Zhong Mengual, Xavier Douroux (eds.), Les presses du réel, 2017
The six essays are disseminated throughout this manual.
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We invited six prominent arts voices – a combination of artists, curators, writers and editors - to explore a topic and to complement the narrative of the program, projects, and process from their experiences. These art subject matter experts bring knowledge about contemporary art, urban and cultural development, and insights into creative processes. This writing places the program within the context of contemporary practice to bring a complementary outside perspective, to see the complexities and nuances of this approach in new light, and to deepen the understanding of its effects and outcomes. These responses provide insight into how artistic and municipal processes work together; they expand on the story that connects us to the understanding of a city and how we relate to one another. Many people have built this program over several years, and these contributions acknowledge the impact of this work on a larger field.
Hesse McGraw WATERSHED+
Essay — Hesse McGraw
Hesse McGraw is a curator and writer and is Vice President for Exhibitions and Programs at San Francisco Art Institute.
Yet we know happiness comes not through things, but through experience. And civic pride is less a product of monuments, than a building up of emotions about place —what it feels like to experience a city. Is the city alive, urgent, inexpressibly itself? Is it a place where I fell in love, or one could fall in love? For a place, earning there-ness is less about having things to see, than having experiences to give, and keep giving. We come to love a place not for its embellishments, but for the inescapable cues that signal where we are in the world—the taste of its water, the smell of Tuesday morning’s air, barbecue sauce that can be had nowhere else, a patterned manhole cover, torqued dialect, or the specific rhythm and speed of bodies moving down a street. These things aren’t quantifiable or even fully knowable, even if one senses them almost immediately. We are living through an era however, where it’s not a place without a pin. It is no longer that the map is larger than the territory; now the map is the territory, it’s in our pocket at all times, and it is rated up to five stars. If the real lure of the city is unmappable, how does one find its immaterial magic? And if an artwork isn’t a thing, how does one experience it? And if an artwork amplifies our civic bond and love for a place, how does one Instagram that? These conditions and questions guided my recent visit to Calgary and explorations throughout the region. I have followed WATERSHED+ for five years, and I’ll admit, throughout that time, I could not fully grasp what it was or exactly what the program had realized. I wondered—what was the role of artists within WATERSHED+—were they artists-in-residence?, or consultants?, or had they become some kind of quasi bureaucrats? From afar, this uncertainty is precisely what held my interest.
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I often wonder when public art will get beyond its thingness. Public art is a hybrid field—it bridges the civic and the personal, the city with the gallery, connects politicians to artists, and brings the world into our backyard. And we plug these gaps with objects. Our most basic expectations of public art are to achieve a monument, a site, or an artwork recognizable as a thing. If that’s our manual, it is nearly impossible to put anything called art in public without it looking like public art.
Essay — Hesse McGraw
Normally, if you visit an artist to see their work, they take you to see their work. Sans façon didn’t do that until the last of seven days. On our first day together, we spent a few hours with Wilton Good Striker, Otahkóóksikinakim, an elder from the Kainai Reserve in Alberta, Canada, who blessed the Blackfoot Land we occupied and stretched our sense of time and presence in this place. We then drove two hours to the foot of the Bow Glacier—the source of the region’s water and an epic site that radically shifted my sense of scale of the city and its role in a changing climate. On the second day, I realized we were experiencing their work, if not seeing anything that typically resembled a public artwork. Here is a place where public art has shed its thingness. And more, WATERSHED+ artists are engaging the city beyond the map. I found, in fully palpable and material ways, a public art initiative that has dispensed with conventional approaches—gone are red dots on a map and objects in a landscape. Instead artists sit at the center of the city: literally, everyday, in a cubical on the second floor of the Water Center; and figuratively, as a perspective invited to engage with the most challenging questions and opportunities of the region. Perhaps the most radical transformation to the context for public art and civic life in Calgary—artists are trusted. Leaving the city following a week of explorations and conversation, this observation emerged as a kind of beacon of possibility for public art, cities, and our public life. What might shift in our relationships to cities, and public art, if artists were simply trusted? What new forms, of both common ground and unforeseen ideas, would emerge? But first, how did we get here, and why should we trust Sans façon, or any artist for that matter? The electricity of the unknown pulls us into contemporary art. It has been a thrill ride of a century—beginning with Duchamp’s readymades, and John Cage’s 1952 invitation to the world and our own thoughts to fill his 4’33” of musical silence, then Yves Klein’s Leap Into the Void 1 (1960), and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Manifesto 2 (1969) and assertion that her “working will be the work,” to Rick Lowe’s powerful edict that the work directly engage rather than comment on its context, and now Tomas Saraceno’s moon shot
toward a future of air travel without fossil fuels. The question isn’t where can we go, but rather where are our unknowns—what are the new questions artists might ask of our world.
This is exemplified in Bruce Nauman’s neon work The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths (1967). It’s an impossibly hopeful aphorism that can be broken down so many ways in ironic gest, even as its hippie-shaman optimism retains a sliver of real insight. Contrast this with Martin Creed’s neon maxim the whole world + the work = the whole world (2000)—it expresses a fundamental futility of being an artist, yet if one understands “the whole world” as an ever-expanding proposition, might “the work” in Creed’s frame serve to accelerate that expansion? Another challenge to trusting artists might be that artists are simply invited to the proverbial table too late to do real work. Expectations of their process, and more stringently the outcomes of their work, are pre-baked into the dialogue. As one surveys the landscape of public art internationally, there is a pervasive “on time and on budget” aesthetic that is code for we know what it looks like and it will offer no surprises. Of course this is antagonistic to any vital creative process, and to any vital city.
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Yet, the prospect of trusting artists is fraught with self-imposed checks and balances. Artists may bring a particular wealth of ingenuity to their craft, but they’re also tricksters. If there’s a problem to be solved, one is not likely to find an artist on a tidy, linear path toward a solution. You’ll find switchbacks, some breadcrumbs, and covered tracks, and a more enlivened, exhaustive process.
Following a presentation by New York developer Douglas Durst, Dutch architect Bjarke Ingels prodded “Why do all your buildings look like buildings?” That question extends the late San Franciscobased artist David Ireland’s mantra “you can’t make art by making art.” If a building doesn’t aspire to look like a building, or if an artist 1. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathonkeats/2015/09/08/find-out-how-yves-klein-leaped-into-the-voidand-got-photographed-at-this-new-moma-exhibit/#6e317c4b55f2 2. http://www.feldmangallery.com/media/pdfs/Ukeles_MANIFESTO.pdf
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resists “making art,” what can we expect? There is terror, surprise, magic, thrill, and new knowledge lurking in the unknown. This is the basic and profound shift of WATERSHED+: the unknown is embraced everyday.
Essay — Hesse McGraw
Coded within the UEP Public Art Plan is respect for process and trust of artists: As part of The City of Calgary’s Utilities & Environmental Protection (UEP) Public Art Plan, WATERSHED+ embeds artists within UEP’s core activities, where they do not decorate or embellish but play an active role on project teams to create interest, intrigue, and public understanding of the watershed… WATERSHED+ proposes a long-term plan, which represents a major step in taking creative practice further into the day-to-day activities of UEP and implementing new working methods and processes. This is an adage within The City of Calgary that 60% of The City’s assets are underground. It’s also a municipality that uncommonly brims with pride—we all know the image of the disenfranchised, shuffling and duty-bound civil servant—that is not Calgary. In this city, at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers, City staff are passionate for their own work and are powerful ambassadors for the city. Their passion is fully present at the wastewater treatment facility, in the composting center, and through a FaceTime chat with environmental inspectors. Yet passion is proprietary andcities conceal themselves. The family and friends of a wastewater engineer, or even landfill employee, may well know the dedication they bring to their role, but cities forget to celebrate, or even reveal their everyday miracles. So much of the work of WATERSHED+ projects like Forest Lawn Lift Station and Fire Hydrant Drinking Fountains has been to elegantly unveil the impact and value of infrastructure, and to a larger degree, municipal services to the daily lives of Calgary residents. Paul Fesko, City of Calgary’s Manager of Strategic Services for Water Resources, offered an understated evaluation of the public art
program’s interest to “…get artists speaking to the same things that are of value to us.” The more transformative effect is that in Calgary, artists make the city visible. Transformative may be the most overused description of the effects and impacts of public art. I left Calgary wondering, ‘is WATERSHED+ transformative if the practice is insistently normal, if it creates common ground within our polarized public and civic life?’
In the midst of the 2015 West African Ebola crisis, Los Angeles-based artist Mary Beth Heffernan 3 asked a new question regarding the care of patients in the most vulnerable moment of their life. She realized the caregivers “looked completely menacing… I mean they really made people look almost like storm troopers. I imagined what would it be like to be a patient? To not see a person’s face for days on end?” Her response was to fly to Liberia, and make smiling portraits of the caregivers to adorn the chests of their protective suits. In a period of incredible loss and human tragedy, Heffernan’s almost “stupidly simple” idea brought a deep humanity to the experience of patients and caregivers. Following the catastrophic flooding of 2013 in Calgary, the chief engineer charged with developing a resiliency plan for the city’s future hit a wall. He couldn’t get past a fundamental obstacle in his modeling. At a loss, he walked down the hall, to the second floor, to find the resident modelers of the unknown. The engineer and Sans façon talked for three hours, turning the problem over, thinking about the life of the city, its resources, and its invisible yet essential values. He said, ‘I knew I could trust you to help me see this problem in new ways.” Their conversation exemplifies the kind of radical normalcy WATERSHED+, and artists, bring to our world. 3. http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/04/09/397853271/an-artists-brainstormput-photos-on-those-faceless-ebola-suits
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There is a common refrain that ‘artists are problem solvers.’ That is limiting at best, and instrumentalizes the ascendant possibilities of artistic practice. Artists rather ask new questions where no one perceived a problem. They take the raw material of everyday life— Martin Creed’s world—and add something that expands the universe.
Background
Background
Within this plan the Visual Language project opportunity was defined. This project was presented as a cornerstone of the Plan’s overall vision, “the public art resulting from the Plan will be rooted in the success of the lead project – the ‘Visual Language’. This project will set the context for all others to follow, as it will create a conceptual framework and visual tone for how UEP wants citizens to recognize and respond to its infrastructure” 2.
1. City of Calgary UEP Plan: A Public Art Plan for the Expressive Potential of Utility Infrastructure, January 2007, by Via Partnership with Cliff Garten and CH2M Hill 2. ibid.
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In 2007 UEP and The City of Calgary Public Art Program developed a public art plan to guide the expenditure of the department’s percent for art in a strategic and comprehensive manner. The resulting UEP Public Art Plan, “A Public Art Plan for the Expressive Potential of Utility Infrastructure”, is founded on the principle that public art, in collaboration with other disciplines, can create remarkable places that encourage sustainability and stewardship of the environment 1. This foundation marked an important moment in developing a way of working that would set the context for future endeavors.
The project’s aim was to “provide a cohesive and elegant visual language for identifying, mapping and codifying the watershed systems.” The ambitions were broad and open-ended: — To foster stewardship of the natural watershed by creating the opportunity to understand our daily impact on it.
Background
— To expand our consciousness of UEP infrastructure in relationship to the watershed and our unique and tenuous ecological relationship to the water that we need” 3. In 2008, Sans façon (Artists Tristan Surtees & Charles Blanc) was selected from an international call for this project and brought together a team of collaborators to respond to this opportunity: Yan Olivares (Architect), Bert van Duin (Water Engineer), Matt Baker (Artist), Emlyn Firth (Graphic Designer), and Eric Laurier (Social Geographer). During the 12 month period of research, it became apparent to the team that the relationship between Calgarians and their watershed is complex, rich, and multidimensional. For the most part, people feel a deep connection and appreciation of the natural watershed, and have a clear understanding of their place in it. Calgary is in a privileged situation where most of the land that is producing the runoff that turns into the water in its rivers is situated within a national park or a provincial park only a couple of hours drive from the city. However, somewhere around the city limits an invisible threshold seems to exist where, for most people, the water (whether stormwater, sanitary or drinking) becomes a service under the purview and custodianship of others. It also became clear through this research that infrastructure was only one aspect of UEP and that visual identification was only part of the consideration. To enrich our relationship, to feel and think differently about our place in the system, to appreciate the complexity and wonder, an emotional connection to our watershed had to be sparked. Creating new associations and meanings, teasing out social and historical facets, adding imagination and intrigue to a system beyond simply giving answers, enriches the relationship with an environment. Bringing an additional layer to a rational understanding, this connection
“[Water] engineers are concerned with the land, and the forces that shape it over time; the patterns of rivers, the behaviour of the sea, and its influence on the coast; the way that weather shapes the places we move through; the effect of water management on the development of communities. This is the stuff of art. The water engineer deals with truly poetic material, though they are often required to reduce it, through instrumental analysis, to hydraulic profiles, flood levels, flow rates, pollution levels...” Mark Fletcher, Paul Simkins in Art, engineering and the environment – A better solution? for the UK Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management Rivers and Coastal Group, 2008
To fulfill the goals identified in the UEP Plan, the artist team in collaboration with City employees of UEP, Parks, Planning and Public Art, researched, explored, tested, and ultimately created WATERSHED+ in response to the Visual Language project brief. WATERSHED+ was envisaged as a long-term framework to create these emotional connections, founded on an understanding that artists working from within an organisation, in dialogue and collaboration with other subject matter experts, could foster incredibly rich and valuable moments of connections for Calgarians and their watershed. 3. Visual Language project, Open Call to Artists, 2007
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creates a deeper relationship. It is a connection that goes beyond multi sensory experiences, it is an emotional connection.
The Foundation Introducing this approach and setting up the mechanism to implement it, the team produced a manual. It presented the guiding principles, the structure for implementation, and identified directions for a series of initiatives. As part of this manual, a Pilot Period was proposed to establish and develop the foundations of the program — to learn, respond, and adapt the program within this period. In 2010, the vision for WATERSHED+ was approved and signed off by the Water Management Team and the manual became the framework to implementing the program.
Background
The manual can be downloaded here: http://www.calgary.ca/CSPS/Recreation/Pages/Public-Art/ Watershed-VisualLanguage-Project.aspx
From the Watershed+ Manual, 2010: VISION There is a need for an expanded dialogue between disciplines in the way we build and understand all manner of waterways, from river channels to main drains. WATERSHED+ is about involving creative practitioners and developing creative practice right from the conception stage. Its focus is not the creative object or the aesthetic but developing the creative thinking in the conception of structures, systems and their understanding. WATERSHED+ is a way of working that aims to develop awareness and pleasure in the environment, not by changing water management practice, nor developing a uniform visual language, but rather by creating a climate of opportunity for water initiatives to build an emotional connection between people and the watershed. When the impact of water management is explored at every level – not just physical, but social and historical – systems and structures can add a new level of richness to people’s experience of their function and their relationship to a place.
The network structure for WATERSHED+ substantially overlaps with UEP’s existing Public Art Plan, but neither replicates nor replaces it. It provides an additional capacity to the Public Art Plan to expand the impact of creativity at the heart of UEP’s activities. STATEMENTS OF BELIEF
Collaborative working Cross-disciplinary, collaborative processes brings about enriched experience, innovative work, and strong products. Widening opportunity A spirit of openness, a wide-reaching knowledge base and ongoing encouragement, brings about greater capacity, confidence and further advancement for all. Contribute to city identity WATERSHED+ can contribute to a positive environmental and cultural identity for the city and its citizens locally and globally. Place and culture specific UEP’s infrastructure projects and initiatives can be expressive of and distinctive to their location and culture. Enrichment of urban life Considered water management initiatives and infrastructures can enrich Calgary’s experience of urban life and stimulate creative parallels with the wild watershed and enjoyment of the great outdoors.
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Increase awareness WATERSHED+ contributes to a greater awareness and knowledge of the watershed and its issues, provoking genuine curiosity and interest.
STRUCTURE
Background
Lead Artist The Lead Artist is a creative practitioner driving the implementation of the WATERSHED+ in partnership with UEP. The Lead Artist is responsible for directing the devising, delivery and evolution of the creative vision and its initiatives as laid out in this manual. The Lead Artist drives the program in identifying areas of work for Watershed+ within existing UEP activities, selecting artists to undertake projects, guiding the process, supervising production and evaluating projects. This responsibility is shared by the Project Manager and the Core Group. Equally the Lead Artist is embedded within the day-to- day activities of UEP, making themselves aware of the activities of the organisation, and being recognisable and accessible to UEP staff. The Lead Artist is based at the UEP Water Centre. Project Manager The Project Manager works closely with the Lead Artist to drive and deliver the program. At a strategic level the Project Manager is responsible for ensuring WATERSHED+ initiatives are complimentary to the overall UEP Public Art Program. Where the Lead Artist’s role is to drive WATERSHED+ creatively, the Project Manager will manage the practical delivery of projects and assist and advise the Lead Artist and the Core Group about the strategic and practical deliverability of all aspects of the program. The Project Manager will play a central role in mediating these new working processes, explaining WATERSHED+ internally within UEP, within the different Business Units and externally to the public.
The Core Group comprises of a minimum of eight UEP staff members from across departments at any one time, bringing a breadth of opinion and expertise. The Core Group represents the many disciplines and constituencies which WATERSHED+ aims to encompass. PILOT PERIOD Taking the WATERSHED+ “manual” as its guide, this early stage provides a space to launch initiatives, learn from and evaluate them. On the bases of the trials, errors and successes during this time, WATERSHED+ will be adapted and improved as required to establish a working methodology. The Pilot Period allows for a higher degree of flexibility and reflectiveness in order to ensure the foundations of the program are established.
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Core Group The Core Group is central to WATERSHED+ acting primarily as a filter for potential projects and connecting projects to the principles of WATERSHED+. Having helped shape WATERSHED+ during its development, the Core Group will continue to assist in driving the program and its implementation.
Background
“An environment of trust is created as bureaucratic structures are expanded and new possibilities for change are introduced. Participants with different skill sets familiarize themselves with specialized languages outside of their own world and search out shared understanding. Alternative ways of thinking combine and produce relationships capable of enormous ingenuity.” Andrea Williamson and Steven Cottingham in There’s something in the water, City of Calgary pioneers the idea of artists building infrastructure. Fast Forward, 2013
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▼ WATERSHED+ Dynamic Environment Lab artists during the introduction to the Bow River watershed
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This Place Sitting at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers at the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountain foothills, before the landscape stretches out east as a prairie for over 1,000 km, Calgary is a city of 1.2 million people, the largest in the province of Alberta. The Blackfoot name of this place is ‘Moh’kinsstis’ in reference to the Elbow river.
Background
First incorporated as a town in 1884 by settlers, Calgary resides on the traditional territories of the (Niitsitapi) Blackfoot and the Tsuut’ina and Nakota people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta. At an elevation of over 1,000 m, the climate is semi-arid and easily hits highs of +30C in the summer and lows of -30C in the winter. This climate and the Chinook winds make managing the water – its profusion from snow melt and spring storms or its scarcity in dry summer months – a challenge in every season. Here is a good point to explain a little of the specific environment within The City of Calgary Water Centre. This purpose-built building on the edge of downtown is the working environment for over 500of UEP’s 1,500 staff. This place has a particular environment, the atmosphere is professional and relaxed. The attitude of the employees is warm, dedicated, and passionate, they have a drive and willingness to embrace new ideas and endeavour to do outstanding work. It is an enticing place to work, surrounded by subject matter experts humbly doing their best.
In this place and with these people, it felt possible to think about an artist’ role in society in an expanded way: to embrace a broader spectrum of artistic practice and envisage a place where artists could contribute further to a connection to our environment.
Additionally, the similarities between the people managing the watershed and artists were undeniable: the need for an enquiring mind, responding to complex contextual conditions with rigour and integrity; an optimism that things can change for the better. Artists bring a complimentary way of thinking to a project. However, this suggests a one-way street, an artist adding the magic dust of creativity which belies the full truth. There was a reciprocity with staff; artists’ engagement in the work of the water utility created space for additional thought and conversation; an exchange and dialogue that informs both professional practices in complimentary ways and both learning from one another. This comes with a generosity and respect; a situation can be fostered but not imposed.
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It became a place that welcomed and valued the role of the artist as part of the team, where being challenged is seen as an opportunity.
Janet Zweig WOT FOR And other questions on the use of public art
Essay — Janet Zweig
Janet Zweig is a public artist based in Brooklyn, New York.
House by Rachel Whiteread, 1993, East London, with graffiti 1
What do people expect public art to accomplish for their city? What civic function should or could publicly-funded art have? Why do some people expect either so much or so little from public art, and why do they feel empowered to freely voice their opinions about it while staying comparably quiet about larger civic expenditures? Perhaps the relatively small scale and cost of public art, its “in-your-face” nature, and its apparent dispensability, plant the suggestion that one might be able to seize some personal control within the otherwise intractable material transformation of our shared social spaces. Effective activism is virtually impossible these days, yet here is a unique opportunity for one person to really raise a ruckus. After all, most public art controversies begin with campaigns launched by individuals.2 During the public hearing for the removal of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc in 1985, Douglas Crimp, speaking on its behalf, said, “[This] is a hearing convened by a government administrator who seems to believe that art and social function are antithetical, that art has no social function. What makes me feel manipulated is that I am forced to argue for art as against some other social function. I am asked to line up on the side of sculpture against, say, those who are on the side of concerts or maybe picnic tables.” 3
1. Commissioned by Artangel. Photograph by Matthew Caldwell. 2. The campaign against Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc was launched by Judge Edward D. Re. 3. The Trial of Tilted Arc, a film by Shu Lea Cheang 1989. No essay about public art is complete without a reference to Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc.
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I once received some “hate mail” following a much-publicized misunderstanding about the funding source of a public art commission. A person identified only as “Happy Day” sent an angry email that included this provocation: “Public Transportation may be funding the majority of your ‘ART’ but it could without doubt be used for safety for its riders. Do you really believe your pictures are going to stop people in Milwaukee from beating and shooting at each other on our bus lines?” After the initial shock of receiving this hostile missive, I seriously pondered Happy Day’s question. My answer, kept to myself then but shared with you now, was “No.”
Essay — Janet Zweig
Whatever pure social function Crimp was imagining that a challenging work of art, encountered accidentally on our busy streets, could provide us -- whether discursive, philosophical, or aesthetic -- any such possibility seems long lost to us now. Post-Tilted Arc, the administering of municipally-funded art in the United States was preemptively and drastically revamped. Artist selection panels now might typically include government and business representatives, developers, and a “community member” (who is this magic metonymic individual who stands in for an entire city?) Arts professionals are also at the table - a local artist and a curator, along with an art administrator who may or may not have an in-depth knowledge of contemporary art. As a result of these administrative changes, there has been a considerable amount of functional art and integrated art 4 commissioned since the 1980s. These works helped fuel a recurring academic discussion denouncing the use of public art for purposes at odds with most artists’ and curators’ intentions.5 Usually the criticism points to the instrumentalization of public art toward gentrification, suggesting that the goal is to benefit developers and business districts. Art can be used as a signal of this change, one of a number of elements that contribute to “revitalizing” depressed areas, thereby pricing out poorer residents. The composition of these selection panels inevitably caused a shift in the goals assigned to public art, and those goals can take the form not only of gentrification, but of other surprisingly specific requests. At the same time, beleaguered art-loving administrators are just searching for any practical alibi for art. Here are a few examples taken from nationally publicized competitions of things that public art has been asked to accomplish: “traffic-calming,” “depict the region’s rich history,” “provoke visitors… to think like a scientist,” “express respect for the judicial system,” “function as a shading structure”, and “cast a human quality to the State Employee Parking Structure.” 6 While publicly-funded art should certainly have different goals than art made for galleries, and different goals than privately-funded and/ or socially-engaged art, these goals and the process of developing them could be reassessed. Are there other models of administering
Finally, what might have made “Happy Day,” my Milwaukee inquisitor, feel connected to the creative process rather than separate and angry? In other words, how could the sense of empowerment people use to criticize public art be encouraged to put them on the side of art, to get them involved in an artist’s process and thinking, or simply to open up a more productive civic discourse? 7
4. Art has been integrated into architecture, flooring, hardscape, and landscape. This is also a way to save money by doubling up the budgets, and a way to avoid controversy by making art look like design. 5.Rosalyn Deutche. Evictions, Art and Spatial Politics, MIT Press, Boston, 1992, was one of the first of these critiques, focusing on the design teams at Battery Park City. 6.One might wonder why an artist is needed; these sound like jobs for designers and planners, though even they might be stumped. 7. Though Collette Meacher, in her essay Impish Acts of Sabotage, suggests that vandalism against art is a collaborative and mimicking form of creativity by the audience of the artwork. In Ehrlich, Ken and Brandon la Belle, eds. Surface Tension: Problematics of Site. Errant Bodies Press, 2003.
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projects that bring interested participants into the process? Can artists bring their ideas and expertise into a situation without either condescending to a group, relinquishing authorial control, or giving their creativity away to ambitions with which they don’t agree? Could artists help define the aspirations of a project as part of their creative work, and could those artist-driven goals be more productive and resonant than ones devised by the selection panel? How can government agencies be involved in a process that includes an exchange of ideas instead of leading the artist to a preconceived conclusion? And how much more successful might such an endeavor be if, in the end, the artist was able to make a work that no one could have possibly imagined? Isn’t that what artists do best?
Essay — Janet Zweig
There are no doubt several new or possible curatorial models that might address these issues. There is one recent model in Europe and Canada of which Calgary’s WATERSHED+ is an early exemplar. In Locating the Producers, Durational Approaches to Public Art,8 Paul O’Neill and Claire Doherty describe this approach through several twenty-first century projects funded by cities in the UK, The Netherlands, and Denmark. They identify three defining elements of the projects. The first is “duration” which is brought about by embedding artists in a place for a considerable length of time, sometimes years. The second is the “charismatic agency” of a curator/producer to successfully initiate and produce the project. The third element is “sociality and participation” through which the artists live in and interact with the situation, site, and community. In this social aspect, the authors stress that artists and producers have no expectation of “doing good” and no outcome in mind. And the sociality is a two-way hospitable street -- the artists are invited into the community and the residents are invited into the artists’ process. But this is not the community mural model; the artists do not cede their authorial voice. Instead they share their strategies. There is also a move among progressive public art agencies in the US to embed artists in municipal departments. Inspired by Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ 38 year residency in The New York Department of Sanitation, New York’s Department of Cultural Affairs is establishing artist residencies in The Department of Veteran’s Affairs, The Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, and the Administration for Children’s Services. These residencies will doubtless share some of the elements of the model described by O’Neill and Doherty. WATERSHED+, supported by both The City of Calgary’s Department of Utilities and Environmental Protection and the Public Art Program, which began in 2009, has many of the hallmarks of the European projects – the artists immersed themselves in the workings of the department; they stayed for a long time, and the results were open-ended. Since the artists were embedded in a specific agency with a range of engineering and scientific goals, there are things that distinguish this collaboration as unique. The artists and the agency worked closely with each other, putting the artists on an equal footing with the people they worked with. The team built a
It’s important to note that this type of long-term embedded work may not be right for every situation or every artist and agency working in the public realm. Most artists can’t move to a new place for a project, and many artists are not as team-oriented as these projects require. However the model does suggest some powerful new possibilities for administering public projects. A commissioned artist, however they are chosen,9 could be asked to frame the initial questions instead of being handed a problem to solve; artists’ ideas can begin the process instead of filling in the blanks. Some of these initial questions posed by an artist in collaboration with an arts administrator might be about the site or the community, but others will be novel and unexpected; questions that can only grow out of an artist engaging with a situation or a site or an individual or an agency or a group of people. And eventually the artwork that is produced might live as a poetic question posed to the public instead of a solution to a prosaic problem. Artists are good at finding the hidden questions, and can eventually pose them through their process and its results. These open questions can be a fertile source of civic discourse, culminating in a myriad of responses from the public, even supplying new meanings to the question of “what for?”
8. Locating the Producers, Durational Approaches to Public Art. Paul O’Neill and Claire Doherty (eds.) Antennae Valiz, Amsterdam, 2011. 9. North American governmental agencies are tasked with being “transparent and open,” developing selection processes that are inclusive and democratic. The selection of artists without a specific project in mind would require some complex development on the part of the administrators and agencies in order to match the right artist with the right project without a preconceived idea or proposal in advance.
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mutually respectful collaboration and learned from each other; artists’ strategies and thinking was injected into the collaboration. Above all, there was an emphasis on the idea that art can create an emotional connection between the public and a civic agency. And the projects that resulted were surprising and playful, poetically revealing to the public the hidden infrastructure of the city.
Pilot Period Initiatives
Pilot Period Initiatives “That broad base team creates better ideas overall, I think it made life interesting. I always enjoyed having artists around, hearing their perspective, and seeing what they come up with because it was totally different from the way we were doing it. But now it’s become part of the way we do it.” Paul Fesko Manager of Risk and Customer Strategy, CoC,, Interviewed by amery Calvelli, 2016
During this period, the Lead Artist was additionally asked to specifically trial the integration of artists in design teams by developing and implementing two permanent projects. These projects created precedents for the program, built relationships, and demonstrated the possibilities for these complex collaborations across multiple City departments and a multitude of external partners.
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Following the spirit of experimentation and flexibility described in the manual, a variety of projects and artist involvement were trialled to inform and form the evolution of the program. These projects — be it a one-day event, a phone line, an international idea competition or an integrated installation three years in the making — illustrate the breadth of what artists can bring and the visionary approach of a municipal department. These projects are also evidence of the importance of what UEP, other City staff and the multitude of partners offered to artists, and the many ways they shaped WATERSHED+. Below is a summary of all the initiatives that took place during the Pilot Period, from September 2011 until July 2016.
All the initiatives implemented during the Pilot Period were derived from the manual.
Pilot Period Initiatives
The initiatives developed and implemented under the WATERSHED+ program were complementary to the other Public Art initiatives that happened under the UEP Public Art Plan, WATERSHED+ being one arm of that wider plan.
“The businesses and government employees working here understand that risk is a necessity — not least of all because a “safe” or “proven” way has yet to be found. Artists, who specifically seek out and thrive in unexplored realms, feel comfortably uncomfortable working in this manner.” Andrea Williamson and Steven Cottingham in There’s something in the water, City of Calgary pioneers the idea of artists building infrastructure. Fast Forward, December 2013
Chris Manderson South Region Manager, Parks Urban Conservation, CoC, Interviewed by amery Calvelli, 2016
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“Having an artist in the team adds to the design, it adds a layer of complexity, of meaning, or even just a line of questioning that a straight forward design may not bring.”
Pilot Period Initiatives
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Pilot Period Initiatives
1. Fire Hydrant Drinking Fountains
There are three distinct Calgary Fire Hydrant Drinking Fountains, Strangers, Family and Group, each inviting different formations of gathering around water. Strangers sees two individuals (and their dogs) drinking face to face, at a distance quite a bit closer than we would typically choose to be with a stranger, increasing awareness of one another. Family has the bubblers lined up at different heights, much in the same way a family might in a family photograph, and Group has drinkers huddled together at different heights and arrangements. These fountains are purposefully designed with their workings exposed, making the direct connection to The City water system clearly visible, creating intrigue and questioning for the users, inviting us to consider the quality of the tap water in Calgary. The overflow from the bubblers runs into dog bowls before draining to the closest lawn or catch basin. To facilitate self-discovery and not turn the fountains simply into a messaging tool, no signage about the purpose or the origin of the fountains was added; a simple disc with contact information is attached, similar to standard hydrant signage.
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Temporary fountains attached to fire hydrants are fairly common practice in North America, but often limited to a very functional set up and/ or as a billboard for messaging. For WATERSHED+, reconsidering the idea of these fountains became an opportunity to explore their social role as gathering spaces and expressing the invisible systems underground.
Pilot Period Initiatives
1. Fire Hydrant Drinking Fountains
Joe Schebel Manufacturing , Fleet Services, CoC, Interviewed about the program, 2014
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“That was the beauty of working on this project (Fire Hydrant Drinking Fountains) it took me out of my regular scope of work and got me involved in problem solving […]. Just thinking out of the box, it was a lot of fun, actually this has been the most fun project. ”
1. Fire Hydrant Drinking Fountains
Pilot Period Initiatives
Project Selection
The fountains came out of a meeting between the Lead Artist and Customer & Community Initiatives (CCI) staff who asked if the Lead Artist could take part in discussion with their team about the development of new fountains. The meeting between the Lead Artist and 3 members of CCI were set up to discuss the involvement of the artist with the initial concept of adding a decal to the side of pre-made water fountains and attached to fire hydrants during public events to provide drinking water. It was quickly identified by the Lead Artist and group that this was an opportunity to have a wider impact than simply designing a decal. The group asked the Lead Artist to develop preliminary ideas to see where these opportunities could go. After some research and initial sketches, the Lead Artist brought the idea of developing specific fountains that would express the connection to the hydrant more visibly to create a sense of intrigue from the public whilst being working drinking fountains. These initial ideas were then brought to the Core Group who agreed that this was a good opportunity. This initiative became one of the temporary pilot projects developed by the Lead Artist as outlined in their initial scope. Once the go-ahead was given, the first meetings with the different staff involved in hydrants and providing drinking water were set up, starting with the Fire Hydrant Supervisor, the Cross Connections team, Operations, meter shop operators, and events organiser. After outline designs were produced, the Fleet Services Metal Fabrication Workshop was identified as a possible source to fabricate the fountains themselves. The metal shop became an essential partner in making this project feasible. Their skills and enthusiasm to participate was a huge boost to the project. Over the following weeks, the staff at the metal shop turned the initial sketches into buildable fountains out of standard pipe fittings,. They came up with creative solutions at each corner, all the way to the installation day were they came to the different locations to adjust fittings hours before public opening.
The Fire Hydrant Drinking Fountains were initially developed to be installed for Canada Day 2012 in three different locations along the Bow River pathway in downtown. They were subsequently installed in Stampede Park and on Stephen Avenue that same year. In 2013, because of the major flood through the city, many events were cancelled and the priority was given to other resources. The fountains were then used in 2014, 2015, and 2016 throughout the city for public events. The fountains are managed by the Citizens Program Team in Water Resources as one of their tools. Partners
Fleet Operations: Manufacturing, Fabrication Welding; Water Services: Customer and Strategic Services, Customer and Community Initiatives; Field Services, Asset Assessment, Asset Operations; Water Resources: Water Quality Services, Microbiology Lab, Customer and Strategic Services, Communication, Community Services; Recreation: Public Art Program, Events Services; Community Services, Calgary Fire Department.
Media Coverage
Metro, CBC news, CBC eye opener, The Calgary Herald, Avenue Magazine, CJSW, Radio Canada, Western Canadian Water, Canadian Art, FFWD, Public Art Review, Ideias Green (Brazil), MakeCalgary, Global news, The Artful City.
Awards
Americans For the Arts - 2014 Year in Review, public art network; Downtown Vitality Award, 2015
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All in all, this project required the dedication of 32 people in different parts of the organisation, all passionate about the possibility of a new project and new ways of connecting to the public.
Pilot Period Initiatives
2. Film Screenings
Three series of screenings took place: the premiere in the Municipal metal workshop and two others in locations along the Bow River pathway in downtown Calgary. The two-day event along the Bow River was part of Alberta Culture Days 2013, where celebrations across the province are about discovering, experiencing, and celebrating a unique blend of peoples and passions, and the importance of culture to a healthy and vibrant province. The free screenings encouraged Calgarians to interact with their water sources, and to engage with independent film in unconventional ways.
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Water Works was a public outdoor screening series showcasing critically acclaimed documentaries, shorts and experimental films about water. This screening series was developed in close collaboration with the Calgary Society of independent Filmmakers (CSiF).
2. Film Screenings September 12th — Première event open to City staff, Municipal metal workshop Powers of ten | Dir. Charles & Ray Eames | 1977 | 9min Waterlife | Dir. Kevin McMahon | 2009 Kevin McMahon | 109min
Pilot Period Initiatives
September 27th — Bow River Pathway Blue Suns | Dir. Chloé Leriche | 2010 | 6min Wavumba: They Who Smell of Fish | Dir. Jeroen van Velzen | 2012 | 80min September 28th — River Walk Magnetic Reconnection | Dir. Kyle Armstrong | 2012 | 13min Leviathan | Dir. Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel | 2012 | 87min Satellite Installations by Joyce Wieland & Michael Snow, Nettie Wild, Noel Begin, Richard Reeves, Larissa Fan and CSIF Film Club
The film screenings was an opportunity identified by the Lead Artist as part of the talks and exhibitions initiatives described in the Manual. Once presented to the Core Group and vetted as a viable opportunity, an advisory group was formed with members of the Core Group. The advisory group helped refine the opportunities, provided their input to the selection of films brought forward by CSIF, and helped select the locations for the screenings.
Partners
Calgary Society of independent Filmmakers (CSiF)s; Fleet Operations: Manufacturing, Fabrication Welding; Water Services: Customer and Strategic Services, Field Services; Community Services: Parks, Calgary Fire Department; Recreation: Public Art Program; Alberta Culture Days.
Media Coverage
Beatroute
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Project Selection
Pilot Period Initiatives
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3. Forest Lawn Lift Station
Pilot Period Initiatives
Lift stations, a part of our wastewater system, are used throughout the city to lift wastewater from low-lying areas to higher areas where it can flow by gravity to a treatment plant. On the surface they are usually an anonymous building containing a control room, a generator and access hatches. Below ground the working machinery consists of large wells with submersible pumps and valves that can be reached and maintained through a hatch inside the building.
This lift station project presented an opportunity to rethink the presence of these necessary structures in the community; to transform them into something that can be understood rather than avoided; to create intrigue about the urban infrastructure. Their place in the much larger network of city infrastructure is rarely given a second thought and yet they hold the capacity to connect us to our environment. Although a wastewater lift station is not a natural place to intrigue and fascinate the public, the Forest Lawn Lift Station location made it an ideal situation to consider its utility as more than purely functional; as a place to talk about the wider system of water infrastructure throughout the city; to enrich our understanding and pleasure in the hidden world of urban water.
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Pilot Period Initiatives
3. Forest Lawn Lift Station
Frank Frigo Leader of River Engineering, CoC, Interviewed by amery Calvelli, 2016
◄ Indicative cross section of the Lift Station showing the size of the machinery below ground
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“There used to be, in Civil engineering, this mantra that if we’ve done our job well you won’t know that any of the infrastructure was there. All the underbelly, all the guts of the city, the piping, the networks, the valves, the pump stations, the backup power, if it all functions flawlessly no one knows it’s there. The reality is, most people have no idea that it is there.”
Pilot Period Initiatives
3. Forest Lawn Lift Station
Built in the 1960s, the Forest Lawn Lift Station reached the end of its lifecycle and capacity and needed to be replaced. The involvement of an artist was written into the consultant engineer’s scope to work on the design team from the beginning of the design process. To trial this type of initiative, the Lead Artist took the role of the commissioned artist. They took part in the design meetings with the engineer and the City Project Manager to understand the complexity of such projects and to share their approach. There was no preconceived ideas in what the involvement of the artist would be like or what would be the outcome
The final lift station still hinted to the usual approach of trying to hide such structures, the envelope of the lift station is carefully simplified and toned down. Through the perforated metal cladding an exact representation to scale of the pipes connecting the neighbourhood to the lift station is displayed on two sides of the building. Using LED lighting connected to sensors that monitor the flow in the pipes, the lights change colour based on flow levels and shows, in real time, the constant activity of the lift station. This map gives a glimpse into the hidden part of our environment, allowing us to see a fragment of the complex 4,500-kilometre wastewater system in the city, and the constant flow changes of that system following the rhythm of our daily lives. This thorough collaboration between artists, architects and engineers resulted in a lift station that not only features state-ofthe-art technology which provides increased sanitary capacity to northeast Calgary, but also integrates creativity in the rethinking of urban infrastructure. The lift station was part of a behind-the-scenes guided tour of Calgary’s water management systems and public art projects organised by the contemporary art gallery Esker Foundation, probably the first time a wastewater lift station was ever part of a contemporary art tour.
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of this collaboration. It was an essential part of this approach that the art outcome would be a direct result of the discussions of the design teams and the exchange of ideas between the different members of the design team.
Pilot Period Initiatives
3. Forest Lawn Lift Station
“I wouldn’t say we are ashamed of our infrastructure, but we do tend to hide it. We tend to want it to blend in and not be noticed. [WATERSHED+] really changed our thinking on that. How do we connect our citizens and our customers to what it really takes to live within an urban setting?” Chris Huston Manager of Field Services, CoC, in Finding the Poetry in Infrastructure Design, by Jen Kinney, in Next City, December 2015r 2015
Illustration of the pipes leading to the Lift Station, in red, and the pipe going from the Lift Station to the Treatment plant, in green ►
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3. Forest Lawn Lift Station
Pilot Period Initiatives
“It was a process that added on to the normal process, extended the time a bit and made it fascinating because we didn’t have any idea what they were going to do at the beginning.” Bill Chisholm Senior Practice Leader Associated Engineering, Interviewed about the Forest Lawn Lift Station, 2014
The replacement of the Forest Lawn Lift Station was identified by the Core Group as a relevant project based on its alignment with the statement of beliefs. The timing (the consultant hadn’t been selected and the design for the new lift station hadn’t started) and its location (publicly accessible and with a view over the city, facilitating a visual connection to the wider system) made it particularly relevant to be undertaken as a WATERSHED+ initiative. An important aspect of the success of the integration of the artist in the design team for this project was the fact that the artist involvement was identified in the Request for Proposal (RFP) for the engineer consultant. The consultant was aware of this additional role in the team and could plan for time and identify relevant staff to take part in this project.
Partners
Water Resources: Infrastructure Planning; Infrastructure Delivery, Customer and Strategic Services, Communication; Water Services: Field Services; Associated Engineers; Recreation: Public Art Program; Marshall Tittemore Architects; Nemalux; Maple Reinders.
Media Coverage
Next City, Avenue Magazine, Canadian Consulting Engineer, Metro, CJSW, The Calgary Herald, Water Environment & Technology, CBC, 660 News, 770 AM, Calgary Sun, The Huffington Post, Global News, The Artful City.
Awards
Mayor Urban Design Awards 2015 (Honourable Mention - Category: Urban Fragments)
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Project Selection
Pilot Period Initiatives
4. East Bowmont Park
â–˛ East Bowmont Park under construction, August 2016
A collaborative design approach between City departments and the different consultants was fostered through WATERSHED+. Artists were integrated into the design process from the beginning of the project to bridge the two design intents, one informed by ecological restoration of the landscape, the other with water resource engineering. Throughout the development of the project the diverse disciplines informed and collaborated on a unique design, integrating and building on the expertise of each partners.
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In 2010, The City of Calgary expropriated an abandoned gravel pit adjacent to Bowmont natural environment park along the Bow River with the intention of restoring riparian and upland habitat. The site also presented an opportunity for major end-of-pipe stormwater quality improvements (1,775 hectares of stormwater drainage), something not contemplated in the original acquisition of the lands, and something arguably contradictory to the original restoration intent.
4. East Bowmont Park
Pilot Period Initiatives
HALLO DRAIN
As part of their deliverables for the Pilot Period, the Lead Artist took the role of the commissioned artist. They lead the concept development to make the treatment train visible throughout and using stormwater as an opportunity for creating a variety of habitats as part of the restoration of the ecological integrity of the landscape. Instead of an imperceptible and visually disconnected treatment system, the journey of stormwater throughout the park and its creation of different habitats is made apparent. The different stages of the active treatment train are designed as distinct environments defined by their specific treatment functions, and the transitions between the stages highlighted. Open water, running water, marshland, riparian, wet meadows, all at once the stormwater is creating habitat, being cleaned, and expressing the processes at work. The park expands the possibilities of connection and appreciation of the complexities of watershed management. Works began on-site in November 2015 and are expected to be complete in winter 2017.
“We have started to see and realise how the art can be integrated into the projects that we are doing, and how we can actually show that function and connection to the environment.� Ian Morley Manager Infrastructure Delivery, CoC, Interviewed about the program, 2014 2015
Watershed+ Succession Plan
▼ East Bowmont Park design session, and work in progress in June 2016
SEEPING WALL
CONVEYANCE CHANNEL
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4. East Bowmont Park
The former gravel pit was identified by the Core Group as an ideal opportunity to be a WATERSHED+ project. The project was flagged as important for the program because of the significance of the works for water quality improvement, the timing, the multi-disciplinary and cross-departmental aspects, and the highly public situation of the park. The role of the artist to lead the development of the conceptual design was written in the brief for the other consultants, allowing a recognition of this additional partner in the team and highlighting a different design process.
Partners
Water Services, Asset Operations; Water Resources: Infrastructure Planning, Infrastructure Delivery, Inspector Services, Customer and Strategic Services, Communication, Project Engineering Underground; Community Services: Parks, Cultural Landscape, Urban Conservation; Recreation: Public Art Program; O2 Planning+Design; AECOM; Source2source; Wilco Contractors SW
Media Coverage
Canadian Architect; The Calgary Herald; Landscape Paysages Magazine.
Awards
Canadian Society of Landscape Architects/AAPC, 2015, National Merit; Mayor Urban Design Awards 2013 (Honourable Mention: Conceptual/Theoretical Urban Design Project)
â—„ East Bowmont Park Proposed Concept plan
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Project Selection
Pilot Period Initiatives
5. Residencies
“When asked to list the materials used in the public art project the description begins “artist, studio, crew shack trailer converted as a mobile studio” I think they forgot to list “imagination, extraordinary leap of faith, and unbelievable civic agency willing to challenge assumptions and the status quo.” Cath Brunner Director of 4Culture’s public art program, Seattle about WATERSHED+ Public Art Residency, in American for the Arts Public Art Network, Year in Review, 2014
The intention of the residencies was to enable imaginative responses and engagements around these issues. They were driven by a time of research to build understandings pertinent to the Calgary context. The residency provided artists wishing to explore, research, experiment, and produce new work in relation to these issues, with time, space, and resources in a unique context within a municipal facility. In turn, the residencies offered City of Calgary staff, the artist community and the public the opportunity to engage with new work of national and international significance and enrich our understanding, appreciation and emotional connection to our environment. During their residency, artists were expected to engage with City staff to promote collaboration and connections between contemporary art practice, subject matter experts, and natural and man-made processes on site, and more broadly in the city (water treatment, natural environment, biology and hydrology, urban watersheds, etc). As support for the residency artists, the Lead Artist acted as a point for critical dialogue and as an intermediary between the artists and subject matters experts in The City, and within the arts and cultural communities in Calgary.
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The WATERSHED+ Artist Residencies were devised to support, promote, and facilitate innovative and collaborative contemporary art practices responding to issues relevant to Calgary’s watershed and water management.
5. Residencies
Pilot Period Initiatives
Project Selection
The initiative was part of the Manual and the Pilot Period. In collaboration with the Lead Artist and the Project Manager, a working group developed the scope of the residency initiative and the artist call. The Artist Residency call was a two-stage application process. Submissions were jury reviewed and a short list of applicants was produced from the initial application review. Short-listed artists were given two weeks to submit a detailed proposal for how they intended to use their time in residency, which included ideas that would be explored, what they would be working on, how they intended to engage with the wider public, resources they may need, etc. This approach to explore and refine works as the residency period unfolded was defined to generate projects responding directly to the artists’ experience during the residency, the relationships developed with City staff, the context at the time of the residency, the public engagement strategies and the outside partners brought in. Artists of local, national and international provenance were encouraged to apply to align with the goal of building creative links with international and local artists and encourage the best outcomes for UEP, the public and the arts community. The residency program offered two streams of opportunities – a short-term residency of up to four weeks in length and a longterm residency for a minimum of three months in length (which did not have to be consecutive). The short-term residency was defined as an opportunity to involve artists with different level of experience in their practices.
One artist call was produced in Spring 2012 to select the 4 artists and artists group who took part in the residencies between 2012 and 2014. All the artists selected were longterm residencies as the jury did not deem any application relevant for the short-term residencies. The first residency began December, 2012. 75 applications from 18 countries 11 short listed 4 selected Americans For the Arts - 2014 Year in Review, public art network Watershed+ Succession Plan
Awards
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5. Residencies
Pilot Period Initiatives
RKP STUDIO The residencies were developed with The City’s Parks department as a host and partner. Ralph Klein Park (RKP) was proposed as an ideal location combining watershed management and Parks facilities. RKP is one of Calgary’s major parks, located within the Shepard Stormwater Diversion Project – a 156 hectares (385 acres) man-made wetland that functions as both a stormwater storage facility and a treatment wetland that naturally filters stormwater. It is the largest constructed stormwater treatment wetland in Canada and provides a route for stormwater from the east side of the city to the Bow River. The wetlands also protect critical wildlife habitat through the natural wetland system which improves the quality of storm water entering the Bow River. Within the constructed wetlands, a 75-acre park incorporates a range of facilities and activities including the Environmental Education Ethics Centre (EEEC). A purpose-built artist studio space was built on the top floor of the EEEC building overlooking the wetlands, with access to a workshop with a selection of basic hand and power tools. Partners
Water Resources; Water Services; Recreation: Public Art Program, Parks: Environmental & Education Initiatives.
CREW SHACK
The Crew Shack Artist Studio was first used as a space of exhibition by Nick Millar and Minty Donald as part of their installation for Doors Open YYC. It was subsequently brought to the Water Centre to act as a studio space for Rachel Duckhouse to produce the final stage of her work whilst having quick access to the subject matter experts. It also became an open studio for Rachel to present her work and have discussion with City staff. Broken City Lab used the Crew Shack studio in the Water Centre location in a similar fashion, facilitating the development of their work in close proximity to both City staff and river access. Project Development
The idea of a satellite space was described in the Manual, a space that could offer a mobile facility to spend time on specific sites, or as a location for interaction and exhibition. Field Services identified a surplus crew shack trailer that would be a good fit for that mobile space. Crew shack trailers are used by operation and construction teams as a base for works to be done on site. Field Services temporarily adapted this trailer to be a versatile and appropriate space for artists to work.
Partners
Water Services, Field Services; Asset Assessment; Asset Operations; Transportation: Sign Manufacturing; Recreation: Public Art Program
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The Crew Shack Artist Studio was designed to be used as a quiet space for the artists in residence when not in RKP, act as a presentation space for artwork, and a collaboration site between the public and the artist. Broadening the capacity and capabilities of the artistic residencies, it created a versatile space that can be closed or open to the public as needed, providing the ability to work in context amongst different environments and different communities of people.
5. Residencies IN DISCUSSION : RESIDENCIES IN CONTEXT Midway through its inaugural year, as part of the program’s Talks & Exhibitions, the program presented six of that year’s artistsin-residence to share their experiences in an engaging and open discussion with the public. Hosted by the Art Gallery of Calgary, the artists presented some past work, discussed how the residencies informed and impacted their practices, why they chose to apply for this particular format of residency hosted by a municipal organisation and centred around a specific focus, and get insight into their experiences and work to date.
Pilot Period Initiatives
The artists present were: Rachel Duckhouse, Nick Millar & Minty Donald, Hiba Abdallah & Joshua Babcock of Broken City Lab, Jay Mosher.
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5. Residencies — Rachel Duckhouse Rachel Duckhouse is an award-winning UK-based visual artist specialising in abstract, geometric etchings and screenprints as well as highly detailed, labour intensive pen and ink drawings. Her work explores the complex patterns and systems in nature, human behavior, and the built environment. She works in a range of media including printmaking, drawing, and sound.
Pilot Period Initiatives
Her work has been exhibited in galleries in Canada, USA and the UK, including the Royal Academy in London and the National Gallery in Edinburgh, and is included in the collections of the British Museum in London.
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5. Residencies — Rachel Duckhouse Development
Pilot Period Initiatives
Final Work
Rachel Duckhouse was the first artist-in-residence for the program. Her interest in how to represent abstract and invisible patterns drew her to conversations and site visits with specialists in engineering, fluid mechanics and ecology and led to an exploration of flow dynamics, in particular in the movement of water through the city – the Bow River, canals, wetlands, water treatment facilities and domestic spaces. In an attempt to represent complex flow patterns of interconnecting water systems within Calgary, a hidden world of imagined pattern and rhythm, Rachel made a series of drawings, chromatography studies, etchings, and screenprints. These studies were developed following an in-depth collaboration process with various City employees whose knowledge, data, and models helped her understand how water moves around architecture, banks and bridges and to visualize the river’s flow. Immersed in the environments of RKP and in the Water Centre, Rachel painstakingly created Bow Flow, an 8-foot-long pen and ink drawing diptych that maps the Bow River as it travels through a section of Southeast Calgary. The drawings portray the flow through a treatment plant, irrigation canal, bridges, depicting only the water above ground and omitting surrounding architectures. In partnership with TRUCK Gallery, one of the artist-run centres in Downtown Calgary, Bow Flow was exhibited alongside her etchings studies. A week after the show opened, a 100-year flood event hit Southern Alberta and devastated many areas including the part of SE Calgary represented in Bow Flow. Over the following months, Rachel researched ways of recording the dynamics and intensity of the flood. During this period, Rachel was based at Telus Spark Science Centre, Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant, the Crew Shack Artist Studio, and the Water Centre.
Partners
Community Services: Parks, Environmental & Education Initiatives; Water Resources: Watershed Planning, River Engineering, Water Quality Services, Microbiology Lab Infrastructure Planning, Customer and Strategic Services; Water Services: Asset Operations; Recreation: Public Art Program; The New Gallery, John Snow House; TRUCK Contemporary Art Gallery; Telus Spark Science Centre; Banff Centre, Walter Phillips Gallery; Alberta Printmaker’s Society; University of Calgary, Environmental design faculty
Media Coverage
Avenue Magazine; CJSW; CBC; The Calgary Herald
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After talking to water engineers, operations staff, and planning engineers, and gathering images, maps, and revisiting the sites affected, Rachel devised a new set of marks to create a flood flow visualisation. With the help of City staff who generously shared memories, photographs, models and stories, Rachel overlaid on the existing diptych a layer of line drawing representing the peak flood level that described the dynamics of the flood flows. Using two layers of marks, Rachel revealed two very different rivers – the original black ink layer depicting the water flow in spring 2013 and the sepia marks representing the flow during the flood in June 2013.
Pilot Period Initiatives
5. Residencies — Rachel Duckhouse
“As a numeric person, I almost had a flashback to 2013, to the actual flood event because of what I was seeing in the lines. The way they were replicating the flow patterns, and what I’d seen from the aerial photography and site visits and all the numerical modeling I had done before. It almost gave me chills. That looks like the river, the way I see the river.” Frank Frigo Leader of River Engineering, CoC, Interviewed by amery Calvelli, 2016
Twyla Hutchison Planning Engineer,Planning & Analysis Infrastructure Planning, Water Resources, CoC, Interviewed about the program, 2014
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“The best part for me has been doing joint presentations with Rachel. We went to various places to give talks. Such as the University of Calgary where we talked with the art students and architectural students and we were able to have a really great balanced discussion about the art component and the work she had done, but also the technical piece and how they overlap. It’s also been a huge benefit to me as an engineer to be able to reflect on how do you communicate your information to a wider scale, to a non-technical group, how do you make that connection to the work that we do.”
5. Residencies — Jay Mosher & Rory Middleton
Pilot Period Initiatives
Rory Middleton (Edinburgh, Scotland) and Jay Mosher (Calgary) are multidisciplinary artists whose paths initially crossed at The Banff Centre in 2010. The artists have some overlapping facets throughout each of their individual practices, including an interest in site-specific works, installation, and landscape.
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5. Residencies — Jay Mosher & Rory Middleton Development
Over the course of a year, Calgary artist Jay Mosher and Scottish artist Rory Middleton were based in the residency space at Ralph Klein Park. Their interest was focused around the particular landscape of Central and Southern Alberta. Physically, as the typical wide open-views, semiarid landscape, where water is a precious resource and the perceived connection to the larger Bow River watershed often distant. Socially, as a landscape with varied land use and with connotations and traditional associations with western culture.
Artwork
Inspired by the work of botanist and gardener Gilles Clement, they produced a two-part series of temporary public artworks aimed at highlighting the overlooked places where nature, coexisting with the manmade, is left to its own unsanctioned processes; in-between spaces Gilles Clément calls the third landscape. Jay and Rory’s work calls attention to the marginal spaces among us not considered as wild but neither cultivated. Far from wasted space these in-between spaces are where nature is left to perform as it should, places where biodiversity is rich and critical natural processes are often taking place. The first part of The Third Landscape consisted of large fabricated letters temporarily situated on the fringe of the wetlands in Ralph Klein Park (RKP) where a railroad, ditch, and native grass intersect. The installation was in place for a year. The second part was a series of five film shorts showcasing the installation of The Third Landscape around RKP. Set to a guitar composition by Dug Bevans, the short films conjure up images of a spaghetti western as a lone horse inhabits the space around RKP’s third landscape. The films were screened at the Plaza Theatre as part of the film festival Cinematheque. The films were then shown at the Globe Cinema for five weeks before all screenings.
Jay and Rory’s installation and film works playfully and joyously invited the public to celebrate the under-considered and little appreciated parcels of land that make up so much of our environment. These leftover parcels of land are lost spaces in our city and in our collective consciousness, yet these third landscapes are an essential part of our urban landscape and the story of stormwater. Community Services: Parks, Environmental & Education Initiatives; Water Services: Field Services; Recreation: Public Art Program; Globe Cinema; F&D; Calgary Cinematheque Watershed+ Succession Plan
Partners
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5. Residencies — Nick Millar & Minty Donald
Pilot Period Initiatives
Minty Donald’s practice is context-specific, attempting to explore our relationships with the spaces and places we build, shape and inhabit. Nick Millar is an artist with a project-based practice; he works frequently with Minty Donald and with other regular collaborators. Their collaborative practice reflects on human/water interrelations.
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5. Residencies — Nick Millar & Minty Donald Development
Pilot Period Initiatives
Artwork
Nick and Minty were interested in both the idea of the physical watershed — its size, variety of landscapes and people’s connection to it — and water as a vital matter. They explored these interests by devising and carrying out a number of actions/experiments, seemingly simple, modestly scaled acts. Undertaken in a spirit of playful seriousness, the actions/experiments paid attention to individual, emotional, sensory, pragmatic, and poetic connections with water. Guddling* About: experiments in vital materialism with particular regard to water Two of the experiments developed during the residency period were enacted at an open studio event Nick and Minty held at Glenmore Dam as part of Doors Open YYC to culminate their residency. The Crew Shack Artist Studio was installed and used as a display of other observations and documentation of the other experiments carried out. The two experiments presented at the open studio were: Action/Experiment #3: Mix Your Own Bow (MYOB) Using water from twenty-one tributaries to the Bow River, the artists invited the public to mix a cocktail in the proportions that each tributary contributes to the Bow River in Calgary — to mix their own little bit of the river. Using a water dropper, each participant painstakingly collected drops from each of the buckets, taking an amount of water corresponding to each percentage from the pails.
* A Scots word for: agitating water by hand; behaving in a playful, undirected way
Action/Experiment #5: What are YOU? (Melting Species)
On the day of the open studio event, the ice molds were placed in a pattern reminiscent of wildlife dioramas in natural history museums. The young female grizzly took about thirty hours to melt, while the wee Alberta rose, the gopher, and the blue jay survived for a brief hour or so. Partners
Community Services: Parks, Environmental & Education Initiatives; Water Resources: Watershed Planning, Resource Strategy, Customer & Strategic Services, Strategy & Analysis; Recreation: Public Art Program; University of Calgary; University of Alberta; Glasgow University; Doors Open YYC
Media Coverage
The Goose, Creative Carbon Scotland, curiousarts
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For the other experiment, the artists froze water from the Bow River. The quantity of water frozen was an approximation of the amount of water present in various plants and animals commonly found in the Bow River watershed. The species selected ranged in size from a five-stemmed Alberta rose (the smallest ice column) to a young female grizzly bear (the largest piece of ice).
Pilot Period Initiatives
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5. Residencies — Broken City Lab
Pilot Period Initiatives
Broken City Lab is an artist-led, interdisciplinary collective and non-profit organisation working to explore and unfold curiosities around locality, infrastructures, education, and creative practice leading towards civic change. Their projects, events, workshops, installations, and interventions offer an injection of disruptive creativity into a situation, surface, place, or community. These projects aim to connect various disciplines through research and social practice, generating works and interventionist tactics that adjust, critique, annotate, and re-imagine the cities that they encounter.
Chris Huston Manager of Field Services, CoC, Interviewed by amery Calvelli, 2016
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“[The Broken City Lab Project] was another one of those opportunities for us to participate in a project where we needed to think about a topic differently than we were used to. We tend to think of the river as a source for water and it’s a source for discharge. It’s a lot of other things though. It is many things for many people.”
5. Residencies — Broken City Lab
Pilot Period Initiatives
Development
Hiba Abdallah, Joshua Babcock and Justin A. Langlois of Broken City Lab divided their time between RKP Studio, the Crew Shack Artist Studio at the Water Centre and Stride Gallery in downtown Calgary. Through site visits and meetings with infrastructure planners, operations teams, engineers, biologists, strategic services, field crews, they explored the physical structure of the rivers, their social implications, and the municipal infrastructure. In partnership with Stride Gallery, an artist-run centre in Calgary, Broken City Lab spent a final period of time in their gallery space developing a series of studies and proposals for public installations exploring how as citizens we relate, understand and feel about Calgary’s rivers. The series was premiered as proposals and mock-ups in the gallery before two of them were implemented as temporary public installations.
Artwork
Varying Proximities is a series of temporary public art works aimed at stimulating dialogue, cueing new relations and sparking memories of Calgary’s rivers. Subtext: River Signs Affixed to 100 stormwater outfall signs along the Elbow and Bow rivers, Subtext: River Signs playfully asks a series of questions we might ask of a person or a relationship. Aimed at encouraging residents and visitors to think about the ways in which we individually and collectively experience the rivers, each question cues new relations, memories, and stories of the rivers. The signs, matching the visual language of the outfall numbering signs, were in place for two years.
Partners
Community Services: Parks, Environmental & Education Initiatives; Water Services, Field Services; Transportation: Sign Manufacturing; Recreation: Public Art Program; Stride Gallery; TRUCK Contemporary Art Gallery; TELUS Spark Science Centre
Media Coverage
Avenue Magazine, The Calgary Herald, Calgary is Awesome, CBC, CTV
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1-844-OUR-BOW-RIVER “Hello. One moment as I connect you to the Bow River.” With this simple introduction, the voice over the phone transports you to the river’s edge and you begin to experience the Bow’s rushing, gurgling, and babbling efforts to connect to you. Whether nearby or across the world, anyone can attempt to connect to the Bow through a simple phone call and begin to explore its wisdom, its secrets, or its songs, creating a unique opportunity to explore proximity and access as fundamental components of our relationship to the Bow River.
6. WATERSHED+ Labs The idea behind a WATERSHED+ Lab was to foster new ideas for familiar issues by bringing together complimentary minds from diverse but related fields and giving them time and space to explore, question conventional thinking, and draw from one another’s area of expertise.
Pilot Period Initiatives
WATERSHED+ LABS aim to gather and share new alternative suggestions, recommendations and opportunities for advancement of the given issue.
Margaret Beeston Leader Water resources planning & Policy, CoC Interviewed by amery Calvelli, 2016
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“The lab was a chance to have entirely new perspectives. Being in a different space was a chance to step out and ask ourselves new questions and bring up new standpoints. Having that broad range of perspectives in the room and different experiences reminded me, and those of us who live with that issue on a dayto-day basis, to be curious again.”
6. Staff Labs — Lab1, Green Stormwater Infrastructure
Pilot Period Initiatives
The argument for green infrastructure has long been won. Increasingly, this is the preferred solution in stormwater management, its implementation is gradually being trialed, tested, and piloted in Calgary in a number of situations from the micro to the macro. Some visible and understandable, others hidden under the pavement. These include, rain gardens/bioretention, bioswales, absorbent landscapes, suspended pavement systems, permeable pavements, rainwater harvesting, stormwater harvesting for reuse and green roofs. At the time, The City of Calgary was committed to delivering at least 13 low impact developments throughout the city. With increasing numbers of green infrastructure projects being created, this WATERSHED+ LAB explored how green infrastructure communicates; what, why, where it is; furthermore how each project can leverage greater appreciation, enjoyment, and emotional connection for citizens. The one-day event took place in Telus Spark Science Centre in October 2013. Participants
UEP: Policy Planner, Public Programs Coordinator, Water Resources Strategist, Project Engineer, Team Lead Planning & Analysis, Leader of Resource Planning and Policy, Watershed Engineer x2, Senior Business Strategist, Land Use Policy and Planning: Senior Planner, Watershed+ artists in residence at the time: Rachel Duckhouse, Rory Middleton, Jay Mosher, Telus Spark: Exhibit Developer, Invited participant: Kevin Robert Perry, landscape architect, Project Manager, Lead Artist
Project Selection
The subject of this initial Lab was identified by the Core Group for its relevance to the current Business Unit plans at the time.
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6. Staff Labs — Lab2, Dynamic Environment
Pilot Period Initiatives
Major natural events can change our lives and how we think about nature. This was particularly felt in Calgary after the 2013 flood, as a significant and momentous event in a line of many others that altered the landscape and changed how we live. From flood to drought, exploring the impact of these constant shifts more deeply is an opportunity to understand how we relate to our environment and to each other, before, during, and after a major event.
“It is well documented that most of the scientific break throughs have occurred when scientists have been inspired by people outside of their discipline. Not only we are able to better communicate by working with artists but actually it can make our science better.” Dr David Sauchyn University of Regina, Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, during Dynamic environment: Complimentary perspectives, a public talk around the Dynamic Environment Lab, 2016
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6. Staff Labs — Lab2, Dynamic Environment
Pilot Period Initiatives
Dealing with the complexity of the stages of recovery causes us to ask questions about resiliency, what it means and how we understand it. How do you prepare a city and its people in the face of an ever-changing environment, and how do you determine a level of readiness and appropriate response? With such natural events, there is a constant shift between preparation, response, protection, and recovery, which leads us to question our place as individuals within this dynamic environment. In the bigger picture, what role do we play and how does our relationship with nature play out; how do we balance that with the emotive response we have to nature, to the city, and its spaces? How do we balance public expectations and the difficulty of designing to eliminate inconvenience? How do we deal with the memory and lasting emotional effects after a major event? These inquiries, among others, directed the Lab and aimed to inspire further examination. Following an international artist call, five artists – Steve Gurysh, Tim Knowles, Becky Shaw, Peter von Tiesenhausen, Stokley Towles — were selected to come and spend a week in Calgary and be immersed in this context. This programming week included visits of key infrastructure sites and locations that played an active role within the watershed management system, the city, and the arts community participating in discussions about water management and the topic of Dynamic Environment in round-tables, presentations by subject matter experts, and encouraging critical thinking focused on this subject throughout the week. The artists were then asked to develop an informed approach in how they wished to respond to this subject in this specific context. The approaches were open to come in the form of permanent or temporary projects, residencies or other ideas.
The ‘Lab’ process offered here gives an opportunity to understand a context from the position of those who work and live within it, and also offers time and space for the emergence of an idea or approach that moves beyond a surface response. Much current public commissioning works by focusing on one individual’s idea, missing the value of input from those who live or work in the context daily, or from other artists. The co-operative model of the Lab provides opportunities for artists to see the context through the eyes of those who know it best, and also through each other’s eyes. From application to the Dynamic Environment Lab public call
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Through immersing artists in this way, the intention was to foster innovative and collaborative art practices, setting up a beneficial exchange of perspective on a subject at the forefront of The City department. This lab format creates an opportunity for contemporary art practice to take part in current thinking around live issues, explores the complex relationships between citizens and their environment and cultivates cross-disciplinary methods of working.
6. Staff Labs — Lab2, Dynamic Environment
Pilot Period Initiatives
Project Selection
This second Lab is an evolution of the initial WATERSHED+ Lab format, responding to and aligning some of the previous initiatives –artist residencies, permanent and temporary projects – to consolidate how projects come about. The Core Group identified the subject of the dynamic environment as an important topic that City staff and citizens are exploring through their own experiences and through the work of water management. The selection of the artists for the programming week and the subsequent proposals went through jury process. The selected projects will be developed and be implemented over a period of up to two years. 83 applications From 10 countries
Partners
Water Services: Field Services, Water Treatment, Construction Services; Water Resources: Watershed Planning, Infrastructure Delivery, Customer & Strategy Services, Water Quality Services; Parks: Urban Conservation, Cultural Landscape, Environmental & Education Initiatives; Recreation: Public Art Program; Calgary Neighbourhood Services: Social Programs & Services; University of Regina, Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative; National Music Centre; Telus Spark Science Centre; Esker Foundation; New Gallery; Stride Gallery; TRUCK Gallery; Klohn Crippen Berger; Associated Engineers.
Laboratory Technologist Niravanh Bounsombath showing the Lab artists samples of live micro organisms ►
From application to the Dynamic Environment Lab public call
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What excites me the most about WATERSHED+ LAB is the built-in potential for leveraging partnerships and collaborations within The City of Calgary and the UEP to integrate capacities for urban and ecological design, hydrological science, cultural history, and more speculative practices that confront the challenges set forth by the WATERSHED+ program.
6. Staff Labs — Lab2, Dynamic Environment ASSOCIATE ARTIST
Pilot Period Initiatives
Alongside the commissioned artists selected to take part in the Dynamic Environment Lab, an opportunity was identified to select an Associate Artist to participate in the programming week. This role was developed to give an opportunity to an artist looking to further develop their public art practice. The artist selected as the Associate Artist was Lane Shordee. During the programming week the Associate Artist was part of all the presentations, meetings and site visits, learning from the subject matter experts about the business unit’s work, and brainstorming with the other artists. It became an opportunity to participate in a public art process, gain further professional experience, and exchange knowledge with other artists. At the end of the week, the Associate Artist submitted a report based on his learning.
Lane Shordee Watershed+ Dynamic Lab Report, 2016
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“I came into the WATERSHED+ Lab thinking that it would be a typical organisational view of the watershed that would come in the form of numbers and statistics, but in fact it was the opposite, the presenters brought a passion about the watershed that was contagious to the artists involved. [This initiative] will be seen as a major step in understanding one way in which artists can dive into real problems, and the inner workings of systems.”
6. Staff Labs — Lab2, Dynamic Environment DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT: COMPLIMENTARY PERSPECTIVES
Pilot Period Initiatives
As part of the programming week in January 2016, a free public presentation at the National Music Centre was set up to share some of the issues addressed and introduce the artist selected for that first part of the Lab. The sold-out event brought together artists and experts in the field to examine the definition of a dynamic environment and how we understand our place as individuals within it. The event explored the impact of these constant shifts, in order to better understand how we relate to our environment and to each other. Living in a watershed which is constantly in flux alters our landscape and changes how we live. How do you prepare a city and its people in the face of an ever-changing environment? Speakers were: Dr. David Sauchyn, Research Professor at Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, University of Regina His main research interest is the climate and hydrology of the past millennium in Canada’s western interior and how knowledge of the past can inform scenarios of future climate and water supplies. Dr. Sauchyn is currently co-directing a five-year interdisciplinary study of the vulnerability of rural agricultural communities to climate extremes in Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Brazil, and in the Canadian Prairies. The five Lab artists selected and taking part in the programming week The Lead Artist
Norma Ruecker Leader Biology, Water Quality Services, CoC, answering questions during Dynamic environment: Complimentary perspectives
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“It’s always a pleasure for us to work with the artists. We do our work day in and day out, we’re very focused on public health, environmental health, and meeting our regulatory requirements; we’re all very analytical. And the pleasure of working with artists is making our work look different in our own eyes. It gives us an opportunity to step back from what we do and see it through a different lens.”
6. Staff Labs — Lab2, Dynamic Environment SELECTED ARTISTS, PROCESS AND INITIAL PROPOSALS
Pilot Period Initiatives
Following the programming week, each short-listed artist was given six weeks to submit a specific concept proposal informed by their experiences and interactions gained during their time in Calgary. The jury invited each of the five artists to move forward with further researching, exploring and the implementation of these proposals. Throughout the coming two years the artists will be immersed in the shifting landscape, researching and advancing their understanding of this environment, connecting and developing relationships with subject matter experts, and engaging with a variety of communities. Artists selected to develop projects are: Steve Gurysh is an interdisciplinary artist who creates expansive narrative structures through a process linking scientific inquiry and popular culture, employing sculpture, time-based media, and public platforms. Social and ecological systems play multiple roles in his work as raw material, contextual backdrop, and subject matter. Gurysh is the co-founder and co-director of The Drift, in Pittsburgh, PA, which has created temporary public artworks and events along the Allegheny River; curating and collaborating with artists, performers, and technologists; exploring bodies of water as a context, site, and material. He is interested in researching and developing a project that explores 3D printing processes capable of producing objects out of silts and clays collected from Calgary’s watershed. His work will focus on the ways in which cultural and geological narratives become intertwined, a creation story of mud and people. Tim Knowles works across a range of mediums, using drawing, photography, video, sculptural interventions, and participatory events or actions. Based in the UK, his work often exists in multiple forms: as a happening or event, an exhibition, an online project, a publication, and even as an idea spread by word-of-mouth. Much of his work involves collaborations with artists, scientists, other professionals and experts in their fields to develop and realise a project, exploring topics and techniques that are new to him. He will explore the movement of water
through Calgary’s watershed – the landscape, river systems, drinking water, and storm and wastewater systems.
Peter von Tiesenhausen is renowned for his environmental and sitespecific works, paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, events, videos and performances. Based in Grande Prairie, Alberta, his work often involves the community in which he is working and utilizes the materials to be found there. Through an artist residency format with UEP, he will explore several areas of interest including: sound and video of interior, exterior and underground spaces, the tools and equipment used by The City to deliver services, bio-mimicry, bio-engineering and renewable energy sources, river bank stabilization, and fish habitat projects. Stokley Towles has spent more than a decade exploring the systems that keep Seattle alive and the people who run them – libraries, police, drinking water, solid waste, trail systems, sewers and stormwater, wastewater treatment, and city bus drivers. He has evolved a methodology of taking up residency within a system, observing it closely, and interviewing the people who work there. He has performed at conventions, art spaces, bookstores, and nightclubs in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle. He is interested in embedding himself within UEP and working with City staff to further explore Calgary as a place of extreme environments and how The City manages these conditions. His work will take form as a series of performative presentations.
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Becky Shaw makes work that explores a place, an encounter or an object, using live processes, photography, and text. Beginning without an outcome in mind, Shaw gradually develops what feels like the ‘right’ response and spends periods of time exploring and responding to places where people interact together, often where production, education, or care happens. Based in the UK, her works sit within a tradition of process-based art and involve scrupulous attention to context. She will explore the relationship between youth and young adults in Calgary, their water system and their sense of past, present, and future. Using contemporary music as a tool, her work will explore their emotional attachment to the river and place, as well as the architecture of the water utilities infrastructure.
7. Exhibition Water Microbes in Glass
Pilot Period Initiatives
The Calgary-based artist collective, Bee Kingdom was commissioned to research the water and wastewater treatment process in Calgary and to give a glimpse to the incredible world of microbiology that laboratory technicians work with daily. This vital part of providing drinking water and efficient water treatment is fascinating yet invisible and rarely considered. Bee Kingdom spent six months embedded in The City of Calgary’s laboratories at Glenmore Water Treatment Plant and Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant where they worked closely with laboratory staff. They were introduced to the complex process of water treatment, the laboratory routine, and the unique world of water and wastewater microbiology, with firsthand observation through microscopes. Their challenge was to apply their expertise and create works of glass that represent a few of the more visually interesting microbes they encountered. One of their main focuses they determined, in consultation with with the laboratory staff, was the ’activated sludge” or culture of helpful living organisms that are a major part of cleaning the water. As an exchange of knowledge, Bee Kingdom also invited the laboratory staff to their glass blowing studio to demonstrate their working process and the different steps and techniques involved in creating hot-sculpted glass. The final work, two sets of six micro-organism species modelled in hot-sculpted glass, is now part of The City’s civic collection and touring in numerous venues. They represent a mix of the helpful, living organisms that are a major part of cleaning the water, and the fascinating and scary world of detrimental micro-organisms that the lab staff relentlessly look for to remove before they reach our drinking water.
Watershed+ Succession Plan ▲ The rotifer, one of the 6 glass models
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7. Exhibition
“Folks in the lab don’t often get to tell our story, which is is typically only told in data and numbers. I think there is extreme value in using different media to tell a story, and in science we have a million stories.” Norma Ruecker Leader Biology, Water Quality Services, CoC, Interviewed about the program, 2014
The microbiology lab came to the Lead Artist’s attention through one of the corridor discussions in the Water Centre. Being based in this building, informal discussions occurred daily and this initiative was a direct result of this integration. Once identified as a potential opportunity, it was outlined with some members of the micro-biology team and presented and vetted by the Core Group. The idea of involving glass artists with the microbiology lab was inspired by the history of this art form in relation to scientific illustrations. For example in 1922, an algae called Synura developed in the New York City water supply causing unpleasant smell. “On account of the popular interest in Synura, a glass model representing a colony of this organism, prepared by the department of lower invertebrates, was placed on special exhibition in the foyer of the American Museum in January and has attracted considerable attention. On January 15, when Synura was at the zenith of its effectiveness, 15,000 persons visited the Museum as compared with the average Sunday attendance of 5,000” 1. Another notable precedent dates back to the Blasckhas family who, between 1863 and 1936, supplied museums and universities around the world with stunningly lifelike glass models of plants and animals.
Artist Bio
Bee Kingdom Glass is a collaborative studio collective based in Calgary. Ryan Fairweather, Tim Belliveau, and Phillip Bandura met at the Alberta College of Art and Design and built their own glass studio in 2004. The studio specializes in unique, low volume glassworks that are known for their vibrant colour palettes and subject matter. The studio’s practice is artful in nature versus the mass production of the factory tradition.
Partners
Water Resources: Water Quality Services, Microbiology Lab; Recreation: Public Art Program
Media Coverage
CKUA
1. From the publication of the American Museum of Natural History, NYC, January-February Issue 1, Volume XXII, 1922. Via an article by Nicola Twilley The Tastes of Drinking Water on Ediblegeography.com, July 20, 2011
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Project Selection
Pilot Period Initiatives
8. Competition
Led by design advocacy organization Design Talks Institute (d.talks), in collaboration with WATERSHED+, the competition called for alternatives to improve the use, public realm, and ecological value of a lost space. Can lost space offer greater links and connectivity for people? How can a lost space connect fragments into corridors and attract biodiversity? How might they contribute to the management of stormwater? How can lost space be remembered and utilized? The ideas competition was open to anyone including architects, artists, designers, engineers, and students. The call was looking for cross-disciplinary teams to collectively respond to the diverse challenges of design, social sustainability, and low-impact design improvements.
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An international idea competition call Lost Spaces was set up to reframe how underused spaces in Calgary might be used. Part of the public realm, these spaces are rarely designed to function with both social and environmental benefit to the city. A “lost space” was defined as any space that remains underutilized within our urban environment. They might be leftover pieces, they could be a passageway, a roundabout, space between two buildings, a highway shoulder, or remnants of the city’s history and memory, a ghost of the planning past.
8. Competition Through the open competition process, over 290 submissions were received from 42 countries. The jury of industry experts, and the advisory group of City staff who helped define the competition, evaluated submissions looking at clarity and quality of the design, but also at the blend of social, ecological, and economic considerations, the environment’s connections linking people and wildlife to the space; the advances thought on current use of the site.
Pilot Period Initiatives
Accompanying the exhibition of the winning entries, artist Richard Wentworth created as specially commissioned tour of his lost spaces in London’s Kings Cross with a slide show accompanied by an audio description. Project Selection
The idea of a competition came out of conversations that took place within the first WATERSHED+ Lab about Green Stormwater Infrastructure. A number of discussions during the Lab revolved around using left over spaces in the city to implement small scale stormwater management solutions. This thinking about the possibilities of these unused spaces led d.talks to collaborate with WATERSHED+ to develop an idea competition to address the urban, social, and ecological possibilities of these remnant pieces of space. A group of advisors from different City of Calgary departments (Water Services, Transportation, Parks, Planning, and Public Art) helped the development of the competition brief and informed the selection process. The different City departments were interested in taking part to both improve upon existing built form while setting a precedent for the design of future projects. The jury comprised of: Shane Coen, the founder of the landscape architecture firm Coen + Partners; independent curator Diana Sherlock; Susan Szenasy, Editor in Chief of Metropolis Magazine; Pierre Thibault of the architecture firm Atelier Pierre Thibault; and Shauna Thompson, curator at The Esker Foundation.
▼ Lost railways, Lost Spaces First prize, by Laboratoria de arquitectura y paisaje, Edgar Mazo,
Design Talks Institute (d.talks) is a grassroots non-profit organisation dedicated to fostering collaborative and engaging public conversation about design and the built environment in Calgary. Partners
d.talks; Community Services: Parks, Capital Development; Recreation: Public Art Program; Water Resources: Customer & Risk Strategies, Customer & Strategic Services; Environmental Safety Management: Environment Programs and Service; Planning and Development, Calgary Growth Strategies, Planning Strategy, Urban Design and Heritage; Globe Cinema; Atelier Pierre Thibault; Coen + Partners; Contemporary Calgary / C2; Esker Foundation
Media Coverage
Globe & Mail, Metropolis, Archdaily, Bustler, Arrevol, Designboom, Canadian Architect, Metro, Global News
Awards
Mayor’s Urban Design Awards, 2015, Conceptual / Theoretical Urban Design Projects
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Sebastian Meija, Iojann Restrepo, Glenn Pouliquen
Susan S. Szenasy Artists are key to humanizing the 21st century city
Essay — Susan S. Szenasy
Susan S. Szenasy is the Publisher and Editor in Chief of Metropolis Magazine.
This massive urban remake in a century preoccupied with becoming modern while jettisoning the old for the new, wiped out locally significant infrastructure such as historic roads and rail beds, as well as the ability to make buildings and people connect to regional conditions climate, terrain, watershed, and the cultures that grew out of them. This massive remake of cities also hid from public view the equally massive infrastructures we built: our water and sewer systems, trash collection and disposal, the production and distribution of electricity, among others. We became consumers who could not be bothered to find out how these services worked. We paid our taxes passively. Going about our lives of disengagement from the infrastructure, we got polluted waters, massive and toxic landfills, and a fossil fuel-ignited energy system that depleted the ozone layer. It was with this in mind that I arrived in Calgary to look at ideas for converting throw-away spaces into useful, beautiful, healthy contributors to city life. In our current age of intense connectivity through digital technology and the rapid social changes it brings about, programs like The City of Calgary’s WATERSHED+ get noticed by likeminded people around the world. They, too, are searching for their own solutions to urban degradation, the fallout from pragmatic but soulless planning. Urban activists everywhere connect to their local governments and their fellow citizens, with help from a new generation of artists, architects, software engineers, and like-minded citizens. I was in Calgary to see such a group in action.
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When in 2015 the invitation arrived from WATERSHED+ and d.talks asking for me to come to Calgary and serve on the jury for Lost Spaces, an ideas competition, I was intrigued. What modern urban dweller wouldn’t be? After all, in almost every city we find unused, fallow, neglected, indeed lost spaces left in the wake of the massive urban renewals that swept over the first-world in the previous century. This was when urban transportation switched from mass conveyance to millions of individuals each in their automobiles. As highways and roads sliced up the land, they left behind an all too familiar urban detritus — unapproachable roundabouts, desolate swaths of land under bridges, and decimated neighborhoods, among other mistakes of policy and planning.
Essay — Susan S. Szenasy
On the first day of judging, it was gratifying to see that ideas came into this Western Canadian city from far-flung places around the globe. England, Columbia, Sweden, among others sent in noteworthy proposals. This shows a growing world-wide interest in local issues, aided by online postings of competitions’ call for entries. But what impressed me most was the intellectual power that gathered in the jury room, assembled by WATERSHED+, in partnership with d.talks, a public forum for design, and the City of Calgary. This day was to be nothing like other jury days. Unlike most competition juries that rely on their own, often limited expert information, in Calgary we were introduced to subject matter experts versed in the local environment and culture, including indigenous prairie flora, beekeeping, and watershed; beyond such expertise, our advisors had the ability to evaluate what would work for their city. They were asked to be in the jury room to help us make informed choices, based on useful facts relating to each of our favorite proposals. For instance, what type of local flora would be appropriate along bus routes to enliven each trip and remind riders of their prairie world? What species of bees would make local honey production possible in hives stationed in city parks? How to connect with the watershed in all the forms it takes, including the Bow and Elbow rivers, to the city’s complex potable water, as well as sewer system? How to tie fragmented layers of Calgary’s landscape together with its local water resources, undermined by the over-paved land that prevents rainfall and the resulting run-off from filtering into the aquifers? As answers to these questions came we, the jury, understood that this competition had a practical and serious intent. The winning projects would inspire a public conversation around finding remedies for their city’s lost spaces. And that would be followed by broader dialogues on the environmental and human future of the city. As I learned more about WATERSHED+ I saw, in practice, the broadranging influence creative people can have on shaping the 21st century city. Here, artists are doing what others like them have done for centuries. They reveal our world to us by helping us see anew what has become too familiar, therefore unseen and unknown. They are showing their fellow urban denizens that the Calgary watershed is a connected system that embraces the river which flows through their city; the plants that rely on its waters and prevent the erosion of riverbanks; the potable water that comes out of thousands of taps; the wastewater that each person produces and must be cleaned by chemical means; the rain water that becomes filthy run-off instead of seeping into the
ground for natural purification, and the impervious concrete barriers like city streets and roads that stop that natural process.
In Los Angeles, for the past two decades, landscape architect Mia Leherer has been a steady advocate for reclaiming the Los Angeles River. This waterway, a resource for the people’s well-being as well as nourishment for the region’s for its flora and fauna, was paved over by engineers in 1938, to prevent seasonal flooding. Now we know better. Now Lehrer’s advocacy is at the center of rethinking the famous sprawl that influenced equally wasteful land use patterns across North America and elsewhere. Through her tireless efforts and convincing arguments for change, Angelanos sees that building communities around natural resources and connecting people with each other, as well as to nature, are keys to the next generation of environmentally aware, humane planning—essentially rethinking the American city. In Mexico City Gabriella Gomez-Mont founded an urban innovation think tank, Laboratorio Para la Ciudad, for a city of 22 million residents. This writer, artist, curator, and documentarian runs a new 18-person government department tasked by the newly-elected mayor, to imagine it being centered on creativity and civic innovation, and to pull together interdisciplinary teams. Aided by scholars from MIT, Yale, and Harvard, they identify and “highlight that which has been left unsaid, and the things that still have no name,” she told us recently. She sees in her city a “renaissance of civics…civic action of people thinking about how they can use their lives to create space for others and the larger community. We can see these public values through people working on rooftop gardens, or communal projects, donating their ideas and time.”
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WATERSHED+ is part of a global movement I first began to see in New York City where the Department of Sanitation has had the same artist in residence since 1977, with Mierle Laderman Ukeles, whose work is widely known and cited elsewhere. The same spirit of citizen intervention is now carried on by such organisations as Boston’s New Urban Mechanics, a citizen action group embedded in the mayor’s office. These highly skilled, spirited young people with expertise in architecture, digital communication, and political activism reach citizens through social media, set up mobile city halls in neighborhoods that need to communicate with the administration, work with schools, among a growing roster of experimental programs. The spirit of Boston’s New Urban Mechanics has inspired a similar group of activists in Philadelphia.
Essay — Susan S. Szenasy
This same kind of civic action is what I witnessed in Calgary. There, WATERSHED+ is revealing the city’s complex water system, hidden for decades, by top-down modernist planning and policy, from the public’s consciousness. Now, it looks like the new age of transparency and connectivity will redefine Calgary’s watershed for the benefit of the Earth, the region, and the citizens who inhabit this prairie city. It is calling attention to the obvious resources in the river that runs through Calgary, and connecting its citizens with potable water sources for nourishment and sanitary uses, to how gray and black water are reclaimed and reused safely, how the natural bodies of water nurture plants whose root systems prevent erosion, and what the massive tracts of city land, covered in asphalt, are doing the prevent the natural filtration and cleansing of rainwater. In fact, the program sets out to make Calgary’s infrastructure visible. And, as we like to say these days, “infrastructure is culture,” meaning that the built environment represents a people’s aspirations and world views. This kind of knowledge and celebration of an infrastructure will most likely lead to citizens’ commitment to preserving and maintaining it. The primary reason for their actions in creating visible infrastructures is nothing less than life itself.
Screenshots of drone video of Bowmont East Park under construction by Wilco Contractors SW, June 2017 ►
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9. Library / Daily Picture Evolving from a physical resource, the Library became the Daily Picture, a visual blog and an email sent to a growing list of subscribers, initially mostly internal staff. The project and images posted ranged from art projects, infrastructure design, historical information, to natural formations, scientific facts, alternative representations, and different cultural relationship to water, all of these related in one way or the other to water and watersheds. Since 2013, it also became a feature in the quarterly industry magazine of Western Canadian Water. The visual blog reached over 17,000 followers by the end of the pilot period, with the most noted post having over 112,500 notes (high-speed photographs of ink mixing with water by Alberto Seveso). The idea of a Library was identified in the manual as a place where people involved in the program or interested in related issues could find documentation of past and current projects, as well as other relevant initiatives, projects, precedents, and programs. It was intended to be a growing collection of information on projects and initiatives related to the program, internationally and across disciplines. Gathering enough varied material, producing the information in a shareable format, and the lack of a appropriate dedicated location for the library, made it impractical to resource and maintain. The Daily picture, initially a means to draw interest in the program and to demonstrate the variety, interest and cross disciplinarity of projects related to water, became an obvious vehicle to fulfill the role of the Library.
Watershed+ Succession Plan
â–ź Naturally occurring methane bubble trapped in the ice, Abraham lake, AB. Daily Picture
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9. Library / Daily Picture
“The Daily Pictures created a dialogue for me, somebody else I was chatting with, or sometimes created an email chain between different groups. Sometimes it was a personal experience I would have and other times it created a chain from my director saying, “Are we doing something like that?” This is a way for me to stay connected more regularly in having artists in our midst, to know that they were part of working with us and understood what we were working on.” Margaret Beeston Leader Water resources planning & Policy, CoC, Interviewed by amery Calvelli, 2016
Screenshot of some of the Daily Pictures ►
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10. Mentees
Over the course of 2012, four Calgary-based artists began working as mentees to gain experience and provide support, input, and ideas to the Lead Artist, working together in the development and implementation of the program. The initial opportunity to create one mentee was extended to creating four positions. The increase was chosen to broaden the impact of this initiative across a number of disciplines and to provide a breadth of opportunities. The four mentorship offered were: Public Art Project Development and Implementation - Randy Niessen Visualization and Design - Daniel Puloski Self-directed Public Art Project - (unrealised) Voluntary Audit - Peig Abbott Partners
Water Resources; Recreation: Public Art Program
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The intention of the mentorships was to build connections, as well as capacity, with the Calgary arts community. The artists selected, participated, witnessed, and directly took part in a variety of projects and the development of the program.
Pilot Period Initiatives
11. Talks Over the Pilot Period, the program has been presented to and discussed with a variety of audiences locally, nationally and internationally. The talks ranged from presentations to public, arts audiences and engineer societies to biodiversity organisations, historians, landscape architects and geographers. These talks and workshops presented the forward-thinking approach of The City of Calgary, the value of embedding artists in a municipal department, the spectrum of public art and the impact of this cross-disciplinary approach. Sharing the program broadly was an active way to cultivate and develop a dialogue with the public. 2011 - Alberta College of Art & Design, Calgary - Manchester University, Manchester, UK - City of Calgary Society of Professional Engineers, Calgary - Pecha kucha, Calgary 2012 - Copenhagen Art Institute, Denmark - Waterlution, Innovative Water Leadership, Calgary - International Conference on Cross Discipline Collaborations, Boston, Massachusetts, USA - Emily Carr School of Art & Design, Vancouver, BC 2013 - LULU Speaker series, Vancouver, BC - Lawrence Cultural Centre, Lawrence, KS, USA - Richmond, BC, City Staff workshop, Richmond, BC - Waterlution, Water & Imagination, workshop, Calgary
2014 - Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art & Design, Calgary - Creative Cities Network, National Summit, Hamilton, ON - Creative Cities Network, National Summit, Peer-to-Peer Presentation with Paul Fesko, Hamilton, ON - Free State Festival, Lawrence Arts Center, KS, USA - Alberta Water Council Symposium, Calgary - Urban Light Ruhr Symposium, Hamm, Germany - Creative Calgary Congress, with Paul Fesko, Calgary - City Hall School, Calgary - Alberta Water Council Symposium, with Norma Ruecker, Calgary - Esker Gallery, Calgary - Alberta Association of Landscape Architects, Annual Meeting, Calgary 2015 - Alberta College of Art & Design, Calgary - Umbrella Visual Arts Conference, Calgary - Yale University Radio, Yale, CT, USA - International Conference of Historical Geographers, with Paul Fesko, London, UK - University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Dortmund, Germany - Connecting Environmental Professionals, Calgary - Seattle City Public Art, Seattle, WA, USA - Governor’s Conference on the Future of Water in Kansas, Manhattan, KS, USA - University of Sheffield, UK 2016 - University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA - City of Calgary Society of Professional Engineers, Calgary - Art + Water at Oxbow in Georgetown, Seattle, WA, USA - Western Canada Water, Annual Conference, Calgary
Alongside these talks specifically about WATERSHED+, presentations by the artists and guests participating in the program happened throughout the Pilot Period.
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- Velocity, Public Art program for the Commonwealth Games, Glasgow, UK - Glasgow City Council, workshop with City and Region staff, Glasgow, UK - Urban Lights Ruhr Symposium, Dortmund, Germany - Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK
12. Water Centre Studio
Pilot Period Initiatives
For the duration of the Pilot Period the Lead Artist team was based in the Water Centre. Their studio was in the same cubicle format as the employees around them, slightly customized to facilitate collaborative discussions. Beyond that arrangement and the images displayed on their walls, there was little to differentiate them from the rest of the staff.
From the outside this set up might seem counterproductive for a creative practice, but it came to be an essential ingredient in not only the blending of the artist in the organisation, but also giving a daily presence to the program and fostering close relationships. Being literally embedded in the organisation meant discussions could take place quickly and unplanned. A staff with an idea to discuss could pop by the “studio�, the Lead Artist could walk down the corridor to see if one of the collaborator was available to confirm an assumption or give further information. Although the visible outcomes of this set up can be difficult to quantify, a number of projects were a direct result of it. The Fire Hydrant Drinking Fountains would never have had chance to be developed beyond the initial meeting. The ability to walk to someone’s desk, to talk to the Fire Hydrant Supervisor for five minutes, who introduced his colleague in the Cross Connection Department, who walked the team to the meter shop to explain a specific process, meeting on the way the leader of Field Services and bouncing off some ideas. This project took six months from the initial brain storming about decals to installing three fountains in the public realm for one of the busiest public event of the year, involving 32 people from 11 different parts of the business. This would have been an impossible task within that time frame without being a part of the organisation, without working within all of these people.
“Being in the heart of it, they’re one of us.”
Another significant moment was a few weeks after the 2013 flood, when the leader for the flood mitigation group walked in the studio to discuss an issue he had about how to share intangible concepts. The initial informal chat led to discussions about perception, from prediction to adaptation, about emotional values of cities and environment, and ultimately lead to the production of a visualization clarifying the initial concept. That product was just the concretisation of these discussions, the real outcome was the reframing of a question through a cross-disciplinary dialogue, and the demonstration of the value of the alternative and complementary way of thinking an artist brings. All possible because of the presence of the Lead Artist amongst all the other people involved in the department. And it is not simply about efficiency but about the human aspects of these relationships. Without over analysing them, being able to chat about someone’s holiday over lunch, or discussing at the “water cooler” what might be trivial moments but build up a deeper connection, an emotional connection.
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Chris Huston, Manager Field Services, CoC, Interviewed by amery Calvelli, 2016
13. Interviews — a Collective Story
Pilot Period Initiatives
Through 2015 and 2016, writer amery Calvelli and video artist Brad Hays conducted a series of interviews to explore engagement between artists and a range of subject matter experts involved in the program that collectively told the story of the WATERSHED+ program. The interviewees shared their personal experiences, discoveries, and reflections about the program. Through their own voices, we hear how the program evolved and responded to the work of the utility; how the nature of this approach has impacted the work and perspective of artists and staff. They present the communal efforts needed to build and develop this embedded and responsive approach. The series examined the ideas, processes, and approach behind the program, contributing to a broader dialogue about the complexities and nuances involved in deep collaboration, and the process of embedding a way of working over the long-term. The conversations analysed and reflected on the methodologies that re-focused the role of the artist and the municipality, shifting expectations and sharing in the outcomes. Fourteen video interviews were produced. The videos produced about the WATERSHED+ program can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/channel/UCUNsYWfW8Q7wHzPA66rHrTA
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13. Interviews — a Collective Story CHRIS HUSTON, Manager, Field Services, UEP, The City of Calgary — Connecting Pipes to People
Pilot Period Initiatives
A water main break or toilet back-up might be one of the few instances where we’re made aware of the underground pipe system that supports our drinking, storm, and wastewater service. The 14,000-kilometre pipe network carries safe drinking water to our taps, collects, and treats wastewater and returns it to the river. Field Services Manager Chris Huston recalls his team’s involvement with WATERSHED+ and how the work has contributed to deepening public connection with the hidden pipe network. From the 1-844 phone line and Bowmont Park to Forest Lawn Lift Station and the composition of water in The Bow River, these interviews wove through numerous artistic projects. One can hear how The Third Landscape signage situated in a wetland park becomes a film, starring a horse owned by one of the Utilities staff. The point is, when creative process meets engineering capacity, a delicate balance emerges between artistic freedom of expression and the practical constraints of functioning infrastructure. PAUL FESKO, Manager, Risk and Customer Strategy, UEP, The City of Calgary — Connecting Pipes to People As Manager of Risk and Communication Strategy at Utilities & Environmental Protection (UEP), Paul Fesko had a question: how to bridge a public service with public awareness. UEP supplies drinking water, provides sanitary sewer and drainage, removes stormwater, manages waste and recycling, and oversees environmental and safety management for citizens. Reliance on an underground pipe network for Water Services and Water Resources was at odds with an outdated perception that all was “good” when the utility was functioning out-of-sight. How could the public become more connected to water as a resource?
As an engineer, Paul describes the metrics but also revealed how important it was to set the stage for artists to do what they do best: to provoke and question assumptions. Seeking to enrich the skill-set of a team of engineers, he saw the idea of having artists-inresidence as a unique opportunity to bring different perspectives to the work. And moving artists earlier into the project process, such as with Beaumont Park and the Forest Lawn Lift Station, was an immense benefit to the direction these projects took. As for what’s next, Paul describes the program’s future as a book with the titles of the chapters identified, but the content inside is rife with opportunity. CHRIS MANDERSON, Urban Conservation Lead, Parks, The City of Calgary — Complexity Revealed Observing the evolution of bug species is a way to connect with Observing the evolution of bug species is one way to connect with the landscape. Another way to forge connection can be to observe human impact on a wetland park and recognize the dynamic change. In 2005, Laycock Park had been identified as a candidate for wetland compensation. Simultaneously, the UEP Public Art program was in its infancy. Chris Manderson, a biologist and Urban Conservation Lead at Parks, reveals how bringing public art to the table at project inception delineated a path that would better connect with the public at large. The site was complicated, in need of water quality and stormwater treatment considerations, as well as the provision of habitat.
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When The City of Calgary’s Public Art Policy was initiated, it presented a unique allocation challenge for the utility. Paul recounts the early steps involved in the request for proposals to develop the UEP Public Art Plan that would fairly manage public funds. Connecting the public to their watershed would eventually lead to temporary projects such as Celebration of the Bow and the WATERSHED+ public art program.
13. Interviews — a Collective Story
Pilot Period Initiatives
The artistic process helped re-contextualize what restoration looked like, trading preconceptions of a naturalized wetland for the embrace of human alterations. By interlacing complex meaning of the inherently dynamic environment, an opportunity for dialog on the human footprint emerged. Chris describes how the lessons from Laycock Park elevated the approach to the design of Bowmont Park, also a wetland compensation project that utilized public art at design inception. Self-admitting that he didn’t know what to expect with the inclusion of artists in the design, he found the iterative process valuable in challenging professional assumptions, resulting in widened possibilities that were more relevant to the public. FRANK FRIGO, Leader of River Engineering, Watershed Planning Group, UEP, The City of Calgary — We do this for people River Engineering provides technical expertise on water quality and quantity. This division studies the 8,000-kilometre drainage area from the source in the Bow Basin, to Calgary, the first major municipal stop for the Bow River. They observe how rivers change and patterns in fish habitats, erosion, and sediment. The Bernoulli Equation, the Reynolds number, and energy momentum flow off the tongue of River Engineering Lead Frank Frigo. And yet, he describes the watershed with a refreshing approach, revealing character and personality traits to unveil a deeply inter connected system with a tinge of Bipolar Disorder (a watershed prone to both flood and drought with a single rain event). Frank describes the flashback moment he felt upon seeing artistin-residence Rachel Duckhouse’s Bow Flow drawings for the first time. The ink lines replicated the flow patterns so closely that
his connection to the 2013 Flood Event gave him chills. Grappling with how, in his words, “arcane tiny little bit of science” becomes compelling to the public. He is keenly interested in the capacity of art in its many forms to translate the science into meaningful connections.
MARGARET BEESTON, Leader, Resource Planning and Policy, Watershed Planning Division, UEP, The City of Calgary — Gaining Objectivity Accustomed to long-term thinking, the Resource Planning and Policy team predicts future environmental challenges that could impact Water Resources and seeks to connect with Calgarians’ vision of their city. Margaret Beeston, the team’s leader, saw the opportunity to work with artists as a means for her staff to connect more deeply with colleagues in other departments, drawing upon a wider resource of perspectives. She reflects upon the work—the Fire Hydrant Water Fountains as employee engagement, how riparian long-term strategy connects with Parks, and a Green Stormwater Infrastructure Lab exploring community gardens and rainwater dystems layered with social, planning, and transportation goals. Describing the emotional connection that creative practice wove through projects, she notes the effects for citizens and internal staff. A weekly email feed produced by the Lead Artist and featuring an inspirational visual representation of water infrastructure was a favourite way to engage. Equally, a film screening inside The City’s Fabrication and Welding shop, and in particular the screening of
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If the water system functions flawlessly, few of us know it is there. Frank revealed why public connection to the character of the system—the physical relationships of the natural system and fractal interconnectivity—is important. His department’s technical analysis is not just for the City, it’s for all of the citizens. And from what he’s observed of the program to date there is a public appetite for this.
13. Interviews — a Collective Story Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, demonstrate the breadth of interactions and inclusive approach of the program. Margaret commends the curiosity invoked by artistic practice and the widened perspectives resulting in greater objectivity within her department.
Pilot Period Initiatives
SARAH ILEY, Manager of Culture, The City of Calgary — Policy & Plan Culture oversees The City’s Public Art Program and supports over 270 annual festivals and events throughout the city. It is focused on engaging all citizens, meeting each with their own relation to culture. Sarah Iley, Manager of Culture at The City of Calgary, has spearheaded a Culture Plan that is heritage-inclusive and rooted in two policies from 2004: the Civic Arts Policy and the Public Art Policy. Noting that Calgary initiated its 1% for Public Art Program with a Public Art Policy instead of a Master Plan, Sarah identifies the Utilities & Environmental Protection department as unique in defining a Public Art Plan in 2007 for how to interpret the policy. A key outcome of this early thinking were ideas such as reframing how artists submit proposals as well as embedding artists within the business and, in particular, fostering greater opportunities for artists-in-residence. Sarah reflects on the educational role of the WATERSHED+ program and the artist’s contribution to a more wide-reaching story of the importance of water within the environment and the dynamic nature of the system. An example of the unique communication role of public art is the Fire Hydrant Drinking Fountains that draws connection to water treatment. In addition to resolving the desire for an alternative to bottled water at festivals and events, the fountains placed throughout the city playfully provoke: If you can
drink from a fire hydrant, how much of our water is potable? The fountains are configured for social connection with strangers and choosing which tap to drink from is part of the fun. Sarah also notes that as the desire for public art and increased creative opportunities grow so does Calgary’s arts and culture community which encourages more artists and creative practitioners to remain in the city.
Implementing The City of Calgary’s Utilities and Environmental Protection (UEP) Public Art Plan came with a few firsts. Public art funds were pooled to focus art on the river and the watershed instead of on specific objects of water infrastructure. It was the first time a City department had embedded artists within its core business. And, programming for the river had never been done before. What emerged from deliberate project management of the plan was a robust WATERSHED+ program embedding a Lead Artist into Water Resources and Water Services, and generating a series of artist residencies and projects that yielded an alternative approach to public art. Heather Aitken led the project management of the UEP Public Art Plan since its inception. She describes the collaborations between City Business Units and the creative process, knitting artistic practice with engineers, managers, strategists, and communication teams. Setting the stage for creative practice to approach problems from an alternate vantage point, Heather speaks about the value of a “bubble effect” which brings people together under a widened pretext of the watershed, leaving aside for the moment the immediate project demands. It is, in fact, this bubble effect that allows for common goals to emerge as individual project needs are reframed into a larger whole.
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HEATHER AITKEN, Program Coordinator, Public Art Program, The City of Calgary — The Bubble Effect
13. Interviews — a Collective Story RANDY NIESSEN, Public Art Program Specialist, Public Art Program, The City of Calgary — Expanding Opportunities
Pilot Period Initiatives
Artist and recent graduate Randy Niessen had been working as a Programming Coordinator at an artist-run Centre before the WATERSHED+ Mentorship program came calling. In 2010, when the temporary public art installation called Celebration of the Bow River was under development, Randy represented the TRUCK Gallery in developing three of the artist installations: José Luis Torres’ Observatory, Cécile Belmont’s Letter Performances and Lewis and Taggart’s Museum of Bow. The temporary nature of the project sparked curiosity, Randy recalls, and the level of public participation widened his view of public art. Applying for one of the WATERSHED+ Mentorship positions shortly after, Randy found himself coordinating logistics of visiting artists, and working with the Lead Artist. Coordination duties with the program’s artists-in-residence landed him in a kitchen helping Broken City Lab figure out how to produce hard candy for a project. Following the Mentorship, Randy became a Public Art Program Specialist at The City of Calgary where he continues to work on projects in the Utilities & Environmental Protection portfolio. In our conversation, Randy attributes relationship-building to the success of the WATERSHED+ program, and in particular, the Lead Artist’s role in fostering a highly-collaborative approach. The un-hiding of the Forest Lawn Lift Station and the value of a program flexible enough to follow the trajectory of Rachel Duckhouse’s artistic development has left an indelible mark with many in the local artistic community.
BEE KINGDOM, Glass artistsy — Heroes and Villains
Glassblowing collective Bee Kingdom Glass put on hard hats and lab coats, peered under the microscope, and met with water engineers and staff to understand the numerous micro-organisms at work in our water treatment system. The artists’ process included surveys, drawings, and some deft handling of glass. Bee Kingdom’s Philip Bandura and Tim Belliveau share their experience as artists working with WATERSHED+ in the spring of 2014. The Calgary-based artist collective, known for their development of characters as well as for working in the medium of glass, revealed an immediate connection to the micro-organisms in the water process. The artists empathized with them a little, and even found these barely-visible organisms to have a bit of charisma. Many of the organisms are benevolent, but a few, if found, would be considered pollutants. Bee Kingdom decided to produce both. The result was that we draw a deeper connection to our water through the insight of the presence of microorganisms....heroes and villains alike.
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Rotifer. Tardigrades. Stalked Ciliate or Crawling Ciliate. Arcella Amoeba. These micro-organisms are fastidiously counted and monitored in the process of cleaning our drinking water. And if a Cryptosporidium shows up, that’s bad news.
13. Interviews — a Collective Story RACHEL DUCKHOUSE, Artist-in-Residence — Rigour and Intuition
Pilot Period Initiatives
Evolving with a residency that would last a year, UK-based artist Rachel Duckhouse’s daily practice moved from the Shepard Wetland at Ralph Klein Park to the Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant, to a trailer at the Water Centre, and a studio in Telus Spark. She met with countless water engineers, mechanical engineers, physicists, maintenance crews, and administrators. Her work reflects the bioreactors, clarifiers, and filtration of wastewater treatment but also reveals a river’s circumnavigation around built structures: bridges, buildings, treatment plants and irrigation canals. Following the flood, Rachel responded to new flow dynamics. Returning to the engineers who had been scenario modelling for a 100-year flood, she reinterpreted her original drawings. Her inquisitive approach filled sketchbooks. New work incorporated audio reflecting the personal connections she was able to fuse between artist and non-artist. Child curiosity made its way from sketchbook to exhibition at the Alberta Printmakers Society: one child wondered why we didn’t build an arc for the animals before the flood; another asked how cars can see when the water reaches the level of the headlights. This was fresh perspective on the human connection with water. Rachel had a loose plan of what she might explore during her residency, but the evolution of ideas, a result of engaging with numerous staff and Calgarians, led to completely new opportunities. She reflects on her ability to respond to the dynamics of people and new situations as one of the most successful aspects of the residency and a period of growth for her practice as a result. This conversation took place at the John Snow House, a former printmaker’s house operated by artist-run centre The New Gallery at the time, where Rachel first commenced with her residency for WATERSHED+.
BROKEN CITY LAB, Artist-in-Residence — Water Memory
Rooted in community-based social outcomes, Broken City Lab explored the legibility of cities and their infrastructures, but the duration of this residency gave them time to process what they learned differently. The result was threefold: a means to connect with water visually, with sound, and through taste. A hundred river signs convert ubiquitous outfall signs into a playful question. Is the river slow? Is it vague? Is it damaged? The aim is a deepened emotional connection with the river and its function. A second project continues the playful connection, this time, a simple phone call to the Bow River to see what the river would say. Thirdly, memory is provoked with Bow-flavoured candies. In varying hues, the candies respond to blues and greens of a changing river. While it turned out to be much easier to pull out pixels than make candy, the idea was that people are drawn to particular hues based on relative memories of water: the first lake we swim in might be a different colour than the river walk we took with a good friend. Playful in approach, memory is an active ingredient in drawing an emotional connection to the river and in recognizing watershed as sustaining life.
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Making candy was unexpected. In fact, the Ontario-based artist collective Broken City Lab had thought their WATERSHED+ residency might result in a language-based outcome, but candy? That hadn’t crossed their mind.
13. Interviews — a Collective Story NICK MILLAR & MINTY DONALD, Artist-in-Residence — Material Quality
Pilot Period Initiatives
UK-based artists Minty Donald and Nick Millar participated in a WATERSHED+ artist residency in 2013. Their work is laced with performance and a particular quest for the human relationship with water. Arriving in Calgary, a place they recognized from the 1988 Winter Olympics, they saw the residency as an opportunity to focus on the natural and cultural environment, exploring the wonderment of water. Their visits during the residency bookended the 2013 flood, offering opportunities to explore the human experience of water with a depth that only an event of that magnitude can offer. Their research brought them to numerous creeks and tributaries in addition to the source at Bow Glacier. They traveled to Blackfoot Crossing and Timber Ridge in a quest to understand how water manifests. As part of their research, Minty and Nick performed actions with water, exploring both the water’s material quality as well as the intangible way we experience a place through it. They borrowed water, carried water, melted it, and watched it dry. Their videos of puddles of water drying reveal the fluid nature of water in motion. The water acts were performed at different sites throughout the watershed. A final project invited the public to compose the Bow River with drops from tributaries and creeks.
Water samples used in Nick Millar & Minty Donald's Action/Experiment ► #3: Mix Your Own Bow
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13. Interviews — a Collective Story JAY MOSHER AND RORY MIDDLETON, Artist-in-Residence — Nature at Work
Pilot Period Initiatives
The Third Landscape reveals nature at work. The installation by artists Jay Mosher and Rory Middleton is situated at the fringe of The Shepard Wetland at Ralph Klein Park where a rail road, a ditch, and native grass intersect. In an interstitial space between property lines and easements, the installation calls attention to the marginal and often overlooked places in our patterns of settlement. Far from wasted space however, the site is rich with biodiversity and is an important watershed, soaking up and filtering rainwater. Jay and Rory were inspired by the work of botanist and gardener Gilles Clement who identified third landscapes where the manmade and natural co-exist. Their installation calls attention to these landscapes. The point is less about visiting the actual site a nd more about generating awareness for the spaces we’ve created. Accompanying the installation, a series of film shorts call attention to third landscapes with equal parts mystery and revelation. Interstitial landscapes question access. Visiting a third landscape as a destination is commercial. Happening across one is meaningful. Precedents such as the right to roam freely across privately-owned land in Nordic countries and Scotland’s Land Reform Act, among others, call attention to the notion of free space. While nature is at work in third landscapes, our freedom to roam, or limitation to do so, calls up a host of questions around the boundaries that we create.
TRISTAN SURTEES, CHARLES BLANC, Sans façon Lead Artists — Art in Context
Visiting Sans façon’s desk, a group of engineers wondered if the artists could design a decal on a fountain attached to a hydrant. Approaching the request with an open-ended query unpredictably resulted in three fountains designed to plug into fire hydrants in different neighbourhoods. Built in-house, they offered a bottled water replacement at public events but also the opportunity to reflect upon infrastructure as resource for potable water. Surpassing the impact of a decal, the fountains are in their fourth year of circulation throughout the city. The conversation covers artist residencies, collaborations, and infrastructure projects where art has a seat at the table from inception. Questions from staff and artist-in-residence participants are peppered throughout. What emerged in the interview was how relationships were cultivated: with staff, business units, artists, and local organisations. The artistic process began with a line of inquiry and followed a journey of emotional connection. Recalling an encounter with an engineer in the cafeteria immediately following the 2013 flood, the Lead Artist made evident the open access within the program. Rather than postponing artists in time of crisis, the busy engineer validated the program’s value by saying that “now, more than ever, they needed artists.”
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The role of the WATERSHED+ Lead Artist is embedded, which means moving from the studio to a staff desk. It’s connected to an idea of reframing art within a broader social context. Setting up their practice at the Water Centre, Sans façon was uniquely positioned to find ways for artistic thinking to compliment the everyday business of the utility. Due to the artists’ operation within this administrative structure, staff relationships were nurtured and a heightened level of trust in the program has resulted.
Tatiana Mellema A Commitment to Process: WATERSHED+ and The City of Calgary
Essay — Tatiana Mellema
Tatiana Mellema is an independent Curator and a PhD student in Art History at the University of British Columbia.
In order to understand process as an artistic practice, it is useful to consider some historical precedents. In the 1960s various artistic projects resulted in the emergence of conceptual art, defined by Lucy Lippard as “work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious, and/or ‘dematerialized’.” 1 While conceptual works included multiple and opposing practices, the accepted rejection of materiality in favor of the conceptual content of a work would radically alter conventions of art making. Artists such as Daniel Buren, Marcel Broodthaers, and Hans Haacke shifted conceptualism’s theoretical considerations towards a critique of the institution of art and its social systems that are fundamental to its validation.2
1. Lucy Lippard, Six Years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972; a crossreference book of information on some esthetic boundaries …., Praeger: New York, 1973, vii. 2. Alexander Alberro and Sabeth Buchmann, ed., Art After Conceptual Art, MIT Press; Generali Foundation: Cambridge; Vienna, 2006, xxiv.
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It is hard to understand WATERSHED+ as a public art project. It is seemingly invisible to the art world, the project itself not being exhibited in a gallery setting, or installed as a sculpture in front of a city building. Its visual products mimic the briefs of the bureaucratic organisation that it is hosted within. Its artists speak of utility, systems, networks, and attend regular meetings with administrators and engineers. Instead of working within a stereotypically removed artist studio, associated artists use the Utilities and Environmental Protection (UEP) building as their base. I have worked in the arts in Canada for the past sixteen years and have come to understand the intricacies of this project only after numerous engagements with it, since its implications are so far-reaching for Calgary. WATERSHED+ has pushed the framework of public art by embedding the artist within the existing administration and design of water services in Calgary. The significance of this initiative lies in process. The process in producing this City program, and the opportunities that having an artist become an integral part of the UEP affords, by embedding creative processes into the daily management of the city’s watershed.
Essay — Tatiana Mellema
Conceptual practices reflected on the role of the artist, just as much as it redefined the conditions of artworks.3 Artists attempted to bypass the art world by emphasizing methods of production as the value of the work, an approach which has become an important part of contemporary art practice. Enter Art Placement Group (APG) that was a part of this late 1960s period that included a re-thinking of the artist’s role within society beyond the art institution, and a belief that art was a creative resource to be integrated throughout society. Conceived by Barbara Steveni in Britain in 1965 and established a year later by Steveni and John Latham along with Barry Flanagan, David Hall, Anna Ridley, and Jeffrey Shaw, among others, APG negotiated approximately fifteen placements for artists within industries and government—such as British Steel and the UK Department of the Environment—where these artists engaged with host organisations. The significant characteristic of these placements was their “open brief”—activities were not intended to result in a pre-agreed plan or a specific artwork, instead the character of the collaboration was to develop during the partnership, the context deciding the work.4 For APG art was to be given a new role as open cooperation, and should be included in the production process of everyday life, so that each may gain from the other’s perspectives and approaches.5 According to Claire Bishop, what needs to be appreciated about APG today is their “determination to provide a new post-studio framework for artistic production, to create opportunities for longterm, in-depth, interdisciplinary research, to rethink the function of the exhibition, and to create an evaluative framework for both art and research that displaces any bureaucratic focus on immediate and tangible outcomes.” 6 Much like APG, one of the defining characteristics of the WATERSHED+ project has been in its establishment of artistic process as a core part of everyday government—in this case the management of Calgary’s water systems. Similar to APG’s open brief, the focus is on developing creative thinking in the conception of structures and systems in collaboration with the UEP. This open-ended process allows for artistic projects to evolve over time and provide a meaningful response to the situation, rather than serving as a public art project with a predetermined result. Instead of a traditional patronage relationship, artists work within water management to collaborate with individuals through various levels
Consider for example the artist residency initiative that came out of WATERSHED+, which invites national and international artists to develop, experiment, and make new work based on context specific research with a flexible approach to achieving outcomes. Rachel Duckhouse, one of the program’s first artist in residence (2012-2013) learnt from a range of specialists at the UEP on how water moves through city infrastructure. Working primarily in drawing, she made new pieces in consultation with various City employees as a way to understand how Calgary’s Bow and Elbow rivers flow under normal circumstances and during flood events. This collaborative process developed not only the practice of Duckhouse, but engaged employees in new ways of thinking through water systems and mapping. Her residency also engaged the city of Calgary, Duckhouse becoming an
3. Benjamin Buchloh, “Conceptual Art: From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of Institutions,” October 55, (1990): 119. 4. Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, “The Politics of Interventionist Art: The Situationist International, Artist Placement Group, and Art Workers’ Coalition,” Rethinking Marxism 21, (2008): 42. 5. Ibid. 6. Claire Bishop, “Rate of Return: The Artist Placement Group,” Artforum International 49, (2010): 236. 7. Sans façon, ed., WATERSHED+ Manual, City of Calgary; Public Art Program: Calgary, 2010, 7.
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of administration, design and on-site work. The process of building this collaboration on all levels within the UEP allows for problems to be identified that were not known before, the artist representing an independent standpoint. The WATERSHED+ manual states: “It is an ambition to facilitate the broader creative thinking that exists often unrecognized at the heart of the design process, from the engineer, the economist, the strategist or the artists, that can generate a profound impact even as it builds new forms of integration.” 7 Results can often be varied, and are sometimes highly visible (such as the popular Fire Hydrant Drinking Fountain) while others are more discreet, generating shifts in perspectives, design and production. The UEP’s commitment to facilitating WATERSHED+, whose outcomes and deliverables are more open, is in fact the crux and strength of this project.
Essay — Tatiana Mellema
active and important member of the cultural community, and exhibiting her residency work at TRUCK Contemporary Art Gallery. Through the process of working with City staff, Duckhouse opened up what is a seemingly invisible system of infrastructure, and had an immeasurable impact on the individuals she connected with. The full impact of WATERSHED+ is yet to be seen, and there is no guarantee that its influence will ever be easy to measure. Moreover, some of the most innovative projects initiated through WATERSHED+ are still in their early stages, such as the Dynamic Environment Lab that has so far resulted in the proposal of six public art projects to be developed in collaboration with the UEP and a group of international artists. However, it is the commitment of UEP to WATERSHED+’s longterm way of working that will ensure the continual support and transformation of the City unit, actively opening itself up to innovative possibilities of public engagement. Moreover, as a Public Art framework, the project provides artists with opportunities to develop their own practices through meaningful engagements that create significant local impact. This is not a fly-in-fly-out approach to site specificity, but a commitment on the part of artists to significantly research and respond to place. While seemingly invisible, it is this commitment to the intangible process that makes WATERSHED+ among one of the most innovative public art projects in Canada. By embedding artists within the UEP, there is value placed at the core of the City unit in creative processes that open up their systems of working. Similarly, this open-ended collaboration allow for artists to expand their practices in new directions while meaningfully engaging with the situation they are working in. It is this mutually beneficial partnership that allows for both sides to surrender themselves to the context and work together to actively achieve unique results that address the complex circumstances of Calgary. In the end though, it is not the result that entirely matters, but instead the method in which the partners shape the work, impacting both the artists and the community in which WATERSHED+ finds itself.
Twyla Hutchinson, Planning Engineer, working with Rachel Duckhouse ►
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â–ź Wolf Keller, CoC expert on river Flood Mitigation,
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talking to the Dynamic Environment Lab artists during a site visit
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Ingredients
Ingredients
or What makes this process different
Wolf Keller Retired Director of Water Resources, CoC, Interviewed about the program, 2014
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“It’s important to get the emotional side of things; the spiritual side of things; that part inside of people that connects with stuff that isn’t just a physical object, but the meaning of things. What do you mean the meaning of water, the importance of the environment? These are concepts, they are not structures or objects; they are concepts that need representation in a way that preserves that, and that’s art, and that’s why you need artists. They have that sensibility to take concepts, emotions and feelings and turn them in to representations that people can relate to.”
1. Responsive The intricacy of a context changes constantly. This program responds to a complex set of elements: a municipal department with rotating staff and evolving strategies and priorities; a social and cultural context; a dynamic environment; a national and international public art dialogue.
Ingredients
The program has to be responsive to this changing context to be truly integrated and relevant. Relevant for the UEP business units and staff; for the artists involved working with up-to-date issues and informed by the previous projects; for the public with a maturing relationship to their environment and to contemporary public art; and relevant to the evolving public art field.
“Sometimes we don’t always take the time to make the space for those questions or put a middle ground between what questions we need to answer. A lot of times working with WATERSHED+ allowed us to do that, to put an issue on the table and everybody has their own perspectives so we can take that space to ask questions and be curious about it.” Margaret Beeston Leader Water resources planning & Policy, CoC, Interviewed by amery Calvelli, 2016
2. Outcomes are not preconceived
“When we started nobody knew what to expect and went in with an open mind so there was no preconceived notions of what the limitations were. Opportunities were limitless and I think that made a huge impact in facilitating that entire process.” Lee Hang Project Engineer, CoC project manager on the Forest Lawn Lift Station, Interviewed about the project, 2014
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The artworks come out of the process of working with UEP, each initiative tailor-made to that specific time and place. The artists on WATERSHED+ take a journey to explore and understand the context; the artwork evolution is directed by the relationships and experiences developed along the way. The openness of the outcome allows for unexpected possibilities, creating richer and more relevant projects.
3. A meaningful dialogue between parties
Ingredients
WATERSHED+ is made up of moving parts, flexible, responsive, and ultimately based around people. The environment in which this dialogue flourishes, with respect and sensitivity, allows for a mutual discovery in subject, process, and outcomes. The result becomes more than the sum of its parts.
“I actually found it quite valuable, meeting the different artists and talking about their projects. The way that each one approached what we do differently and had a different perspective and ideas was eye-opening. I think I got out of it way more than the artists probably did, just in changing the way I think.” Chris Huston Manager Field Services, CoC, Interviewed by amery Calvelli, 2016
“The core idea of this alternative method for a public art commission is developing the process together, being part of the ongoing conversation even if there isn’t any public art identified yet, and not just focusing on the completion of the work as an end result.” Dr. Cameron Cartiere About WATERSHED+ in "Beyond Institutional Critique: Artists as Civic Employees", Reclaiming Art / Reshaping Democracy – The New Patrons & Participatory Art, Estelle Zhong Mengual, Xavier Douroux (eds.), Les presses du réel, 2017
4. A receptive and supportive host
“Let’s put it this way, when you introduce a new aspect like public art into a normal project, it’s a different process. You need to be prepared for more than just delays but that it will also be different. This doesn’t mean that it is bad but it’s interesting, and it needs extra effort and some support from my part and my project engineers so we can all go forward and deliver something exciting.” Gregory Kozhushner Project Engineering - Underground, CoC, Interviewed about the program , 2014
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An essential part of the success of the WATERSHED+ program is the willingness and support of UEP, from leaders and projects managers, staff and management. They value what a complementary voice adds and are willing to explore what it might bring to their work.
5. Staff see themselves in it WATERSHED+ is part of UEP, it explores and reflects the work, the issues, and the ambitions of the department. Water professionals are often modest, they know the importance and value of their daily work, but their stories are rarely shared. The initiatives expand these stories and brings different worlds together, creating connections.
Ingredients
“From the design stage going forward we really had an opportunity to do something different. And for me, as an operator looking at this lift station, the artists were able to take the lift station functionality and do something with that that was actually meaningful to us in operations.” Chris Huston Manager Field Services, CoC, Interviewed about the Forest Lawn Lift Station, 2014
“What it has taught us is to look in more dimensions, what is a deeper message that can be conveyed through this (an engineering project) and actually some of the “beauty” that is associated with what we are doing.” Bert van Duin Senior Engineer Development Approvals, CoC, Interviewed about the program, 2014
6. The art responds to the subject, the art is not the subject
“It provides beauty but I also think it provokes questions and a different way of thinking about the city and how we use it. For example, from an interpretation perspective telling people what’s going on it’s not necessarily a very linear thing like an interpretive sign. This is a process that, if it’s done well and if it works well, will make people stop and think about what’s in front of them. Using the art as a way to provoke thought and discussion is, in my view, one of the most important things we can do in any space. So beauty, absolutely, and the things one traditionally associate with public art are very important here, but the fact it can provoke thought and discussion from a different perspective on what we have, is what I look for.” Chris Manderson Urban Conservation Lead, Parks, CoC, amery Calvelli interview, 2016
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Within WATERSHED+, developing works solely for an art audience is not enough. The works are about how they articulate and reflect people’s relationship to the watershed and to the city, whilst also being part of a contemporary art dialogue.
7. The role of an artist in a team can be as valuable as the artist making a product
Ingredients
Artists bring an alternative thinking process to a discussion. This complementary perspective allows for a reconsideration of assumptions and produces richer responses. The role of the artist in a team also defines a time to explore and ask questions beyond trying to find answers.
“We moved on from asking “do we want public art on this project?” to “is it a project where we want an artist at the table?” The involvement of artists on a project creates the space for a different discussion, for different groups of people to question underlying assumption in a very collaborative way.” Chris Manderson Urban Conservation Lead, Parks, CoC, Debrief discussion to selected artists during the Dynamic Environment Lab, 2016
8. Spectrum of public art
“There are about nine in my team. Generally they are all hydro-technical specialists who, like me, are involved, approach the rivers and some of the systems that we deal with (stormwater, sanitary systems), from a very numeric stand point. [...] Especially with the river flooding we tend to think in very numeric terms, we tend to think in very technical terms, but we do think that there is a really important role, in terms of having the public or anyone that’s looking at this issue, understand this from a more visceral stand point.” Frank Frigo Leader of River Engineering, CoC, amery Calvelli interview 2016
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WATERSHED+ revolves around creating an emotional connection. Public art can take many forms and be many things. A performance, a phone line, an alternative solution to an infrastructure design, or an integrated work onto a structure, all these forms of public art contribute to developing that emotional connection. The value in bringing artists into this discussion without determining the outcome, lies in the possibilities this involvement can take.
9. Respectful
Ingredients
The artists are invited into an organisation to respond to specific aspect of the watershed. The artists are welcomed to meet the staff, do site visits, have presentations from subject matter experts, experience day-to-day operations, etc. This welcoming and invitation at the heart of the organisation also comes with a need to be respectful of people’s time, sensitivities about current subjects and the need for a municipal organisation to have a specific attitude. This doesn’t mean that the artist has a limited brief and restricted impact, it implies that the artists is responding to a specific context, which requires some additional sensitivity and maturity.
“I never felt like I walked into a situation where there wasn’t already some momentum to be utilized. This was important for a person that was stepping out of meetings with Provincial regulators to ensure that my time was being useful — and I certainly felt that it always was. There was always so much back work that had been done. That’s what was important, there’s been a lot of thinking about how does this fit in: how does this make sense, what are we going to talk about, what are relevant themes or whatever project opportunities we might have, or, flipping that on the reverse, what projects might make sense for this kind of a theme.” Frank Frigo Leader of River Engineering, CoC, amery Calvelli interview 2016
10. Lead artist
“We needed people that are themselves artists […]. When I first met them I really couldn’t figure out this role: ”Lead Artist”. What does that actually mean? Does that mean they do all the sculpting and all the painting? […]. These are the people who are going to develop the project (WATERSHED+), they are not accountants or engineers and it’s appropriate that’s who you need. They have really made it a point to understand what we are about, what’s important to the business and what’s important to what we do to the community. They have worked to understand this role which is a big part in making the program a success.” Wolf Keller Retired Director of Water Resources, CoC, Interviewed about the program, 2014
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The Lead Artist provides a critical and curatorial oversight of the program’s implementation and evolution. The Lead Artist helps to shape it to respond to the ongoing changes. They provide a critical context for artists commissioned, a point of critical dialogue to inform the artists’ concepts. They are the creative intermediary between the artists and the staff members, introducing, facilitating connections and being a guide to this situation. The Lead Artist also creates a presence for the program within the organisation, giving visibility and advocacy to this way of working.
11. It takes time
Ingredients
Working within a municipal setting takes time. Beyond this, the WATERSHED+ projects take time as they embrace a creative process throughout. The exploratory nature of this process means it is not linear nor defined from the outset. It is experimental: ideas need to be tested and mature, relationships need to be initiated and developed. The artists are working within an organisation, and they have to collaborate and take other people on this journey. It takes time but it is so much richer for it.
“There is a tremendous amount of work in getting from zero to a finished significant installation […]. It doesn’t just happen and isn’t just a win, and it isn’t just “let’s pick something that’s neat”. It’s much more complex, and I think that’s an important part of what we are trying to convey through what we are doing here, that this is not simple and you have to put the time and resources into it if you want to get the outcomes that are significant pieces which enhance the city and get a message across […]. To leave behind lasting works that embody those concepts and increase interest of the city, the beauty of the city, and the livability of the city.” Wolf Keller Retired Director of UEP Water Resources, CoC, Interviewed about the program, 2014 Sailing Stone from Racetrack Playa, California. Daily Picture ►
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Our Lead Artists Trusted Members of the Family
Our Lead Artists
The following reflects conversations between Core Group members hosted by the Project Manager and the Communication Advisor.
Working within the public sector required tenacity and acknowledgement of the unique challenges and processes that live within this space. This willingness to keep going down what can be a difficult road, despite challenging constraints and shifting priorities, helped the staff involved in the WATERSHED+ initiatives to have the confidence and desire to keep moving forward too, despite not always knowing the exact outcome. The process of developing projects this way is at the heart of the Lead Artists’ practice and this belief and relentless work in demonstrating its value helped bring staff along. In a program based around people, the Lead Artists came to the program as expert relationship builders and took the time to ask questions and truly listen before they responded. This expertise as relationship builders became essential. Their innate curiosity and desire to understand the complexities of the business — the people, the environment, and the community — opened doors, built bridges between teams, and, ultimately, changed how staff members approach their own work. Like any family, this group worked together to navigate the unknown, supported by the sensitive and responsive Lead Artists who took the time to inform, collaborate, communicate, advocate, and listen. They took the time, effort, and dedication to build relationships, to take us along on the journey, and recognized that we needed time to recognize what they already understood. Public art can be an intimidating and unfamiliar realm for many. Translating complex works and processes into a language that is accessible and resonates helped to shift the notion of public art from a thing to a process.
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Families are complex and The City of Calgary’s staff family is no exception. Coming into this complicated family — one with layers of priorities, goals, programs, and people — was no easy feat, especially when pioneering a public art initiative that challenges staff to look at the work, the city, and the environment differently. As Lead Artists, Sans façon became part of the family and embraced their role as confidants, problem solvers, ambassadors, and trusted partners. Their ability to connect with people, put them at ease, and make art accessible while staying true to contemporary public art practice, helped staff to not only accept the role and contribution of artists, but to seek it out.
THE NOTION OF FAILURE
The Notion of Failure
The notion of failure was talked about repeatedly during the pilot period. The idea behind a pilot period is just that, a pilot: trying out how proposed initiatives get shaped in relation to current circumstances, trying out unexpected and untested methods, initiating new partnerships to see if they are the right ones, responding to requests, and trialing projects. Developing the pilot period came with the acceptance that some work and effort may not lead to the initially intended outcome and could, at first glance, be seen as a failure. For some, this was seen as a risk. Not all projects came to a tangible result or demonstrated the work undertaken in their development. However, that journey itself was a productive process for the rest of the program. Some projects faced insurmountable bureaucratic processes, some ideas just didn't work (no matter how much chartering, planning, and City alignment pieces were done), and some became amalgamated with other projects. Each hurdle that was faced enriched the rest of the projects by helping to tailor and refine, and paved the way for more successful efforts subsequently. This process of learning by making, and experimenting to refine, is a common journey for an artist but not always a comfortable process for a municipal organisation. It was, however, a journey that was willingly embarked upon by all parties. All the initiatives, one way or another, directly informed the development of the program and helped its refinement, its evolution, and tailored it further to the work of UEP and to Calgary. This process of trying, learning, and adapting is an inevitable trait of the creative process involved in forging new ground. It has been an important aspect of the pilot period and, by extension, has become one of the essential qualities of the program.
Watershed+ Succession Plan ▲ Crown splash, with rim and satellite droplets. Daily Picture
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Outcomes / Recommendations
Outcomes / Recommendations
The Observations and Outcomes illustrate the results of this approach, taking the initial vision introduced in the original WATERSHED+ manual, the development through the pilot period initiatives, and the feedback from all involved, especially the in-depth participation of City staff in the Core Group. These outcomes can be read in different ways, the impacts and benefits differ depending on the works and roles but overall reflect the collaborative process involved in implementing and refining this program. The Recommendations respond to the Outcomes and the evolution of the program and present ways to shape what will be needed to take this approach to the next stage.
“This is a hard project to present at a “Public Art Year in Review” when up against the powerful visual images of other projects— the images for this project pretty much depict people in offices sharing ideas. The paradigm shifts that can happen through this type of work and the incremental steps towards better civic policy or resource management are hard to capture in a photo. Process is always a more difficult thing to quantify than product. But this work really matters.” Cath Brunner Director of 4Culture’s public art program, Seattle, about the WATERSHED+ Public Art Residency, in American for the Arts Public Art Network, Year in Review, 2014
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The Observations, Outcomes and Recommendations acknowledge that this program is unusual in its approach to art and in the involvement of artists within a city department, and was the fruit of a complex collaborative process.
Outcomes / Recommendations
“When offering such a different model of public art commissioning, how does one manage the fear of change or the intimidation of ambition? Part of the transition relies on the relationships that are built over time. The right people need to be at the table from the beginning. It all takes time and the key for the success of this model within the Department of Utilities and Environmental Protection was the department’s willingness to take that time needed for the process to evolve, even if not much “stuff” was initially produced, because they recognized that change is longer term. Great things are achievable when all those pieces are in place. Thoughtfulness takes time and it moves beyond tangible deliverables.” Dr. Cameron Cartiere About WATERSHED+ in "Beyond Institutional Critique: Artists as Civic Employees", Reclaiming Art / Reshaping Democracy – The New Patrons & Participatory Art, Estelle Zhong Mengual, Xavier Douroux (eds.), Les presses du réel, 2017
Diagram showing the connections between WATERSHED+ initiatives, City of Calgary ► Departments and Business Units, and external organizations
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Watershed+ Pilot Period
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PROFESSIONALS
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Diagram continued’ p192
GENERAL
190— 191
MEDIA
Lead Artist Engagement
MEDIA
Watershed+ Pilot Period
LOCAL
NATIONAL
192— 193
INTERNATIONAL
The Pilot Period in Numbers 52 — City of Calgary Business Units,
Departments and Working Units 8 — Community Services
Outcomes / Recommendations
Recreation, Arts & Culture, Public Art Program, Events Services / Parks : Urban Conservation, Environmental & Education Initiatives, Capital Development, Cultural Landscape / Calgary Neighbourhood Services : Social programs and service, Social supports / Calgary Fire Department
39 — UEP 22 — WATER RESOURCES, including: Infrastructure Planning & Delivery, Infrastructure Delivery, Project Engineering, Underground, Inspector Services / Water Quality Services : Microbiology Watershed Assessment, Laboratory Operations, Regulatory Affairs & Compliance, Water Quality Compliance: Industrial Monitoring, Stormwater Pollution Prevention, Support Services / Watershed Planning: River Engineering : Resource Analysis / Citizen Programs, Resources Strategy, Flood Mitigation / Customer & Strategic Services : Business Strategy & Analysis Communication / Customer & Risk Strategies 16 — WATER SERVICES, including: Field Services : Asset Maintenance : Stormwater & Sanitary Infrastructures, Lift Stations / Meters Projects : Cross Connections / Asset Assessment, Asset Operations /
Operations :Hydrants Projects, Distribution System Maintenance, Distribution System Operations / Water Treatment : Operations / Construction Services : Capital Constructio / Environmental Safety Management : Environment Programs and Service : Corporate Environment Stewardship
2 — Transportation Roads : Traffic, Field Operations : Sign Manufacturing
Fleet Services Fleet Operations, Manufacturing, Fabrication Welding
Planning and Development Calgary Growth Strategies, Planning Strategy, Urban Design and Heritage
Corporate Analytics & Innovation Asset Information & Mapping, Water Design
43 — Partner and
AECOM; Alberta College of Art & Design; Alberta Printmaker’s Society; Art Gallery of Calgary; Associated Engineers; Atelier Pierre Thibault; Banff Centre - Walter Phillips Gallery; Blackfoot Crossing historical park; Calgary Cinematheque; Contemporary Art Gallery; CsIF (Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers); Coen + Partners; Contemporary Calgary / C2; d.talks; Doors Open Calgary; Esker foundation; F&D Scene Changes; Glasgow University; Globe Cinema; Haight Gallery; Jane’s Walk Calgary; John Snow House -The New Gallery; Kasian Gallery; Latitude 52; Maple Reinders; Marshall Tittemore Architects; Metropolis magazine; National Music Centre; Nemalux LED lighting; O2 Planning+Design; Source2source; Stride Gallery; Telus Spark Science Centre; The New Gallery; TRUCK, Contemporary Art in Calgary; University of Alberta; University of Calgary - Environmental, design faculty; University of Regina - Prairie Adaptation Research collaborative; Untitled Art Society; Urban Rain Design; Waterlution; Western Canadian Water; WILCO.
60 — Media
Coverage Program: Radio Canada, Alberta; Radio Canada, Saskatchewan; FFWD; Public Art Review; CJSW; Canadian Art; Avenue Magazine; The Calgary Journal; Western Canadian Water; The Artful City PHD on cultural planning case study of W+, Nipissing University & University of Toronto, 2014 Chapter by Dr. Cameron Cartiere, in The New Patrons, published by Sciences Po, Paris, Nov 2016 / Residencies: Rachel Duckhouse: Avenue
194— 195
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Participating Organizations
Outcomes / Recommendations
The Pilot Period in Numbers Magazine, CJSW, CBC , The Calgary Herald, Broken City Lab: Avenue Magazine, Calgary Herald, CBC News, CTV, Calgary is Awesome, Nick Millar & Minty Donald: The Goose, Creative Carbon Scotland , curiousarts / Film screenings: Beatroute / East Bowmont Park: Canadian Architect, The Calgary Herald, Landscape Paysages Magazine / Fountains: Global News, Metro, The Calgary Herald, CBC Homestretch, Avenue Magazine, CJSW, Ideas Green, CBC news, CBC Eye Opener, Public Art Review, The Artful City / Lift Station: The Calgary Herald , Canadian Consulting Engineer, Metro , CJSW, Calgary Sun, Water Environment & Technology, CBC, Canadian Strategic Consultant, 660 News, 770 AM , The Huffington Post, Next City, Avenue Magazine, Global News, The Artful City / Exhibition: CKUA / Competition: Globe & Mail, Metropolis, Global News, Metro, Archdaily, Bustler, Arrevol, Designboom, Canadian Architect.
50 — Talks and
Presentations Alberta College of Art & Design, Calgary / Manchester University, Manchester, UK / City of Calgary Society of Professional Engineers, Calgary / Pecha kucha, Calgary / Copenhagen Art Institute, Denmark / Waterlution, Innovative Water Leadership, Calgary / International Conference on Cross Discipline Collaborations, Boston, Massachusetts, USA / Emily Carr School of Art & Design, Vancouver, BC / LULU Speaker series, Vancouver, BC / Lawrence Cultural Centre, Lawrence, KS, USA / Richmond, BC, City Staff workshop, Richmond, BC / Waterlution, Water & Imagination, workshop, Calgary / Velocity, Public Art program for the Commonwealth Games, Glasgow, UK / Glasgow City Council, workshop with City and Region staff, Glasgow, UK / Urban Lights Ruhr Symposium, Dortmund, Germany / Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK / Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art & Design,, Calgary / National Summit of Creative Cities Network, Hamilton, ON / National Summit of Creative Cities Network, Peer-to-Peer Presentation with Paul Fesko, Hamilton, ON / Free State Festival, Lawrence Arts Center, KS, USA / Alberta Water Council Symposium, Calgary / Urban Light Ruhr Symposium, Hamm, Germany / Creative Calgary Congress, with Paul Fesko, Calgary / City Hall School, Calgary / Alberta Water Council Symposium, with Norma
8 — Awards Americans For the Arts - Public Art Network- 2014 Year in Review Watershed+ Public Art Residency / Americans For the Arts - Public Art Network- 2014 Year in Review. Fire Hydrant Drinking Fountains / Calgary Downtown Vitality Award, 2015, Fire Hydrant Drinking Fountains / Mayor’s Urban Design Awards 2013, Honourable Mention: Conceptual Theoretical Urban Design Project, Bowmont Park / Canadian Society of Landscape Architects AAPC, National Merit 2015, Bowmont Park / Mayor’s Urban Design Awards, 2015 Category: Urban Fragments, Forest Lawn Lift Station / Mayor’s Urban Design Awards, 2015, Conceptual Theoretical Urban Design Projects, Lost Spaces Competition / 40 under 40, 2014, Calgary Avenue Magazine, Lead Artist.
447 —Applications to the
Program’s Open Calls 74 — RESIDENCIES 83 — LAB 290 — COMPETITION
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Ruecker, Calgary / Esker Gallery, Calgary / Alberta Association of Landscape Architects, Annual Meeting, Calgary / Alberta College of Art & Design, Calgary / Umbrella Visual Arts Conference, Calgary / Yale University Radio, Yale, CT, USA / International Conference of Historical Geographers, with Paul Fesko, London UK / University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Dortmund, Germany / Connecting Environmental Professionals, Calgary / Seattle City Public Art, Seattle, WA, USA / Governor’s Conference on the Future of Water in Kansas, Manhattan, KS, USA / University of Sheffield, UK / University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA / City of Calgary Society of Professional Engineers, Calgary / Art + Water at Oxbow in Georgetown, Seattle, WA, USA / Western Canada Water, Annual Conference, Calgary.
The Pilot Period in Numbers 62 — Countries of Applications to the Program’s Open Calls
18 — RESIDENCIES (5 of them are the same as for the Lab) 9 — LAB 42 — COMPETITION
Outcomes / Recommendations
Participants Peig Abbott, Hiba Abdallah, Heather Aitken, Cory Albers, Bernie Amell, Gail Anderson, Sid Andrews, Josh Anderson, Didier Arnould, David Atkinson, Joshua Babcock, Matt Baker, Phillip Bandura, Patrick Bardie, Pat Bardiz, Kevin Barth, Corinna Baxter, Margaret Beeston, Tim Belliveau, Noel Begin, Mark Bennett, Jennifer Berwanger, Jeff Biggar, Anna Blaxley, John Bonnycastle, Laura Boone, Nicole Borenovich, Carolyn Bowen, Niravanh Bounsombath, Cliff Brady, Billy Brandt, Valentin Brouko, Kelvin Brown, Andy Campbell, Heather Campbell, amery Calvelli, Aldrino Canlas, Ginger Carlson, Obey Chanthavong, Marcia Chapman, Bill Chisholm, Vania Chivers, Coben Christiansen, Kenneth Clogg-Wright, Shane Coen, Steven Cottingham, Lorna Crowshoe, Gregor Cuddeback, David Danchuk, Dwayne Darling, Gerry DeMan, Sarah Demko, Denise Di Santo, Rachelle Dillon, Jamie Dixon, Minty Donald, Susan Dong, Matthew Dorma, David Down, Brock Downey, Bill Doxsee, Russ Dueck, Rachel Duckhouse, Fran Dunn, Pamela Duncan, Katelyn Dunning, Lee Dupras, Caylee Dyck, Stacey Dyck, Marlis Eaton, John Enes, Tibor Eres, Randy Erick, Ben Ethier, Stacey Everett, Ryan Fairweather, Kayley Fesko, Paul Fesko, Emlyn Firth, Anette Fischer, Kim Fletcher, Frank Frigo, Joanna Fugler, Maria Galdon, Randy Girling , Ken Goodwin, Melanie Gray, Jim Green, Joe Groat, Steve Gurysh, Catherine Hamel, Lee Hang-Liu, Lesley Hatch, Cheryl Harmsworth, David Harrison, Hagen Hartwell, Melisa Hauzer, Brad Hays, John Headley, Alex Heathcott, Dennis Helmeczi, Heather Hendrie, Jasna Heinrichs, Mac Hickley, Quyen Hoang, Maureen Hogdan, Pati Holloway, Bob Hoyt, Andy Hughes, Chris Huston, Twyla Hutchison, Sarah Iley, Wayne Intveld, Ted Jackman, John Jagorinec,
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Scott Jamieson, Trevor Jensen, Jayda Karsten, Wolf Keller, Joe Kellner, Kristopher Kelly Frère, Megan Kerluke, Ryan Kidd, Andrew King, Madeleine King, Natasha Kinloch, Jennifer Klazek, Gregory Kozhushner, Tim Knowles, Nada Ladhani, Justin Langlois, Shannon Lanigan, Brad Larson, Eric Laurier, Kate Letizia, Rene Letourneau, Dan Limacher, Andrea Linkert, Kaitlynn Livingstone, Mike Luck, Ron MacDonald, Michael Magnan, Alan Mah, Stan Makar, Octavia Malinowski, Chris Manderson, Peter Markey, Marko Markicevic , Sarah Marshall, Maurice Mast, Brian Maude, Kelly Maxwell, Bill May, John McConnell, Kim McCulley, Dave McGillivray, Ciara McKeown, Kyle McManus, Tatianna Mellema, Carla Mendes Jeffrey Meneses, Fernandes Da Silva, Deborah Miall, Rory Middleton, Nick Millar, Ken Mitchell, Marissa Mitton, Chris Moffatt, Ian Morley, Karly Mortimer, Jay Mosher, Joseph Mosca, Ioan Mosu, Michelle Mueller, Mohamad Muhieddine, Jane Mulreay, Colleen Muraski, Andrew Murphy, Robin Murphy, Dan Myers, Amanda Nagel, Mindy New, Manny Ngwudike, Randy Niessen, Tara Nychkalo, Kate O’Neil, Yan Olivares, Randal Olive, Doug Olson, Jeremy Pavka, Kevin Robert Perry, Jason Petrie, Christian Pfeiffer, Pat Phillip, Edith Phillips, Kelly Pike, Christopher Plouffe, David Plouffe, Sam Pogosian, Bianca Portoraro, Risto Protic, Charles Pullan, Daniel Puloski, Rob Pritchard, Dianne Quan, Afrah Rayes, Michelle Reid, Penelope Reid, Bev Rempel, Andy Riccio, Karen Robertson, George Roman, Amy Ross, Nicole Rowney, Norma Ruecker, Rav Saini, Harpreet Sandhu, Frank Sarro, Dave Sauchyn , Nadine Sauder, Yvano Seguin, Joe Schebel, Dean Scott, Rachael Seupersad, Patricia Shako-Parris, Becky Shaw, Lane Shordee, Diana Sherlock, Jonathan Slaney, Rodger Smith, Ron Snoddon, John Souleles, Rob Spackman, Nicole Sparks, Kerry Spring, Nancy Stalker, Chris Steffen, Bill Stone, Jennifer Storm, Blair Strachan, Ernie Sutherland, Susan Szenasy, Abe Taha, Graham Tait, Man-Tat Tam, Jeff Taylor, Pierre Thibault, Jim Thompson, Karilynn Thompson, Maggie Thompson, Shauna Thompson, Larissa Tigglers, Tom Tittemore, Stokley Towles, Sylvia Trosch, Bert van Duin, Leta Van Duin, Carlos Vargas, Karina Verhoeven, Trina Vickery, Renato Vitic, Peter von Tiesenhausen, Krista Vopicka, Nicola Waugh, Adam Weir, Richard Wentworth, Denis Westhoff, Nicole Westman, Joe White, Jody Williams, Andrea Williamson, Su Ying Strang, Corey Young, John Young, Susan Young, Katherine Ziff
Shauna Thompson
Essay — Shauna Thompson
Shauna Thompson is a Curator at the Esker Foundation in Calgary.
Since artists concern themselves with making work from and about the world, and often, from and about a particular place, the urgent questions for programs and institutions become: how can we a) support them in this process of learning and making, (which may not immediately produce expected results, or any results) and; b) support the presentation of this work in such a way that it relevantly
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Art is made from, and of, the stuff of the world, and through art, artists transmit, translate, and transfigure complicated ideas. The prefix “trans” is important here, as it indicates the development of thought and action that contemporary artists undertake in their artistic labour in order to produce meaningful work; that is, to take their practice “across,” “over,” “beyond,” and “through.” The myth of creative work being creative precisely because it is produced in isolation, away from public influence (and even, perhaps, removed from the conscious control of the artist herself) and seemingly emerging from nothing—picture: the artist-genius alone in the studio, hidden away and shunning the public, only to emerge much later, perhaps years later, with a fully formed result: a product or object for consumption and display—no longer holds any currency. Contemporary art making is not about removal, or a purity of absence, or spontaneous genius; rather, it is a process that is engaged with, embedded within, informed by, and relevant to everyday life. Its framework and stakes, while indeed intuitive, aesthetic, and even imaginative, are also ecological, scientific, technological, economic, philosophical, educational, communal, sociological, cultural, activist, poetic, feminist, queer, etc. The range of possible thought, research, and experimentation that contemporary artists are concerned with spans all facets of life and non-life, including, in particular, the Anthropocene; the era of life on earth demarcated by humanity’s impact on the world—its climate and environment—and all of its ramifications and inter-associations. Artists address these issues in multiple and multifarious ways; we are situated in a time of truly multi- and interdisciplinary work. In response, (because artists are always the leaders in this) institutions and programs need to adapt and be receptive. It is the work of contemporary galleries, granting and commissioning bodies, and indeed, the public art programs within the cities in which we live, to create opportunities and support for these varied and wideranging practices.
Essay — Shauna Thompson
connects to a public? As Lucy R. Lippard muses in her book, The Lure of the Local: Senses of a Place in a Multicentered Society, traditional means and spaces are not necessarily the answer: “The limitations of the hushed and pristine gallery and the oftenunreadable pages of art magazines are stunting the growth of an art that dreams—however quixotically—of striding fearlessly into the streets, into the unknown, to meet and mingle with other lives.” (269) Art that operates in this vibrantly public mode has an incredible ability to illuminate and reveal things in ways that little else can. Art like this has the potential to give us pause, for a moment, to slow down and consider our surroundings and our place in them. In a country like Canada, where arts education is woefully lacking and the arts are not traditionally positioned and incorporated as part of the daily experience of people’s lives, the reconsideration and cultivation of the relationships among artist, art institution, place, and citizen is crucial work. Through the act of embedding artists into The City of Calgary’s Utilities & Environmental Protection Department, WATERSHED+ has responded to these questions in a unique and vanguard way by highlighting the importance of the necessarily intertwined relationship among artists, context, and public, as well as by introducing new challenges about what a public art commission could be in a way that both benefits artists as well as the place in which their art is made and/or presented. The program embraces a philosophy of what I would term critical neighbourliness; that is, not just the act of being agreeable and polite to one another, but more importantly, it involves the actions of being generous, conscientious, thoughtful, engaged in creative civil exchange, and acting in the spirit of sharing. Critical neighbourliness is about creating or activating a context for art and civic life to intersect. The WATERSHED+ program encourages the emergence of such contexts through offering a series of platforms that act as connective tissue among people and places, and that allow for the open possibility of questions and responses to emerge. The work of WATERSHED+ guards against placelessness or “no-place” by recognizing the vital importance of contemporary art practices in connecting publics to the hidden systems embedded in everyday
In all of its activities, from collaborating with other institutions and organisations in Calgary, to a commitment to public talks and discussions, to the presentation of public art works that engage with and respond to this place, there is a sense of WATERSHED+’s deep investment in cultivating genuine relationships which highlight the fact that artists are also literally working and wrestling with the ideas, problems, and issues with which we are all, on some level, grappling. Within a larger contemporary art context, the program is also a forerunner in its recognition of the importance of commission-based programming that has ample support built into it for the artist in the form of time and research. This method of working allows for the possibility of a real participation in civic and municipal discourse, and moreover, means that WATERSHED+ has stepped into a role of supporting a healthy arts ecology by offering new methodologies for sharing space and social experience. Through its residencies, mentorships, talks, exhibitions, and public programming initiatives, WATERSHED+ has created opportunities for the local, national, and international development of new ideas, practices, networks, and collaborations between artists, curators, and organisations, which encourages the development and accumulation of knowledge through shared concerns based on experience, practice, and exchange. For example, the act of hosting an ideas competition such as Lost Spaces, (which was a hugely successful collaboration with another important Calgarybased cultural organisation, d.talks) brought together a range of experts in the fields of art and architecture, and its call for ideas generated an impressive response from 290 participants (and
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life. By fostering deep collaborations with engineers, architects, biologists, artists, and other City staff, the program allows ideas and projects to move forward with a greater mutual understanding about the nature of urban engineering and planning, as well as the nature of contemporary artistic practices. The watershed and all of its support structures become an important opportunity for invited artists to cultivate a deeper investment and understanding of the place in which we live, in all of its complexities and specificities. And coming to know a place, including the machinery and the mechanisms through which we alter and influence our environment—and the various ways in which we are all implicated in this—is important territory in general, and is a critical component of the production of relevant and meaningful public art.
Essay — Shauna Thompson
participant teams) from 40 countries. This level of engagement with an ideas competition, and the subsequent local exposure of the community to these new international proposals, demonstrates how WATERSHED+ sees the importance of supporting the generation of ideas, (regardless of whether or not they will actually come to fruition) and the latent potential for these ideas to cross-pollinate and grow into something later. The WATERSHED+ program is a leader in its unique emphasis on the equal importance of all of the kinds of work we do, and the necessity of equitable exchanges of knowledge or ways of knowing. It is a program that exhibits profound respect for people, disciplines, and ideas, and in finding progressive and generous ways to be inclusive. At the heart of its success lies a belief in very deep and real collaboration, a sense of communal investment in this city’s ability to work collaboratively, and an acknowledgement and support of the various intersections of creative life. By supporting artists and artistic practice in a generous and open-ended way, the program encourages citizens to experience Calgary poetically, and to build a relationship with the place we live that extends beyond the quotidian, invites us to come to know it on a deeper level, and to feel connected to its elements—even the trying, disharmonious ones—by demystifying the vast mechanisms at work around us while we sleep, live, and work. Drawing us closer together through wonder, through questioning, through creatively uncovering the systems, mechanisms, or ways of working that are so often hidden, the program helps reveal the important and productive context of Calgary and its people.
Bibliography Lippard, Lucy R., The Lure of the Local: Senses of a Place in a Multicentered Society, (New York: The New Press, 1997).
Watershed+ Succession Plan â–˛ Trevor Jensen, CoC Parks Supervisor, talking to the Dynamic Environment Lab artists during RKP site visit
204— 205
Outcomes, Observations Outcomes / Recommendations
Result of Initiatives
What to do about it in the future
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Watershed+ Succession Plan
Recommendations
Outcomes,Observations GENERAL
This way of working has been adopted by the department, its acceptance and visibility have contributed to the work of UEP. Staff sees WATERSHED+ as a way to have the conversations UEP wants to have, it becomes a way to help tell their story, it helps them get what they do out.
Outcomes / Recommendations
Opens doors for more curiosity, it developed conversations and stories for the public, but also for project teams to explore other approaches. Staff mention how the program has helped them see a value in flipping from an invisible approach to telling stories. Staff describe how UEP approaches its work differently, how it thinks, does and shares its work thanks to the experience of the program.
UEP sees the value of public art in the work that it does. Staff value how projects are able to happen in different ways. Staff embraces a need for a broad spectrum of public art, not just big projects but a variety of outcomes. Staff expressed the value of having small scale initiatives without predetermined and specified outcomes.
Recommendations
Commission more artists coming in to work on the program on temporary/ permanent projects with the organization for various lengths of time. Continue the approach to integrate artists in the work of UEP. It sparked connections for people to create their own stories without giving all the answers, not just fed information. This approach should continue.
WATERSHED+ is an opportunity to continue changing the way things are done long-term.
Having artists working on UEP projects brings the added value of an alternative thinking process. This complementarity should be encouraged to continue. Create a type of initiative that artists can choose to respond to that are small scale in time and budget.
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Watershed+ Succession Plan
Artists works can be a complement to UEP education teams works and process, they should not replicate it.
Outcomes,Observations GENERAL
There have been collaborations with numerous organizations across Calgary, and a dialogue with many outside The City as well. For staff, that connection to other Calgary communities is a chance to gain new insights while meeting people with shared interests and investment in their city.
Outcomes / Recommendations
WATERSHED+ is seen as intersecting different worlds and is specific to UEP.
Creative discussion has a value for all parties involved, it is a twoway street, the impact of which is not always immediately evident, it is part of the artists’ process as well as the process of bringing artists into the program. WATERSHED+ acknowledges there is significant value to artists working on design/project teams, it doesn’t necessarily require them to be brought in to work on art piece.
Staff identified the importance of pooling funds for public art, they see it as an essential part of what makes WATERSHED+ unique and successful.
Recommendations
There should be an engineering course for presenting what the opportunities of working with artists offer and the ‘how to’. More overlaps with different Business Units would be advantageous to share this approach and the value (ie. Parks, Public Art); more representation from PA program on Core Group would be beneficial. Recognise that for staff, thinking about their work in new ways and from different perspectives improves the service and value delivery for citizens.
Acknowledge and accept working within a municipality, any process takes longer than anyone expects. Roles and responsibilities of the WATERSHED+ project team (Project Manager and Specialist, Lead Artists, communications, etc) need to be clearly defined, explained from the outset (for the team but also those working with WATERSHED+ – Core Group, Advisory Group).
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WATERSHED+ projects begin with a direction but no predetermined outcome. Recognize that the process of an artist's involvement can be as important as the end result.
Outcomes,Observations LEAD ARTIST
By having artists embedded in the building and in the work of UEP, art/artists are no longer considered an “addition”, UEP staff see the role and place for artists in their work, it is not arduous to have artists be part of how things are done.
Outcomes / Recommendations
The staff see that having Lead Artists’ daily presence in the Water Centre is important to them. The artists studio in the heart of the headquarters of UEP, amongst the staff, using the same spaces, is a critical part of the success. WATERSHED+ has become a department – part of the family. It is important to be seen to be part of the family (within the City and the Business Unit). ‘The definition of public art has shifted – art no longer stands alone’ (feedback from Core Group brainstorming session, June 21). By being based in the Water Centre the Lead artists are able to attend meetings as project evolves, to help with detail and overcoming challenges from an artist’s perspective. Lead artists can quickly assist when issues come up. The staff sees it as an opportunity for all of us to have the program here in the building and as part of their daily work.
Recommendations
The Lead artist role is minimum 3 years (spend majority of time on WATERSHED+, min 4 days/week) based in Calgary, at the Water Centre (can’t be a long distance relationship).
The studio is a statement, a point of intrigue, a place to connect and consult with artists - it makes things possible, legitimate, richer, normal. Lead Artist needs to acknowledge the responsibility of the role: events, BBQs or other staff social gatherings, meetings, conferences, etc. The Lead Artist needs to actively participate within the organization. Having Lead Artists based in the building long-term is important, for chance encounters, observing the work of the staff, participating in the life of the organization, learning and forming relationships, establishing trust, and intrigue. For artists coming in for other projects (e.g. Lab artists), their presence in the building and the time spent with staff to understand context and form relationships are essential to projects development. A production space as well as studio/’collaboration’ space, near the Water Centre, is important need for having artists working with the organisation.
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A dedicated studio space is needed inside the Water Centre. The Lead Artist must be in the heart of the building and part of the organization’s day-to-day activities, part of The City system (email address, phone, computer, etc).
Outcomes,Observations LEAD ARTIST
Lead Artist becomes an ambassador for the program, the business unit and this way of working. A Lead Artists plays many roles: artist, curator, researcher, assisting the Project Managers, leader, etc.
Outcomes / Recommendations
The role of the Lead Artist as an intermediary between the organisation, the artist, and other partners is vital. The Lead Artist has a guiding role for artists who are new to working with an organisation in this way. The Lead Artists has a role in fostering relationships with other commissioned artists, they provide critical context, discussions about how a proposal fits within the program and how the new work is true to the nature of their art practice. Lead Artists forge relationship with staff and Project Managers, they advocate for project and artists' perspective, as they are familiar with both the UEP and the art context. The staff values the role of WATERSHED+ to develop art in dialogue with capital project development. Lead artist mediates design conversation with capital projects.
What has been perceived as “scope creep” is what has made WATERSHED+ so successful: Responsive and with art project outcomes not pre-defined. The process is not linear and leaves room for interpretation by the artists and staff, it creates “permission space” for staff.
Recommendations
Lead Artist should continue to foster relationships with external/ outside organizations, form partnerships, make presentations and give talks, spend time cultivating them, and continuing what’s existing.
There is a commitment by the Lead Artist and the WATERSHED+ project team to respect these relationships; for artists coming in to the program, it is a delicate interplay of balancing staff time and the desire of each artist to individually shape their relationships to staff. Authenticity is vital within these exchanges and they require careful consideration. A big part of Lead Artist role is to provide critical oversight and discussions when working with other artists. This critical role is vital in supporting the development of the art projects and the connections, practically/logistically, conceptually. This is a complementary role to the Project Manager.
A rigid and predefined setup would be easier to manage but of less value to UEP, artists and the public. Responsiveness has to remain key.
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Watershed+ Succession Plan
To understand what’s required, what to expect, and what to avoid, in order to support other artists in the development of their work, the Lead Artist needs to have professional knowledge and experience in contemporary public art practice, experience in creating/leading critical dialogue, logistical, and administration coordination of projects, including coordinating permanent projects from concept to install.
Outcomes,Observations LEAD ARTIST
Outcomes / Recommendations
Rigidity and prescribing the projects in advance inhibits responsiveness and/or opportunities (i.e., 2013 flood couldn’t be addressed in time).
CORE GROUP
Core Group is an essential part of the program to provide feed back, inform the Lead Artist, help identify opportunities and act as ambassadors. They provide oversight and decision making on projects.
Recommendations
The Lead Artist needs a contingency of time in their scope to respond to possibilities. The ability and opportunity for the Lead Artist to be more responsive throughout program has to be increased (e.g. have time allocated within scope to address ideas/projects as they arise).
The close relationship of the Lead Artist with UEP should be reflected with a closer relationship with the Public Art Program team to facilitate further the responsiveness of WATERSHED+. Foster more dialogue with the Public Art Program. The Lead Artist should produce less large scale works than what has happened in the Pilot Period to be able to focus on opportunities where other artists are brought in. To support a responsive process and cover the completion of projects, Lead Artist contract extension has to be considered.
Continuing role of Core Group is fundamental for the integration of artists within UEP. Approximately 20 people is a good size. Meeting once every 2 months - is sufficient and a realistic demand for the staff.
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The Lead Artist should not be City employee – it is beneficial to have flexibility in how they work.
Outcomes,Observations CORE GROUP
Outcomes / Recommendations
Core Group is a positive, impactful way to bring internal staff together to find out what is going on across the department, develops awareness and interest in others’ work (part of meetings have to be staff sharing not just artists updating every time).
Recommendations
Lunchtime is a good time for meetings, it provides a good setting and atmosphere to bring people together, lunch should be provided in exchange for their time and expertise. To have closer oversight on specific initiatives special advisors group of 4- 6 people should be assembled from the core group, by project or by recommendation.
Project Manager should facilitate Core Group, set meeting agendas — allow time for updates, discussions. It is good to have artists and project managers currently working on projects attend meetings (as applicable). Core Group members selection – by recommendation of Project Manager, Lead Artist or Core Group members, by people working on projects with the program/artists, by individuals who express interest in being part of WATERSHED+. Participation is based on interest and experience with their work area. Within their role it is expected they share expertise and insights, share potential projects and connections on upcoming projects, people. It is good to have people with general knowledge of UEP. New members: year-long commitment (informally); clarify roles and responsibilities. Members should be considered to participate on public art juries to share their expertise. Sharing who’s involved in Core Group would be valuable to the rest of UEP and to WATERSHED+, they are public art ambassadors. Identifying who can advocate or be involved as and when needed, as well as who can be called upon to help/join the Core Group, would be advantageous to the projects. An active and empowered Core Group has to be facilitated and supported.
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Diversity of members – broad backgrounds and areas of work – is a big part of how the group functions.
Outcomes,Observations PROJECT MANAGER
The Project Manager is responsible for UEP program delivery. The Project Manager works closely with the Lead Artist to drive and deliver the program.
Outcomes / Recommendations
The Project Manager is collaborative, responsive and skilled at creating a supportive environment for artists and staff to explore and collaborate The Project Manager is able to work without defined outcomes, to support artists and advocate for their processes. The Project Manager brings perspective and insight from the Public Art Program, while cultivating a deep knowledge of the department’s business.
Recommendations
Where the Lead Artist’s role is to drive the program creatively, the Project Manager is responsible for the delivery of all aspects of the program and provides oversight to all projects within portfolio.
The Project Manager should continue to create connections, identify internal ambassadors, champions and subject matter experts and work along the Lead Artist to cultivate and nurture these relationships. The Project Manager’s role to create a safe space to explore, and even fail, and ensure that lessons learned are captured should continue. The Project Manager must consider all perspectives, and ensure the goals of both the public art program and the utility are delivered. The Project Manager must understand and be sensitive to the culture and context, anticipating risks and encouraging a collaborative and proactive approach to mitigating risks. The Project Manager should continue to support information sharing processes that build continuous lines of sight for decision makers, helping to build understanding and lasting support. When establishing a new way of working, the Project Manager must be skilled at helping staff and the artists navigate complicated and new processes. The Project Manager as an intermediary between the artists and the organization is critical.
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Amongst many other roles, the Project Manager is responsible for the delivery of projects, provides oversight and guides the Lead Artist and the Core Group on strategic and practical delivery of all aspects of the program.
Outcomes,Observations ASSOCIATE ARTISTS
Four mentorships and one internship were offered in the pilot period.
Outcomes / Recommendations
Offering associate artist/mentorship positions, has value for the individual artist. It develops their art practice, it also builds capacity and experience in this way of working in the city. Artists are looking for opportunities to advance their professional experience (these are few and far between), with WATERSHED+ they are interested in experiences which allow them to have critical dialogue with the lead artist and commissioned artists, observing how the program works, how relationships form, to understand this way of working. The idea of an artist roster was explored as part of the pilot period in an attempt to speed up identification and appointment of artists.
LIBRARY
A small library was established in the artist studio as part of the pilot period. Whilst a valued resource for visiting artists, because of its specificity and archival value of past projects, the library is not being used as extensively by staff as was hoped. The intention of the initiative to connect staff to the work of artists is also being achieved in other ways, i.e., through WATERSHED+ daily photo, WATERSHED+ website, which allows for easier and broad access to information, ideas, inspiration.
Recommendations
It is a time and resources demand for the project team and the Lead Artists, needs to be valuable to the program as well as for the associate artist. Attaching resources to this side of the program should be considered, and a plan should be developed before implementation.
Commissions should be clearly defined with specific information on the opportunities and expectations of the artist and The City. The generality of a roster doesn’t allow for the specificity required for projects that emerge within UEP. Additionally, it bypasses artists who have a specific interest in a field of work or type of opportunity. The program should work closely with Supply and Procurement to establish the most fruitful appointment process.
Maintaining the small library and archive should remain a resource in the studio. In addition, WATERSHED+ could build relationship with city/ university libraries as a resource for visiting artists.
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Artists are paid for their time to compensate for their input and to create a responsible working relationship.
Outcomes,Observations TALKS / EXHIBITIONS / FILM SCREENINGS / WEBSITE / AWARDS SUBMISSIONS
They broaden appeal, introduce new audiences, builds relationships, widen discussion, extends capacity, and brings new ideas.
Outcomes / Recommendations
DESIGN PROJECTS
Artists are acknowledged as a valuable resource, in addition to visual thinkers and makers they have been shown to offer valuable thinking around complex problems complimentary to other subject matter experts, offering different perspectives, contributing to addressing issues, and challenges associated with the work of the organization. The staff describe working with the artists as helping them see the possibility, they see WATERSHED+ projects as a tool now, not solely an “artwork�.
For staff, consultants and artists, working on projects collaboratively, often ignites peoples passion for the work they do, renewing excitement and energy and pride. Staff were able to apply skills and expertise in totally different ways. Sense of pride around what is produced, it provides a way of showcasing the work staff does in a variety of departments and business units.
Recommendations
Partnerships with outside organizations are valuable and should be encouraged if they have the capacity and the benefit is reciprocal.
Artists should be considered as equal members of a project team, and this expectation should be expressed and resourced from the outset. Involving artists from the outset of the project with the rest of the team, even in the process of selecting other consultants, will help establish that equal role. Clarify and agree to roles and responsibilities from the beginning.
Giving projects additional time allowance assists with forming these trusting relationships, of shared interest and consensus.
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The variety of art projects and processes is important to be able to tell many stories, respond to many issues, and touch a variety of communities.
Outcomes,Observations DESIGN PROJECTS
Projects created within a generous collaborative situation with a range of subject matter experts are richer as a result, and create something greater than the sum on the team.
Outcomes / Recommendations
The realisation of collaborative projects is a place for the passion of UEP staff and their work to be acknowledged and celebrated together with citizens – the importance and value of a subject (e.g., drinking water, water as resource) is put centre stage, offering multiple moments for civic and professional pride, in seeing citizens connect, through enjoyment, intrigue, and knowledge. Working on WATERSHED+ projects fosters collaborations that continue to have positive influence on other projects for the business unit. WATERSHED+ artists and projects are in demand, there is an appetite for more projects and more collaborations, staff described needing more of this work and asked if this approach could be expanded. Staff mentioned that no one argues the value anymore, that it’s an “easy sell”.
Working in this way adds additional complexities requiring additional time and resources.
Recommendations
There is no exact recipe to this, however each member of the team must be willing to contribute their expertise, listen to others, and be interested to work in this way. Expectations have to be set upfront.
Watershed+ Succession Plan
To have productive collaborations, there can be place for egos, but not for lack of respect, arrogance, or ignorance. This has to be identified early on to help select the right people involved in a project.
Identify early on that the time commitment required by staff/consultants/ and artists is over and above a standard project: design sessions, communication, reviews, etc. To work on design team it is ideal to have public art budget assigned (to produce the unknown). It gives the artists leverage to suggest things outside the immediate practical scope of the project. Explore budget released in stages (stage-gating). Introduce external project teams early to this way of working help them understand the added time requirements, etc.
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Outcomes,Observations
Outcomes / Recommendations
DESIGN PROJECTS
The review, approvals, procurement process is very slow, things happening in six months is fast.
The project team had an ability to be responsive and adaptable with resources as projects emerge/develop – time, budget, people, expertise benefits the outcome for UEP, for the public and for the artist.
There is appetite within contemporary public art for this type of responsive, integrated and collaborative opportunity.
Recommendations Have the time requirements of working with artists/WATERSHED+ program, and role of the artist, written into contract of any consultant/contractors. Bring in external consultant teams willing to work with artists, have a strong interest in and commitment to working with artists as members of design teams.
These procurement/process steps should be streamlined, allowing it to be more responsive to events and opportunities. Assessing the time scale before selecting a project is critical to allow artists enough time to fulfil expectations once commissioned.
Building flexibility/freedom into scope of the project benefits the outcome allowing movement and adaptability throughout. Terms and deliverables need to be flexible as the opportunity presents itself – room for artist to shape and input into how project develops.
This type of opportunity does not suit all artists, careful explanation of the process and expectation in artist calls, and careful selection with the help of art subject matter experts and project team is key to finding the right person, with the skills aptitude and passion. These types of projects and their processes can help evolve and share the story/potential of public art with citizens and within the associated fields. This aspect of the program has to be utilised in Communications.
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For each project realised there should be a maintenance / field manual to ensure the work continues to be in keeping with the artists intention as outlined in the Public Art Program process framework.
Outcomes,Observations DESIGN PROJECTS
Not every staff person, consultant, or artists, is interested, willing or able to work in a collaborative open way.
Outcomes / Recommendations
Internal UEP advocates/ambassadors, who support, advise and help shoulder the responsibilities is essential from conception to realisation of all projects.
Design projects are a big resource and time commitment for the Lead Artist and the public art project manager.
Critical and creative discussion around conceptual development between the Lead Artists and the commissioned artist has been vital. It enriches the project, creates efficiencies, supports the artists, mediates problems, and ensures curatorial oversight (how project works as an artwork, fits within context, how it can be achieved where it fits in the lexicon of public art etc).
Recommendations
This type of project does not suit everyone. A “show and tell” discussion about one another’s work, interest and the project, with all potential team members is a helpful way for the Project Managers, and Lead Artist to ascertain the appetite prior to committing to starting work on the project.
The whole team (WATERSHED+ project team with Lead Artists, UEP Project Managers, consultant/contractor) agreement to engage in the project and willingness to support the project throughout is vital. Regular communication outreach, core group meetings, and presentations to City department management should continue as a useful way of sharing developments.
The number of design projects undertaken and the frequency should be carefully considered by the team and advisors before committing. Having Lead Artist do permanent projects is a huge time demand and the outcomes are not best use of their involvement whilst they are active Lead Artists.
The Lead Artists should have regular contact with all commissioned artists, attend design meetings. The Lead Artist is the bridge between the conceptual idea, the advisors and project team, supporting internal relationship, and building connections for the project.
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There is no exact recipe to this, however each member of the team must be willing to contribute their expertise, listen to others, and be interested to work in this way.
Outcomes,Observations DESIGN PROJECTS
Outcomes / Recommendations
Lead Artists develop an in depth knowledge by being embedded within the organisations and having critical oversight on other artists projects.
Built projects both temporary and permanent have been completely adopted as part of the ‘what we do’ within the organisation, they are integrated physically and administratively into the work of UEP, it is now normal for artists to work alongside staff (in all areas of UEP work: engineering strategy and planning, education and outreach, etc.). Definition of public art has shifted, Staff no longer describe it as a stand-alone piece. Staff appreciate that the projects create a direct, accessible, visual, experiential connection to the water system for the public. That the experience of these projects create intrigue, invite questions, and conversations in the public realm. Staff describe that making the processes or parts of the system visible allows for conversations around role of infrastructure, it becomes gateway into public service conversation/value for service and our infrastructure. Staff indicated that these initiatives encourage them as a business unit to consider how they link into society – “it allows us to go beyond the problem, can we serve other purposes?”.
Recommendations
To leverage this insight and expertise, Lead Artist should have the opportunity to undertake a permanent project after their term as Lead artists (acknowledging this is a minimum 3 year process).
Watershed+ Succession Plan
The diversity of artist projects should continue, they present such numerous touch-points with different audiences, opportunities to connect, and bridge conversations.
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Outcomes,Observations PROJECT IDENTIFICATION AND SELECTION PROCESS
Staff value the ongoing programming of work and local, national and international artists, and the connections it builds. Project selection criteria developed early in the pilot.
Outcomes / Recommendations
It is at least a six month process to get a Call for Artists ready if it goes out to open call.
Recommendations
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Anyone can bring project idea to Lead Artist and Project Manager, by outlining time frame, stage of development, site/opportunity, partners, budgets
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Lead Artist and Project Manager take suggestions and consider them in context of capacity, program vision and alignment, curatorial per spective, project selection criteria, etc.
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Lead Artist works with WATERSHED+ Project Manager, advisors/ ambassadors, to bring idea to Core Group
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Core Group use project criteria to reflect on project feasibility and acceptance
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Lead Artist research and reflect with Project Manager and advisory group on feedback brought forward (from Core Group)
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Advisors group appointed
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WATERSHED+Project Manager working with Lead Artists and Advisor group create the intent doc/shape the opportunity
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Project Manager creates Call to Artists with input from Lead Artists and Advisor group
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This process should be streamlined wherever possible, this is a huge hurdle to invite artists to develop projects that should respond to time sensitive issues. Within the existing system, the selection process for projects/initiatives should be as follow:
Outcomes,Observations
Outcomes / Recommendations
PROJECT IDENTIFICATION AND SELECTION PROCESS
Recommendations
Small, quick turn-around projects can be undertaken by Lead Artist but should be brought to Project Manager and Core Group for review and approval. There can’t be an assumption Lead Artist will take on all projects.
Endeavour to write in the possible artists' involvement early in a project within the Request For Proposal/Qualification. Complete a maintenance and conservation plan with all projects as to what happens to the work after it is completed – as per the Public Art Program process framework. Define how to tell the story of the work during the process and post installation. An active, vocal and strengthened Core Group will keep project selection process going and aligned with Public Art Program process. Core Group is oversight and decision making body.
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In order to be responsive, staff, and Core Group need to be involved in program development throughout further projects. If projects are identified ahead of time (not through staff and Core Group) they will be less relevant to the Business Unit, to the public or the artists.
Outcomes,Observations COMMUNICATIONS
Outcomes / Recommendations
The process and artworks created are often not talked about, the stories haven’t been well told.
WATERSHED+ is a new way of thinking and working. It can be challenging to determine how to communicate about open-ended processes that may not have a defined outcome at the start.
At its core, WATERSHED+ is about people. The very process of embedding artists in the business offers The City an opportunity to foster conversations — with staff, citizens, stakeholders, Subject Matter Experts and artists — around what public art might be, while showcasing the positives of collaboration, and share with multiple audiences the business of UEP.
Recommendations
Artists must work through the Project Manager and The City communications team on all releases/communication. All material released by The City about the artist and their work should be reviewed by the artist to ensure it reflects how they would talk about their practice.
It is vital to bring the Communications team in for support often and early to create space and time for them to understand the process. It will also allow them time to story tell and share complex concepts throughout the creative process, rather than just the end result. To do this well sharing needs to be done consistently and continuously which can be challenging when communications resourcing is limited. Internal UEP ambassadors could be tapped to help tell the story more consistently and help create bridges between WATERSHED+ and the day-today work of staff. The artists, project manager and Communication team should work hand-in-hand for all communication about the artist’s project.
Continue to create communications strategies for each project/initiative. The human aspect of this program offers an opportunity to deliver authentic communications that are accessible and embrace conversation, collaboration and simplicity. It will be important to continue to identify internal ambassadors to help showcase the value to the citizens when communicating about initiatives.
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More work needs to be done to engage local, national, and international audiences. The program is a benefit to the organisation, raising its profile and educating, while promoting the city’s pioneering attitude.
Outcomes,Observations COMMUNICATION
WATERSHED+ has resulted in a wide variety of initiatives, experiences and projects. While each has been supported with a communications plan and a communication strategy was outlined in the original manual, a comprehensive overarching communications strategy for the program remained under-resourced.
Outcomes / Recommendations
The very nature of public art can cause emotional and vocal reactions. This can be uncomfortable for an organization committed to creating and delivering value for citizens.
WATERSHED+ IDENTITY
Established in the pilot period to clearly identify an approach, a way of working and the experimental nature of the initiatives. Identity worked as other people accepted it would be more experimental – was seen as complimentary arm of UEP program, the experimental arm which they could help shape. Results and successes of WATERSHED+ was more the process that lead to product. Because of the breadth of projects, WATERSHED+ became seen as the UEP public art program. Because of the complex hierarchy and dependencies, it is difficult and confusing to try to explain to citizens WATERSHED+’s place in The City organisation to the public. The visual identity of WATERSHED+ helped to thread the initiatives together internally within the department, but created challenges externally with branding.
Recommendations
Early and continuous internal engagement and communications could help support staff to find value in a spectrum of reactions. External engagement on City projects is also critical to anticipate concerns and issues, allow opportunities to listen, and for artists to understand the complexity of the context and develop sensitive works that take that complexity into consideration.
Without WATERSHED+ identity, staff would lose sense of their contributions – lose what they have been part of building, WATERSHED+ is owned by many; impact of WATERSHED+ on staff – seeing their work differently and the pride in their work; WATERSHED+ gave staff a place to have emotional connection, it allowed that to happen. Removing identity of WATERSHED+ could be useful for next Lead Artist, depending on the shape and intention of the phase 2 of the Public art program. The identity of WATERSHED+ helped identify it as an art project in itself and simplify its presence for citizens. The challenges with the WATERSHED+ identity and The City branding policy has to be addressed to maintain this advantage. It will be critical to work closely with communications to determine how to identify the work of the program, ensuring it responds to The City’s branding structure and strategy.
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An overarching communications strategy should be developed early on to establish key messaging, knit together communication planning around specific initiatives and support internal collaboration and clarity around communication roles and responsibilities between impacted/ involved departments.
Diana Sherlock Resonant Infrastructures
Essay — Diana Sherlock
Diana Sherlock is a Calgary independent curator, writer and educator.
Public art at the height of neoliberalism illustrates this powerful confluence of capital and culture. In fact, Florida’s wildly popular book, The Rise of The Creative Class, has become the neoliberal bible to which civic authorities readily turn when they need to justify funding for, or even the mere existence of, art, culture, and design initiatives in the public sphere. So, although it might seem contradictory to whisper Florida and Adorno’s conflicting politics in the same breath, the line between the two draws a tight circle around what has happened to arts and culture—and public art— under neoliberalism. A circle that, in less than 100 years, has all but squeezed out Adorno’s aspirations to retain space for a critical, autonomous art in the public sphere and has instead surrendered it to the present day proliferation of homogeneous banal spectacles foreshadowed by Adorno.
1. Richard Florida. The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2002). Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944). 2. Nato Thompson. Seeing Power Art and Activism in the 21st Century (Brooklyn, London: Melville House, 2015), 13.
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Public art today is part of what American academic Richard Florida calls the creative industries, the neoliberal equivalent of what German Marxist theorist Theodore Adorno dubbed the culture industry in 1944.1 Neoliberalism is an economic theory popularized in the 1950s that advocates for a market-based capitalism that uses public resources to enhance the private sector. In hindsight, it is the economic reality Adorno foresaw for culture when he rather bleakly predicted the complete instrumentalization and homogenization of art by commerce through the culture industry—particularly those popular, sometimes propagandistic, media such as film, television, radio, and magazines. With futility, Adorno and his Frankfurt School colleagues attempted to uphold a rather purist argument for the autonomy of art in the face of these mass cultural industries. Now one could argue Adorno’s prophetic vision of art and culture completely subsumed by commerce is the spectacular reality of art today regardless of its form.2
Essay — Diana Sherlock
A much needed and positive counter to Adorno’s fears and Florida’s fix is The City of Calgary’s Public Art Program’s Utilities and Environmental Protection Public Art Plan (UEP Public Art Plan) WATERSHED+ program, which imbeds artists’ critical expertise into the infrastructure process, instead of just imbedding art into the infrastructure. The program combines the creative skills of artists, engineers, designers, ecologists, biologists, public art specialists, and others in an equitable, ongoing interdisciplinary process that produces new knowledge about art, culture, watershed issues, and the city for its citizen-participants. The resulting projects are often holistic in their approach, extending art into other areas of expertise without sacrificing its particularities. For example the first project, Sans façon’s (French architect Charles Blanc and British artist Tristan Surtees) Laycock Park/Nose Creek Restoration project in 2007,3 resulted in nine follies that delineate the flood plain and use waste material generated from the reconstruction of the wetland, and a vanishing pond that rises and falls with the seasonal flow of water from the community to the creek. Furthering these initial ideas in 2009, an interdisciplinary team of visual and water management experts began the UEP’s Visual Language Project; a year-long series of collaborations designed to incite curiosity and extend meaningful relationships between the watershed, its infrastructure, and citizens. This process culminated in the WATERSHED+ Manual (2010), which outlines the conceptual and philosophical parameters for the 25-year plan to imbed the Lead Artist in the UEP at the beginning of the design process on an ongoing basis.4 The plan values artists’ expertise in conceptualizing water infrastructure as emotionally resonant elements of the urban environment. In it, citizens, especially UEP staff, are an integral part of the process in both their realization and reception of the public artwork. A partial summary of WATERSHED+ projects to date provides insight into the diversity of artists, art, and interdisciplinary working methods and projects the program is able to initiate collaboratively under the well-defined, but expansive umbrella of the UEP Public Art Plan. During a 15-week residency prior to Calgary’s devastating flood in June of 2013, UK artist Rachel Duckhouse completed a series of abstract diagrammatic drawings and prints based on visualizing
WATERSHED+ serves as an important example of a conceptually cohesive project within the UEP public art plan that positively influences public policy within a neoliberal framework. A quick glance at the Calgary Public Art Policy, under which this program exists, gives a good sense of the contrasting and competing roles of public art as defined by the Calgary Public Art Program itself. The program attempts to “articulate […] a clear definition of public art for The City of Calgary,” but one, I would argue, that is inextricably intertwined with dominant neoliberal values and therefore, 3. Tatiana Mellema expands on early WATERSHED+ projects in her article, “Calgary’s WATERSHED+ Revamps Public Art Expectations.” Canadian Art Online (February 27, 2013). 4. WATERSHED+ Manual (Calgary: Sans façon and The City of Calgary Public Art Program, 2010).
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data of the Bow River’s water flow. Following the flood, Glasgow’s Nick Millar and Minty Donald’s Guddling About experiments involved people making cocktails from water collected from twenty-one Bow River tributaries; conducting participatory experiments with water akin to instructional performances at the Glenmore Dam; and using pseudo-scientific methods to document in ice the water content of plants and animals that live along the Bow. In a permanent installation, Sans façon also visualizes water management data in the form of an LED bar-light map on an otherwise nondescript industrial shed to make visible the precise flow of wastewater from the Forest Lawn Lift Station (2015) to the Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant. Windsor-based interdisciplinary collective, Broken City Lab, poetically mediates the urban river system in Varying Proximities, an 1-800-call-in audio work and temporary public installation of signage attached to 100 stormwater outfalls that reframe how we experience these landscapes. Calgary artist Jay Mosher collaborated with Scottish artist Rory Middleton in a year-long residency to produce The Third Landscape (2015), a series of temporary public artworks at Ralph Klein Park and five short films about land-based contact zones that represent complex interactions between the manmade and natural world. Now WATERSHED+’s Dynamic Environment Lab continues onto its next phase with a new series of diverse projects by artists Peter von Tiesenhausen (Grande Prairie), Stokley Towles (Seattle), Tim Knowles (UK), Steve Gurysh (Pittsburgh), and Lane (Calgary). BeckyShordee Shaw (UK).
as Adorno predicted, restricts other social, cultural, and political values that exist in the public sphere, even those central to art itself.5
Essay — Diana Sherlock
On one hand, The City of Calgary’s Public Art Policy argues for public art’s socio-cultural value, which can improve the quality of life for citizens. Public art is free, accessible, and democratic; it reflects citizens’ most important ideas and beliefs back to them. Public art creates experiences and defines communities by creating a sense of place. Public art creates a visually rich environment, and also generates dialogue among citizens through community engagement. Finally, public art “contributes to the growth of a culturally informed public.” 6 Yet, the Public Art Policy makes clear “The value of public art cannot be derived solely from an assessment of completed works, but must [my emphasis] include its impact as a significant economic driver, its collaborative and complementary value as a component of public spaces, and its social value as a means through which to express, reflect, and enjoy our city.” 7 Here public art’s artistic and socio-cultural merit must always be assessed through the lens of neoliberal values. Does the public art create a sense of place to attract creative businesses and workers? Does the public art create experiences and visually rich environments that encourage tourism, street life, and consumerism to improve one’s lifestyle? Yes, the public art program attempts to foster dialogue and community engagement, but these crucially critical components of the public art process are often diminished by the need to measure impact quantitatively, which can lead to misunderstood expressions of democratic participation by community and the public. In contrast, when the Public Art Program imbeds artists into communities and the very political and bureaucratic infrastructures that inevitably shape their final projects, it empowers the artists, citizen engagement, and shared ownership of these public art projects through ongoing, meaningful participation. In this way public art in Calgary can become more public. What I mean by this is that currently, it is primarily the automatic generation and expenditure of funds for the purpose of furthering a neoliberal agenda—grow the creative industries, build a creative city—
One indicator of how market forces affect the reception of public art is that citizens often only judge public art relative to its dollar value—both what is spent and what might be generated. This indicates just how dominant neoliberalism has become in determining even our most important human relations such as those associated with identity, education, environment, health, and democracy to which public art can and, often does, speak. Our socio-cultural values have become neoliberal values—money determines everything—even in the public sphere. This is why public art programs most often justify their existence in neoliberal terms—art is valued as a tourism, development, business driver— and these indicators often conflict with the socio-political values of the art itself. Politically and socially engaged artists and citizens who engage in the public art process often have goals and values 5. “Corporate Public Art Policy.” The City of Calgary (February 2004). 6. Ibid., 2. 7. Ibid., 1.
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that drives the public art process and shapes public art policies; it is not the artistic, socio-cultural value of the art itself and its relationship with citizens. But the Calgary Public Art Program understands that making art public means more than situating it in public space as an obligatory by-product of a formuladriven system—a percentage-for-public-art allocation from each infrastructure project budget over one million dollars. Its move towards collaborative, context-specific methods of making public art, such as those produced by WATERSHED+, encourages citizens to engage in meaningful experiences in the public sphere that push past just encountering art in public space. When the UEP and the Public Art Program collaboratively co-manage allotted funds to collaboratively commission art such as the Forest Lawn Lift Station, they expanded the very ideas of art, public space, and infrastructure. So instead of producing a homogenized type of public artwork drained of any specific content for an often illdefined public, initiatives such as this attempt to restore the vibrant social relations between art and its publics that have been dulled by market forces.
Essay — Diana Sherlock
that conflict with the very mechanisms that bring this art into existence. While economic growth spurred on by development and public art may be positive generally, it can, and often does, conflict with artists and citizens who may become alienated from their community and suffer ill consequences from gentrification. I would even offer a sudden public awareness of the schism between public art’s social, political, and neoliberal values, often triggered by the installation of a new work, may be one of the reasons for the public outrage so often levelled at public art projects. To be clear I am not advocating the money for public art should be, as it so often is, in question here.8 Rather I am arguing the public funds for artists and the works they produce need to be carefully reconsidered and integrated into the fabric of civic life as the particular city sites they occupy. If public art can’t escape neoliberalism, how can it do better within its constraints? Can Public Art Programs creatively reconsider how one-percent-forpublic-art funds, which are currently tied to individual infrastructure projects through provincial legislation and the Public Art Policy, are spent? What other ways might there be to better serve more diverse publics, even counter publics, or those whose politics and social values oppose the majority? How can we shift civic bureaucracies to focus on qualitative, not just quantitative, impacts? The City of Calgary’s current Public Art Program, which I have served as a Board member, does well within its current political and bureaucratic framework. But for public art’s socio-cultural capital to contribute more fully to citizens’ experiences of the city, Calgary’s Public Art Program and City Council must find more ways to bridge the gap between public art’s sometimes divergent neoliberal and social-political values. Civic responsibility in public art must also extend to those voices often less heard. The City of Calgary’s Public Art Program knows this. They also know that an ongoing, integrated, collaborative process is needed to produce resonant public art that encourages citizens to own public art through empowered participation, not just dollars. Jon Spayde’s article for Public Art Review referred to WATERSHED+ as “a case of positive, even visionary ‘mission creep’” within Calgary’s Public Art Program, and I would have to agree.9 While still furthering the Public Art Program’s stated objectives, WATERSHED+ expands its
WATERSHED+ demonstrates that artists who make public art must work from within, collaboratively, in concert with the very infrastructures—material and ideological—that can restrict public art’s critical resonance.11 In his book, Seeing Power Art and Activism in the 21st Century, Creative Time Director Nato Thompson defines an infrastructure of resonance as “the set of material conditions that produces a form of meaning.” 12 In other words, infrastructures are interconnected systems that exist in time and space to produce meaning: they organize society physically and ideologically. WATERSHED+, Calgary Public Art
8. Ibid., 4. The Calgary Public Art Policy was revised in May 2014 in response to negative public response to Inges Idee’s Travelling Light (2013). The Percent for Public Art Allocation for capital projects was reduced from 1% to 0.5% for the portion over $50 million, and all projects were capped at $4 million. 9. Jon Spayde, “Utility Centric,” Public Art Review (Fall Winter 2013): 15. 10. FN NT 139 and Claire Bishop. 11. Nato Thompson, 15. 12. Ibid., 60.
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limitations and improves public art’s social and political agency. The project straddles the political and the aesthetic to perform a social aesthetic resulting from an open and dialogical working process. This social aesthetic builds on earlier feminist sociopolitical public art practices of Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s 1970’s maintenance art, Suzanne Lacy’s new genre public art and Suzi Gabilik’s connective aesthetics of the 1980s, and more recently, Grant Kester’s dialogical aesthetics to perform a public art that nimbly mediates between the social, political, economic, and aesthetic realms using a fully integrated, imbedded, collaborative working process at the UEP.10 As seen earlier, this social aesthetic is, of course, palpable in the ways the artworks visually interpret often-unseen urban water infrastructures to connect citizens with, and raise awareness of, complex socio-economic and ecological watershed issues. Just as importantly, and like their precursors, the imbedded artists’ ongoing working process and collaboration with the UEP must be understood as a large part of the Art.
Essay — Diana Sherlock
▲ Sign in The City of Calgary Water Centre
Acting as double agents,13 WATERSHED+ artists and their UEP collaborators walk the tenuous line between socially transformative public art and the neoliberal infrastructures that attempt to instrumentalize it. WATERSHED+ demonstrates the Calgary Public Art Program, like Nato Thompson, understands that “If we want to change meaning in the world, we simply need to diagram an infrastructure, visit it, and radically alter it.” 14 Together, WATERSHED+, the UEP, and Calgary Public Art are working collaboratively to make more resonant public infrastructures.
13. Mireille Perron suggested this phrase in a conversation with the author, June 22, 2016. 14. Nato Thompson, 61.
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and the UEP cohabit infrastructures, hybridizing them to expand their limits from within. Consequently, many of these projects return the critical function to public art and public policy by shifting the very role of infrastructure—its efficiency, impact, and significance to place-making and community—which is often misappropriated by neoliberalism. They limit the alienating effects of formuladriven, culture-making processes maximized for efficiency and quantitative measures. In these new resonant infrastructures hierarchical disciplinary divisions that often relegate public art to mere beautifications or elitist pursuits give way to convivial, critical, interdisciplinary public Art collaborations between different communities. And last but not least, because we always exist within market constraints, WATERSHED+’s ongoing integration at the UEP’s Strategic Services Division ensures that the public art dollars allocated to the UEP Department are uniquely applied as part of the UEP Public Art Plan.
Commissioned Writers’ biographies
Credits
Hesse McGraw is a curator and writer, and is Vice President for Exhibitions and Public Programs at the San Francisco Art Institute. At SFAI he directs the Walter and McBean Galleries and oversees SFAI’s public programs, visiting artists series, and public education programs for youths and adults. From 2008 to 2013 he served as chief curator at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska, where he developed an exhibition program focused on site-specific, immersive, crossdisciplinary, and socially engaged projects. McGraw’s notable accomplishments at the Bemis Center include working with artist and cultural planner Theaster Gates, and Rebuild Foundation, to renovate Carver Bank—the site of the first African American-owned bank in Omaha—into exhibition and performance spaces and artist studios, making the site a hub for the creative and public life of its neighbourhood and community. McGraw was formerly associate director of Max Protetch gallery in New York, and was the founding director and curator of Paragraph, a contemporary art gallery operating under the non-profit Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri. Tatiana Mellema is a Vancouver-based curator currently pursuing a PhD in Art History at the University of British Columbia. Her graduate research considers the incorporation of pedagogy within art and curating, and the gallery as a site of educational exchange and enactment. Recent curatorial projects include, “Notes on the Nude” at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2016); “Mark Clintberg: Do I still cross your mind?” (2013) at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery; and “Paul Butler: The Greg Curnoe Bicycle Project” (2011) at the Art Gallery of Ontario. In 2009, she managed the production of Ragnar Kjartansson’s video “The End,” which was presented as part of the Icelandic Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. She has worked at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Nuit Blanche Calgary, The Banff Centre, The Power Plant, and the National Gallery of Canada. Her writing has been published in Canadian Art, Border Crossings, C Magazine, Black Flash, and Akimblog.
Susan S. Szenasy is Publisher and Editor in Chief of METROPOLIS, the award-winning New York City-based magazine of architecture and design, at every scale. Since 1986 she has lead the publication and its other media platforms through decades of landmark design journalism, achieving domestic and international recognition. She is a pioneer in connecting environmental stewardship with design, and a tireless advocate for human centered design. A book of her writings and talks, Szenasy, Design Advocate, was published in 2015 by Metropolis Books/DAP.
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Diana Sherlock is a Canadian independent curator, writer, and educator whose projects create opportunities for contemporary artists to produce new work in response to specific collections, contexts, histories, and cultures of display. Recent projects include: New Maps of Paradise (2016) with Eric Moschopedis and Mia Rushton (Nickle Galleries, Calgary); In the making (2014–15) (Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Calgary and Kenderdine College Art Galleries, Saskatoon); Folly: Château Mathieu (2009–14) (Mathieu, Normandy, France; Esplanade Art Gallery, Medicine Hat and Nickle Galleries, Calgary). Current projects include tracing the parallel histories of West German ceramics (Ricardo Okaranza: Un Certain Regard, Berlin, 2010) and the Medicine Hat clay industries in southern Alberta, and editing a publication on Canadian artist Rita McKeough’s performances and installations. Sherlock has published over 60 texts in gallery catalogues and contemporary art journals internationally. Sherlock teaches critical theory and professional practice in the School of Critical + Creative Studies at the Alberta College of Art + Design, Calgary.
Commissioned Writers’ biographies
Credits
Shauna Thompson is Curator at the Esker Foundation, Calgary. She has developed numerous projects and exhibitions with national and international artists, including Celia Perrin Sidarous, Charlotte Moth, Beth Stuart, and Tobias Zielony, among others. Previously, Thompson has worked with Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre; Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, YYZ Artists’ Outlet, and Doris McCarthy Gallery, all in Toronto; as well as the Art Gallery of Mississauga. In 2009, she was Press Assistant for the Canadian Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. She holds a master’s degree in Curatorial Studies from the University of Toronto as well as a master’s degree in English from the University of Guelph. Janet Zweig is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work consists of art in the public realm, computer-driven languagegenerating sculpture, and artist’s books. Since the mid-1990s, she has installed public commissions in New York, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee, among other cities. Her sculpture and books have been exhibited widely. Awards include the Rome Prize Fellowship andNEA fellowships, and residencies at PS1 Museum and the MacDowell Colony. She teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and at Brown University’s Graduate Program in Public Humanities.
Acknowledgements WATERSHED+ is not the result of one individual or group, it is the outcome of many people from many different disciplines, sharing their time, talent, and expertise with one another, people who often went over and above, who shared passions, explored new ideas and innovated together. WATERSHED+ is indebted to all of these people:
The many City of Calgary staff who came together to form the Core Group and enthusiastically gave their time, invaluable knowledge and expertise. The shape and content as well as the success of WATERSHED+ initiatives is in no small part thanks to them. All of the artists who embraced the unfamiliar, shared, cared and made new work which engaged, questioned, challenged our perspectives and enriched our relationship with our environment. The art, architecture, design, and engineering communities of Calgary who supported and collaborated with the program (in many instances making projects possible). The collaborative team who, between 2008 & 2009 researched and devised WATERSHED+ in collaboration with City employees. WATERSHED+ would also like to add a very special thanks to the Calgary Giddies, without whose kindness and support it would not have been possible for the Lead Artists to undertake this project. In memory of Gail Anderson.
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The City of Calgary Department of UEP and the Public Art Program for their unwavering commitment, their trust and willingness to support the project to reach its full potential. UEP’s Public Art Project Manager without whose dedication, determination and vision WATERSHED+ would have remained little more than an idea.
Credits Research, development and conception of WATERSHED+ (2008 – 09) was undertaken by a team assembled by Tristan Surtees & Charles Blanc (Sans façon): Matt Baker, Emlyn Firth, Eric Laurier, Yan Olivares and Bert van Duin.
Credits
Lead Artist (2011-2017): Sans façon (Charles Blanc & Tristan Surtees) City of Calgary UEP Public Art Project Manager (throughout): Heather Aitken City of Calgary UEP Public Art Program Specialist (2014 – cont.): Randy Niessen Communication Advisor: Andrea Linkert Core Group 2009 - 2017 Margaret Beeston, Marcia Chapman, Vania Chivers, Sarah Demko, Denise Di Santo, Bill Doxsee, Russ Dueck, Fran Dunn, Stacey Dyck, Marlis Eaton, Kayley Fesko, Paul Fesko, Anette Fischer, Frank Frigo, Lee Hang, Cheryl Harmsworth, Lesley Hatch, Melissa Hauzer, Heather Hendrie, Chris Huston, Trevor Jensen, Salimah Kassamali, Ryan Kidd, Gregory Kozhushner, Nada Ladhani, Kate Letizia, René Letourneau, Andrea Linkert, Kaitlynn Livingstone, Octavia Malinowski, Chris Manderson, Sarah Marshall, Ian Morley, Tara Nychkalo, Kate O'Neill, Charles Pullan, Dianne Quan, Michelle Reid, Penelope Reid, Norma Ruecker, Rachael Seupersad, Patricia Shako-Parris, Nancy Stalker, Jennifer Storm, Sylvia Trosch, Bert van Duin, Carlos Vargas Production of the Succession Plan - Sans façon - Production manager, and contributor: Ciara McKeown, - Production assistant: Heather Campbell - Staff and artists interviews: amery Calvelli & Brad Hays - Proof editing: Leigh Ratcliff
Succession Plan Graphic Artist Mustaali Raj mustaaliraj.com Photo Credits:
10 — Rachel Duckhouse 32 — Matthew Caldwell 41 — Paul Fesko 54-55, 64 — Angus Mackenzie 62 — Illustration based on Imagery ©2013 CNES / Airbus, DigitalGlobe, S. Alberta MD's and Counties, Map data ©2013 Google 70 — Rendering by O2 Planning and Design 76 — Charles Hope 79, 105 — Jeremy Pavka 80-81, 83, 86 — Bow Flow, by Rachel Duckhouse 88, 89 — Stills from The Third Landscape Video, by Jay Mosher and Rory Middleton 92 — Nick Millar and Minty Donald 96-97, 98 — Jared Sych 119 — Tim Belliveau 122 — Lauda Images 125 — Laboratoria de arquitectura y paisaje, Edgar Mazo, Sebastian Meija, Iojann Restrepo, Glenn Pouliquen 131 — Screenshots of drone video of Bowmont East Park under construction by Wilco Contractors SW, June 2017 133, 164-165, 205 — Chris Manderson 135 — Screenshot of WATERSHED+ Tumblr archive 143 — Screenshot of video by Brad Hays and amery Calvelli 179 — John Fowler, (flickr.com/photos/snowpeak), licensed under CC BY 2.0 183 — d_pham (flickr.com/photos/d_pham/), licensed under CC BY 2.0 All other images by Sans façon
Watershed+ Succession Plan
Thank you to the photographers and artists who gave permission to include their pictures in this publication.
© Sans façon 2017 Images, texts and illustrations, all copyright remain with the photographers and authors as detailed. Copyright for layout and graphics is jointly held by Mustaali Raj and Sans façon. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, by any means, electronical, mechanical or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Sans façon or other copyright owners.
ISBN 978-1-7753148-0-6