Abstract

Public art is a creative placemaking tool to enhance the quality of civic life and foster a sense of community. There is growing enthusiasm for public art to be integrated into the suburban environment in fostering a more culturally vibrant place. This paper explores the unique challenges faced in suburban public art planning. The City of Markham’s new public art program is used as a case study. Successful public art in the suburb should reflect the local community’s history, values, or needs. Public engagement and collaboration is critical to creating public art that garners intrinsic connections. Generally, since suburban municipalities have smaller populations and lower developmental demand than urban cores, they should incorporate a variety of funding tools to effectively sustain their public art programs. Markham should increase its efforts on engaging the public in all aspects of public art commissioning, and maximize their financial resources in order to increase the presence of its program.

Highlights

  • Sprawl, bland, car-society, lifeless, etc.: These are all prevailing preconceptions associated with the word “suburb”

  • 2.3 Public art in the suburbs public art has been a successful component in established city centres, there is a notable lack of public art installations in the suburbs, where public art planning has yet to be prioritized within suburbia (Riddle, 2008a; Nikitin, 2008)

  • Armed with ample understanding of the functions of public art in the suburban context, as well as several approaches and strategies to incorporating public art into its landscape to satisfy its diverse populations, this paper focuses on how the new knowledge can be applied into a developing suburban public art program

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Summary

Introduction

Bland, car-society, lifeless, etc.: These are all prevailing preconceptions associated with the word “suburb”. The integration of public art into municipal planning has been increasingly adopted in North America, starting with Philadelphia in 1959 (Russell, 2004). In the peripheries of the culturally vibrant city centres the growing enthusiasm exhibited by suburbs ambitious in fostering a more culturally vibrant place has local governments scrambling to integrate cultural planning into its agenda. No longer do they want to strictly be stereotyped as boring, uninteresting bedroom communities; rather, they want to bring culture back to where home is. A conversation on how the research and strategies learned can be applied to Markham’s fresh public art program will be provided in order to suggest ways to fortify its prominence and impact its particular urban landscape

What is public art?
Why public art matters (placemaking)
Public art in the suburbs
Creating a successful public art program
Funding sources
The suburban context
Newly master-planned neighbourhoods/New urbanism
Marginalized neighbourhoods
Functions and roles of public art in the post-modern Canadian suburb
The slippery slope of public art as place branding
Public art to regenerate
Essential considerations for suburban public art planning
Public collaboration
Case Study
Case Study #2: Grassroots murals in Washington DC
Case study
Emerging trends in funding public art Since public art planning in the
The Grantmaking Revolution
Fundamental shift in thinking about public art funding The Canadian Public Arts
Spatial distribution
An evaluation of Markham’s public art program
Markham’s foray into public art planning
Markham’s Public Art
Evaluating suburban public art programs: methodology
Analysis #1: Public involvement and collaboration
Discussion
Lack of community involvement in the selection phase
Strong education and outreach program
Great opportunity for public art that collaborates with the public
Recommendations for public collaboration 1
Analysis #2: Funding
Securing a reliable and diverse funding base
Recommendations for funding 5
Findings
11.0 References
Full Text
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