Community & Public Art

Creative Community and Public Art Projects

The term community is more often used than analysed; a community is often defined as a group of neighbours in a particular area or a group of like-minded citizens who share values, backgrounds, religions or political affinities. The term public art is also a loosely-used term, signifying a range of possible spaces, groups, natures and practices with which artists and communities become engaged.

Many network members work in, with, or are mindful of, a particular community and work with a range of publics. But these communities and publics shift in definition: often, artists, architects, landscape architects and designers work with a specific purpose in mind, for example, drawing attention to a riverway and watershed in a particular place. Or, the community itself may be more nebulous, invisible in layers of unarticulated histories and unseen cartographies of presence. Mapping in that instance is an act of creative attention, an imaginative performance drawing attention to those histories and values of a particular place that are made invisible in mainstream society. Cultural geographers, folklorists and local people—not to mention the indigenous populations, for example in North America, Australia and South Africa— may draw attention to the configurations of peoples and natures in other than evident contours, acknowledging long-held traditions and perspectives on places and values.

Knowledge begins with respect and is followed by creative understanding. In the activities listed here by MST members, members engage with communities through creative projects and public art on several levels. The projects and events detailed here document different ways of understanding shared experience which does not fit within singular frames of reference.