The City of Campbell River’s new Public Art Committee has been formed, it has officially met, and it has already come back to the community with a problem to solve: Where should they start?
“One of the things that has come up right away is, ‘what’s the priority for public art in town?’ Like, what are the areas of town that should be prioritized, and how do we even determine that?” says Ken Blackburn, executive director of the Campbell River Arts Council, who was also selected to sit on the committee.
So committee members thought, where better to get the answer to the question, “where in town should there be more public art?” than from the public?
On their new website, launched just this week at www.campbellriverpublicart.ca, there’s a place for the public to have its say before the committee really gets to work.
From the responses to that survey, Blackburn says, they will take their direction in terms of prioritizing the areas of need, and begin looking toward solutions.
But that’s not the only reason for the fancy new website, obviously.
You don’t need a whole website just to put out a survey.
“This website is where we want to start building a resource for public art within the community,” Blackburn says.
“It’s where people can go to have their say about public art, and it’s also where artists can go to become part of a public art directory.”
Anyone interested in having their work considered for public display – whether for murals, box-wraps, banners, crosswalks, sculptures – should visit the site and add themselves, Blackburn says.
“We need a directory so that when either city organizations or private business comes and says, ‘we want to put a mural on a building,’ they can go to the directory,” Blackburn says, and see a selection of artists and their work.
Blackburn, for one, is glad this day has finally arrived.
“(The committee’s formation) has been a process of at least six or seven years to try to get to this point,” Blackburn says.
It started with a recommendation from the Arts Council about seven years ago that the city really needed some kind of public art policy, Blackburn says, and last year, when one was finally adopted by the city, “part of the policy itself recommended that to administer and guide the policy, a public art committee needed to be formed.”
The committee is made up of six community members from different sectors, including a high school student and Blackburn himself, who was elected chair of the committee, and he’s excited to get to work.
Head over to www.campbellriverpublicart.ca to find out more about what the committee’s role will be in the community, to register yourself as an artist interested in becoming part of the artistic landscape here, or to have your say about where you’d like to see some more art go up.
