According to the Project Narrative document, “Artists will work with community stakeholders to discuss ideas and gather insights about the specific communities that utilize the areas where the spaces are located. … Community members from the different neighborhoods will be engaged through a community engagement process allowing the artists additional inspiration and content to consider in their design development. This process of engagement also strengthens a community’s public health.”
“The idea is that you are making art about the trail,” Gensler said at last year’s kickoff meeting. “I kind of refer to it as community engagement through art-making. … You’re being paid as an artist to basically inspire both the community, and be inspired by the communities along this trail.”
Unfortunately, in both the October kickoff meeting and at the meeting held today, Gensler essentially said the City gets to have it both ways: artists may or may not consider public input when creating their public art.
“The art is the community engagement,” Gensler said in October 2022. “If you want to engage with people and have a meeting … like we did with the community murals thing, you’re welcome to do that. You can engage people and create work out of that process. Or not.”
As a resident who will be directly affected by the trail and the public art along it, I will be watching as the artists begin the “community engagement process.” As an independent photographer, I’ll be documenting what actually happens.
What has happened so far is that the inspirational rhetoric about “public engagement” doesn’t guarantee that any meaningful public engagement will occur.
