About the Public Art Program

The Public Art Program develops projects in public spaces, facilitates community-based projects, holds workshops and organizes forums and other public events.

Calls-to-Artists for public art opportunities and announcements about other events are made available online so please check often for updates or contact Tricia Wasney, Manager-Public Art at 204.943.7668 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

COMMISSIONS

Artworks for public spaces are initiated by the Winnipeg Arts Council and commissioned through Requests for Proposals and/or Requests for Qualifications. Sites are determined through discussion and collaboration with the City of Winnipeg. The Winnipeg Arts Council develops projects based on site parameters, natural and historical factors and conceptual considerations. Calls-to-Artists are posted online as opportunities are developed throughout the year.

WITH ART COMMUNITY PROGRAM

WITH ART matches artists with community groups to work on community identity, issues, and shared goals through the development of an art project. The project unfolds in two phases as the artists consult with community members to determine the goals of the art project. In the second phase the artwork is developed more fully and created in collaboration with the community. Once completed the artworks are celebrated in a public launch. Applications from community groups and artists are sought in the autumn of each year. A Program Description is downloadable here  for more information (PDF).

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

The Winnipeg Arts Council initiates an annual Artist-in-Residence program where artists are placed in City of Winnipeg facilities for periods of up to one year. The goal of the program is to integrate artists and their ideas into City facilities to explore civic resources and history through the creative process. Artists are provided with an artist fee as they research, engage with the public and develop a project proposal. A commission fee is also provided for the creation of a permanent work of art for the site. Recent Artist-in-Residence projects have taken place at the Living Prairie Museum (2006-07) where video artist Collin Zipp created a non-narrative interactive video work entitled lost_landscape now on display in the Museum’s interpretive centre. This was followed by a project at the City of Winnipeg Archives where filmmaker Paula Kelly made Souvenirs, a short documentary that explores Winnipeg’s identity in three distinct ways. In 2009,  songwriter and musician Christine Fellows developed a multidisciplinary performance that included music, film and visual art while in residence at Le Musée de St. Boniface Museum.

COLLABORATIONS WITH OTHER PARTNERS

Art projects for public spaces are developed with other agencies such as the Bike Racks on Broadway, created with the Downtown Winnipeg BIZ and the Exchange District Posterboard Project, a collaboration with the Exchange District BIZ.

HISTORY OF THE PUBLIC ART PROGRAM

“We need art, in the arrangements of cities as well as in the other realms of life, to help explain life to us, to show us meanings, to illuminate the relationship between the life that each of us embodies and the life outside us.”
Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Winnipeg’s Public Art Policy was developed in 2002 through the Winnipeg Arts Council, fulfilling another recommendation of the Cultural Policy Review Report published in 1997. The Public Art Policy was the result of the work of the Mayor’s Task Force on Public Art formed in May 2002 to research public art policy and programs in other municipalities, consult with experts in the field of public art, meet with City staff, and conduct a public education and consultation process in Winnipeg.

The policy was formally adopted by City Council on October 27, 2004, in a unanimous vote, having been accepted in principle a year earlier. With the policy’s adoption came the release of funding allocated for the program. Unlike many North American cities, Winnipeg’s public art funding is not based on a percentage of capital development project budgets, but on an annual grant from the City. This enables the creation of artworks in a variety of settings that are not tied solely to capital improvements.

The public art program is an exciting addition to WAC’s role in Winnipeg’s art community and, through its national competitions, to the broader Canadian environment as well. The program is managed by a WAC staff member and overseen by a volunteer Public Art Committee  composed of artists, art educators and administrators, curators, design professionals, and a representative from the City’s Planning Department. WAC works closely with various departments of the City to administer the program, determine sites and ensure that safety and other technical guidelines are met. Competition proposals are reviewed by a jury of artists and art professionals as well as a representative of the community in which the art work will occur. Integral to the development of the policy and program is respect for the work of artists. Public art can involve a wide variety of people and professions, perspectives and parameters. WAC believes that the work of the artist is central.

Though still young and evolving Winnipeg’s Public Art Program has achieved much since its inception. A growing number of commissioned artworks, community-based works and artist residencies are now a part of Winnipeg’s public spaces and cultural imagination. Diversity – of artists, location, media, scale and theme – is central to the mandate of the Public Art Program. According to the needs of specific projects, Calls to Artists will sometimes be national in scope, at other times local. The goal is to insert the work of artists into city life where ideas can be encountered on a daily basis.

PUBLIC ART POLICY

Winnipeg’s Public Art Policy was approved by City Council in 2004. You may download the policy here, available in English  and French.