The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced that the City of Wichita has been approved for a $75,000 ‘Our Town’ award in support of “A City Where I Belong: A Toolkit for Artists.” These placemaking grants support projects that integrate arts, culture, and design activities into local efforts to strengthen and authentically engage communities in order to advance local economic, physical, and/or social outcomes in communities.
For this project, the City’s Division of Arts and Cultural Services has partnered with Harvester Arts and visiting artist Aaron Asis. COW, HA, and Asis will assemble a cohort of three local artists to analyze and interpret the City’s ‘Percent for Art’ program and public art commissioning processes, deploy temporary art engagements that collect feedback from the public, and ultimately incorporate the findings into a public artist toolkit that will expand access and address barriers to enter the public art field for local artists.
Artists selected for the cohort should expect a 10-15 hour per week commitment. The cohort will meet in person and/or virtually and should be able to be easily reached by phone and email, and be outside for extended periods of time.
The three local artists that are selected for the cohort will each receive $1000 per month for year 1 (12 months) and $600 per month for year 2 (10 months) and be provided up to $5000 in materials for a temporary public art project they will develop as part of the cohort.
