Boston AIR, Massachusetts, USA

Boston AIR is a new artist-in-residency programme working in tandem with the Boston Art Commission, which curates and cares for public art in Boston, and shapes public arts government initiatives. Both programmes are run by director Karin Goodfellow from the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture. In its first year, Boston AIR received federal funding via the National Endowment for the Arts and its Our Town grant. Costs for its second year have been fundraised through the city development department; to cover 10 artists, the programme budget was $500,000, with artists paid $22,500 plus $10,000 for materials.

Mission: integrating artists and art work into city practices, policies and departments

Boston’s public art programme has been in existence since 1890. When Karin Goodfellow first entered the office in 2008, some programmes required rebuilding and restructuring; the programme has since grown in depth and quality, in part due to the work of Goodfellow and the Boston Art Commission team. The goal of the Art Commission is to “commission and approve innovative and transformative artworks that engage communities, enrich and enliven the urban environment, are driven by a clear artistic vision, enhance the diversity of the existing collection, respond directly to a specific environment, and possess durability appropriate to the lifespan of the work”. The programme aims to ensure the public art reflects the multicultural and intersectional communities within the city of Boston: “We’re looking at diversity of materials, diversity of styles, as well as artists and subjects”, all to counteract the predominance in the city of “bronze works honouring white men” that “creates a dishonest record of our history”.

Boston AIR – an artists in residence programme – has grown out of Goodfellow’s work on the Commission. Now in its second year, the programme is focused on exploring the intersection between social practice and art, and how a combination of thoughtful programming and civic engagement can lead to stronger communities. Boston AIR aims to: “look more at social practice and working with artists to integrate artists and art work into city practices, policies, departments. Boston AIR is designed for the artist to be interacting directly with city employees and supplementing their work, growing their work, challenging it, engaging folks in the community. It’s acting as a liaison between the city and the community, while developing their practice at the same time. It’s much more open and less object-based than the public programme.”

Embedded in government and community

In its first year, Boston AIR placed three artists in different situations within the city. L’Merchie Frazier worked with the Office of Recovery Services and Women’s Advancement leading quilting workshops with women in addiction recovery. Violinist and composer Shaw Pong Liu worked with the Boston Police Department looking at gun violence, racism and police practices. Georgie Friedman specialises in video and installation pieces and worked with the Department of Neighborhood Development and the Parks Department to reimagine city space by projecting pastoral visuals on to city properties with little green space around them.

For its second year the programme has expanded considerably, with 10 artists from diverse backgrounds, including a drummer, a film-maker, a poet and a graphic novelist: “all sorts of different artists doing very different projects, all sited at a different community centre”. Working with the Boston Center for Youth and Families community centres, Goodfellow feels, ensures that the artists’ work is “really grounded: it allows for the work to be directly connected to local residents, which leads to more honest relationships”. Goodfellow hopes that AIR will showcase the importance of having government support art projects in all communities, and how meaningful dialogue around pertinent social issues can be bolstered and ignited through the arts. Through AIR, Goodfellow believes artists will also gain more insight on how to include civic practice in their work.

Challenges

At the same time, Goodfellow identifies some key challenges to working within a government setting:

1: Capacity

Although dedicated, the Boston Public Art team is small in numbers. The amount of administrative work that accompanies public art projects often takes time away from Goodfellow’s ability to participate in the more creative or visionary aspects of the role.

2: Perceptions

As Boston AIR is still in its pilot phase, Goodfellow and the Boston Art Commission team are still trying to find the right synthesis of government and artist collaboration that also proves the programme is purposeful and creates opportunities for authentic dialogue with communities. “We want to maintain involvement in order to engage and support artists, but also keep a balance where they aren’t going to be stifled by our expectations of them, or by doing the things a government needs, like different kinds of administration and evaluation that take up all the artist’s time so that they’re no longer able to do the art and they might as well just be regular city staff. It’s protecting the artist from that in a way, trusting them and designing a programme that allows for that trust – which is a hard thing to do as a government agency, because people want to know, what are we getting? What are we paying for? What are we investing in? There’s a level of risk in these projects, on all sides: you’re taking a risk, and the artists are taking a risk that we’re not going to turn the work that they do into something dead for public relation or political purposes.”

Goodfellow admits that her perspective on this point is coloured by her own background as an artist (which included creating murals and working in community projects”): “Trust in the arts community is really important to me. I don’t think you have to be in the room saying, I’m an artist, but you do have to be in the room talking about what is right, what’s appropriate, what’s standard procedure. Because artists don’t have unions: we’re very good at organising around some things but not necessarily for ourselves as a community, so I’m very interested in doing that work, even in indirect ways.”

What next?

Goodfellow is hoping that, as Boston AIR develops, it will bring about a number of cultural shifts, from the ways in which “the arts are seen and how artists feel valued as community members”, to conversations about how artists might be involved in “conversations about changing policies in the way we as a city manage our projects”, so that artists are not simply encouraging dialogue on issues such as gun violence, but involved in civic solutions. To be able to reach that stage, she knows she needs to secure more consistent funding, to ensure that the programme can continue and develop into its full potential. At this time, a third round of Boston AIR is being planned.