Community Art is any art form which focuses on involving community members, who contribute a variety of talents, to design and create a public art piece. These projects are done together with a professional artist who passes on skills to the participants through the art-making process. The content of the artwork usually reflects local issues that have been identified by people within the community. Community art can use any art form including theatre, music, visual arts, literary arts, dance, media arts and more. The importance of the project is placed on the process of art making because of its ability to build relationships and involve all members of a neighbourhood helping to establish collective identity. The artwork, once complete, is exhibited, installed or performed for the community.

If you are interested in starting a community art project in your neighbourhood contact or for more information about community art contact:

Kate MacLennan
Community Arts Facilitator
maclenk@halifax.ca
Tel: (902) 490-4408

Pilot Project: Placemaking

HRM’s Pilot Project: Placemaking brings together community members to create public art that activates shared public spaces to give a sense of place and build communities. HRM is enthusiastic to work with the community group Place Making Halifax for this first place making initiative. Place Making Halifax describes placemaking as “Community works together to make the place special. They make it a place where people want to go to, where they feel safe and welcome. They make it beautiful and interesting. They make it meaningful, an expression of their own local culture.”

Visit Placemaking for more information about this pilot initiative.

Open Projects: Community Arts

HRM invites community members and artists to submit proposals to Open Projects: Community Arts for community art projects that will result in public art sited in or on HRM’s public space including parks and open spaces. HRM is interested in commissioning projects that identify and capitalize on opportunities to reimagine, remake and reinvigorate its civic spaces. Civic spaces include free and publically accessible sites for interaction such as parks and open spaces, streets and sidewalks, libraries, museums, galleries and other public institutions, and privately-owned, publicly navigable spaces under certain conditions.

Open Projects: Community Arts fosters and strengthens relationships between individuals and groups. All proposals should include a strategy for making people feel safe and welcome, and an intended community or neighbourhood it is aiming to connect. All proposals should include community members as the primary decision makers of artworks content and creation.

For more information and application details visit HRM Cultural Affairs Opportunities.

Special Projects

HRM's Community Art program started as a pilot project in the fall of 2006 as an initiative to provide opportunities for young people to be creative, connect with their community and heighten community identity through beautification. The program has expanded over its short lifetime to involve youth and community members of all ages. Special projects have been completed in Sackville, Spryfield, Clayton Park, Lakeside, Halifax, Dartmouth East, North Preston, Woodside, Central Dartmouth, Bedford, and Tallahassee.

To view past special projects visit the Community Arts Archive.

Youth Graffiti Program

In an effort to reduce graffiti HRM has partnered with the Community Justice Society (CJS) to offer the Youth Graffiti Program. Young people who are caught for graffiti vandalism and who are diverted to CJS will be offered this educational and experiential program. Youth learn about the full effects of graffiti on the individual, the victim and the broader community. Selected youth will additionally have the opportunity to give back to their community by creating a painted piece of public art.

Read the Graffiti Management Plan.

Traffic Control Box Program

Cultural Affairs and Transportation and Public Works have partnered to create the Traffic Control Box Program. A diversity of local artists are hired each year to paint murals on the newly created or replaced traffic control boxes found at intersections. The boxes provide a desirable canvas for public art because they are highly visible to both pedestrians and road traffic. Each year citizens and visitors are exposed to the creative work of local artists enhancing civic pride and beautification. Through honorariums and exposure the program helps support our cultural economy. Artists have positive experiences of painting outdoors while receiving positive feedback from passers by. Their artwork has also been successful at reducing graffiti on the traffic boxes.

Resources

Good Neighbours Great Neighbourhoods Community Art Tool Kit