Why Artists and Governments Should Collaborate: A List of Reasons

A post in Medium points out "artists and governments have a future together," reflecting on how a group of residents had gathered together to brainstorm for a community garden and sculpture project following the call of artist Carolyn Lewenberg.

Mallory Nezam, the author, lists six reasons for governments to collaborate with artists. Among them, she says:

• "Artists help us see, center and celebrate the beauty of our neighborhoods and our communities."
• "Culture is and always was central to place.  This never changed, we just stopped valuing it in public society, and we stopped centering it in the way we planned communities. What sometimes gets lost in street grids, engineering protocol and politics is the uniqueness of people in place that together makes a place more than the sum of its parts."
• "Artists are professional and radical imagineers. It can be hard to see a path forward if there is no roadmap, yet creatives help envision what isn’t bet but what could be."

Nezam continues:

No one excels in a silo, especially around bettering the places which we all share. Artists collaborating with government is just one of the many bold ways we can shift our thinking of how we serve community and co-create the place where we live, work, play and love.

Read here the post.

Image: Unsplash / Mathew Schwartz