Year: 2016
Project Lead: Cameron Cartiere
The city of Richmond BC, and the developer Ampri Group needed to create a sense of community in a new development at Alexandra Road. They were aware that public art could play a role in fostering community unity, and initially approached Cameron Cartiere as an advisor to suggest a few pieces of public art that could be installed into place. Instead, Dr. Cartiere offered a more ambitious approach, suggesting that they undertake a more formal public art planning process to deliver a solution uniquely suited to the neighbourhood and its constituents. Dr. Cartiere’s approach was to create an innovative public art planning class using Alexandra Road as its assignment.
In this class, working with Cameron Cartiere, students developed the actual public art plan for Ampri Group and the city of Richmond. The class was composed of students across the university, including communication and industrial design, photography, sculpture, painting, and social practice. Each student brought unique strengths to the project that they were allowed to build upon by working in teams. The students researched, developed and designed the public art plan. They had the opportunity to meet a broad range of professionals from the City of Richmond as well as industry partners during the class.
Together with Dr. Cartiere, the class presented their plan at Richmond City Hall and participated in a round table discussion with public art decision makers. Their plan became the foundation for a unique public art commission call, open to currently enrolled students and emerging artists across the Lower Mainland. This project was so inspirational that a documentary was produced about this unique course. Cameron Cartiere was invited to present a paper on the development and impacts of this class at the 2018 College Art Association annual conference in Los Angeles in the session: A Public Art Primer: Expanding Form and Content.
