A Reflection from MAPC’s First Artist-in-Residence

July 26, 2017. Boston, MA.
MAPC staff photos day 2.
Metropolitan Area Planning Council.
© 2017 Marilyn Humphries

In 2017, MAPC hired Carolyn Lewenberg as our first artist-in-residence. The goal of the MAPC Artist-in-Residence Program is to bring arts, culture, and creativity into the agency’s multidisciplinary planning work with cities, towns, and other organizations. By tapping the talents and perspectives of a visiting artist, the residency aims to infuse arts, culture, and creativity into project scoping and implementation while enriching and expanding the creative practice of the visiting artist.

In early November, Carolyn’s 18-month residency came to end. Below, she reflects on her residency and outlines the projects she worked on here at MAPC.

I’m in the last week of my residency and doing a lot of reflection on where I’m at now versus where I was when I started, 18 months ago, and how this experience has shaped my practice as a public artist. Prior to my work at MAPC, my bread and butter was working as an educator and youth worker while making studio art and public art projects on the side, attempting as often as I could to integrate this into my work with young people. Having the last 18 months to work solely on public art projects has been an enormous privilege and I’m excited to leap out of the nest of MAPC into freelancing with some fresh new skills and approaches. It’s exciting and honestly a bit overwhelming.

Over the last 18 months I’ve gotten to work with 10 different planners at the agency in a variety of departments: Land Use, Public Health, Environment, Government Affairs, and Strategic Initiatives. I was also involved in project development conversations with Municipal Collaboration, Transportation, Clean Energy, and Data Services. The following is a list of the projects I completed during my tenure and the awesome teams I worked with:

Artist-in-Residence Carolyn Lewenberg writes "Albion Arts Launch" in chalk on the sidewalk

Albion Arts Corridor Strategy

I worked with former Economic Development Planner Amanda Chisholm, who encouraged me to develop creative strategies for bringing people into the Wakefield Albion Arts Corridor Launch Event. I created a collage to add some flair to the release of the report and worked with high school students to make chalk drawings on tar paper outside the library to draw people in.

Learn more about the Albion Arts Corridor Economic Development Strategy here.

Women look through viewfinders while an MAPC planner holds a suvey at a public event in Everett.

Everett Open Space Recreation Plan

I worked with Principal Land Use Planner Carlos Montanez on creative community engagement as part of the Everett Open Space and Recreation Plan. Together, we developed engaging and innovative arts programming as part of a pop-up for the Village Fest event. This included creating viewmasters to get people to participate in sharing their visual preferences, and bringing in the Veronica Robles Cultural Center Elote Cart to provide corn to participants in the survey.

Large photos of various trail amenities can be seen through a giant gold frame.

Natick Senior Friendly Trails

I worked with Public Health Director Barry Keppard and Senior Communications Strategist & MWRC Coordinator Karen Adelman to use a gold frame to create a spatial experience through which people could view possible trail amenities. I worked with artist Eva Van Aken to create the gold frame. The installation prompted conversations about what people wanted to see on a future trail network.

Read about LandLine, MAPC's vision for a seamless trail network.

Everett Earthworks Sculptural Garden

Everett Earthworks - or a Ripple Effect - created a new space for the community to gather to grow food together and celebrate artistic expression. A sculptural bench designed by me is the centerpiece, with sculptural mural panels created by Everett high school students on the garden shed and a collaborative mural inspired by the Community Food Assessment on the fence as a backdrop to the garden.

This exciting demonstration project for community-engaged public art and urban agriculture promotes innovative thinking with regards to beautification, growing food, improving health and building community. This project is a collaboration between the City of Everett, Everett Community Growers (ECG), and the Arts & Culture, Environment, and Public Health teams at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, with support from the UMass Boston School for the Environment.

I worked with many MAPC folks on this project including:

Assistant Director of Public Health Heidi Stucker worked with me to plan a joint celebration of the Everett Community Food Plan and A Ripple Effect, and for helping me define metrics for success of this project. We co-presented on these efforts at an MAPC staff meeting and her passion for this work was infectious.
Senior Environmental Planner Darci Schofield helped me understand the environmental benefits of this project and articulate these in clear benchmarks of success.
Digital Media Designer Kit Un took my documentation of the project and turned it into a really exciting video. Kit also helped with blog posts and created flyers and visually compelling e-blasts for different projects that helped tremendously with outreach.

Learn more about Everett Earthworks here.

Learn more about the Everett Food Plan here.

Annis Sengupta puts hand decorated leaves onto a tree made of branches.

Revere OSRP Vision Tree

I worked with former Land Use Planner Emma Schnur on creative community engagement as part of the Revere Open Space and Recreation Plan. We asked people to decorate leaf-shaped paper templates in response to the prompt “What does your perfect day in the park look like?” At the final public forum, we unveiled a sculptural tree with these decorated leaves. We also showcased the Revere Tree in the office to show the work we were doing in other communities.

Four women stand in front of a wall with the words "arts and culture discussion series #2: Arts and green infrastructure"

Arts & Culture Discussion Series

I worked with the New England Foundation for the Arts to develop and present a series of three discussions, creating space for artists and municipal planners in the Metropolitan Boston region to share thinking, vision together, gain access to resources, and create more opportunities for artists to contribute to municipal planning and community development projects. This series explored how public art can address a range of planning goals and objectives, including green infrastructure, community building, economic development, and public health.

Artist-in-Residence Carolyn Lewenberg stands at a table with drawing supplies. Behind her, five drawings hang on a clothesline.

Natick Center Creative Placemaking

I worked with Arts & Culture Manager Jenn Erickson and Arts & Culture Planner Dan Koff, the Town of Natick, and Natick Center Associates on a creative placemaking project. I helped lead creative placemaking workshops and worked with artist Britany Crawford to modify a pop-up tent to create a homey space that we brought to multiple Natick events to spread the word about a call for artists for Natick Center creative placemaking projects. Community Engagement Specialist Carolina Prieto worked with us to engage community members.

Learn more about the Natick Creative Placemaking Project.

HUBweek and MetroCommon Pop-up

Shannon Basketball Tournament

I worked with Government Affairs Specialist Diego Huezo, Government Affairs Manager Lizzi Weyant, , and Grants Management and Procurement Specialist Christine Howe to develop an arts element at the Shannon Grant Basketball Tournament, which promotes community cohesion by having teams of youth and police representing different cities and towns in the Metro Boston Area play together. Youth artists Aminah Yahya, Ja’Hari Ortega, and Keavon Green ran a custom t-shirt table, with stencils and fabric pens.

Learn more about the tournament on the Planning101 blog.

Sole of Rockland

I worked with Senior Arts and Culture Planner Annis Sengupta on an artmaking station modeled after a shoe-shine cart. The cart functioned as the headquarters for artist engagement at the Rockland Farmer’s Market. Participants were invited to tell us about places they valued most in Rockland and to create a watercolor shoeprint to contribute to a community wide public art project. We transformed shoe prints into vinyl stencils in partnership with local artists and businesses and painted them on the ground near Rockland’s most valued places. Arts and Culture Intern Michael Rosenberg also played a key role in creating maps and the shoeprint stencils, and Community Engagement Specialist Iolando Spinola worked with us on community engagement efforts.

Learn more about the Sole of Rockland here.

Office Art

I worked with Operations Manager Heidi Anderson, who played a key role in guiding me to work with emerging artists in creating new artwork for the office. I was constantly in and out of Heidi’s office borrowing her drill, hammer, picture hanging hardware, measuring tape -you name it - and she always had a good attitude about it. Special thanks to Digital Communications Specialist Elise Harmon for helping me with documentation and blog posts.

See MAPC's new office art and read about the young artists.

It was an honor to work on these dynamic projects with such highly motivated, passionate, and gifted individuals as the first Artist-in-Residence at MAPC. Many of these projects grew out of the conversations I had in the first couple months of my residency, when I met with directors from all the dynamic practice areas at MAPC about how they imagined arts and culture could be woven into their work. I was inspired by the depth and breadth of their focus areas, and the opportunity to not just to imagine possibilities together, but to put the ideas in action was very exciting.

Art by Carolyn Lewenberg displayed in the MAPC lobby

The Arts and Culture Team

During this same period of getting to know MAPC, Arts and Culture Manager Jenn Erickson, Senior Arts and Culture Planner Annis Sengupta, and I explored our values and our reasons for coming into this work and began to develop a foundation of team values that would drive our work together. The intentionality in the space that Jenn created for these conversations was grounding and instructive of future conversations we would have with different communities that would drive the different projects forward.

Jenn provided guidance throughout my entire residency to help me learn the culture at MAPC and how to be effective in working within this context, encouraging me to be reflective about my work, to pursue projects that would be meaningful, and to develop skills to scope out projects. Jenn’s in-depth understanding of MAPC allowed me to leverage momentum of existing projects with other departments, build on relationships with different municipalities, and find allies within the agency who have passion for art and creativity.

Annis is a team player and collaborative leader, who demonstrated patience and brilliant insights into the complexities of arts and culture planning work. Annis’ willingness to bounce around ideas with me was major in shaping the direction of projects. Her ability to translate our work into presentations, graphic materials and written reports was amazing.

My Time AT MAPC

At MAPC, all time is accounted for. The chart below shows how my time shook out.

While accounting for time spent in a creative process was a huge challenge, having this information helped me process my experience and capture some important takeaways. These include:

Project development and planning time has taken about 13 percent percent of my time. This is really hard to account for and be compensated for as a freelancer.
Staff meetings accounted for nine percent of my time. This time can also be overlooked in project development, but being intentional at the outset that a collaborative spirit will drive the work is key.
We gave a lot of presentations and workshops! I was encouraged to carve out time for reflection. This reflective practice was a key part of presentations and workshops.

Prior to this experience I hadn’t really considered how different it would be to have an artistic practice based out of a government planning agency as opposed to a studio environment, as studio space was not a resource that MAPC offered. Instead of my studio-based practice of playing with materials, exploring a site, having conversations with people who have personal connections with a place and allowing an inclusive process to emerge, at MAPC the experimentation and play happened through collaborative conversations with planners whose perspectives were supported by research and data.

From there I would connect with community, once the general vision for the project was articulated. Driven by a creative problem solving framework, the artistic process was highly structured and articulated in advance of community engagement. I struggled to navigate this structure in a way that would allow for flexibility once community engagement began and I learned what community members and resources would support the work and offer new directions that made sense for the process, product, and site.

What's Next?

As I reflect, I also think about people outside MAPC I had the privilege to work with: the teens in Everett with neon orange shirts applying polyurethane to the waterdrop sculpture, people sharing their collages at creative placemaking workshops, and guests from Providence talking about public health at the discussion series. I’ve met so many community members, leaders and youth who shape our region. It’s been a rich residency and I am grateful for the experience.

Follow Carolyn's future activities on her website: https://carolynl.net