GIVE ARTISTS a “seat” at local government tables and they will bring “new mindsets” to planning and problem-solving, according to a leading Chicago arts practitioner speaking in Galway.
Sculptor Frances Whitehead believes the future of Irish cities could be radically changed for the better if artists were “embedded” in local authority offices.
Ms Whitehead, who addressed artists, film students and arts policy-makers at the annual Tulca festival in Galway yesterday, has offered a template currently applied in Chicago that Galway artists hope to put into practice.
Tulca – from the Irish word for "wave" or "flood" – is Galway's annual visual arts festival. The programme runs until Sunday on the theme of After the Fall,examining artists' responses to the political, social and economic collapse in Ireland and abroad. More details on www.Tulca.ie
As part of her “embedded” approach, the sculptor currently works with a team of planners, scientists, botanists and other experts in Chicago’s environment department on a project to reclaim abandoned gas stations throughout the city.
"It's called the slow clean-up, as it involves using plants to clean soil," Ms Whitehead told The Irish Times.
”The standard faster option – involving moving contaminated soil to a landfill and putting in new soil – may be faster, but it creates as many problems as it seeks to solve,” she explained.
Ms Whitehead believes artists are lateral thinkers, who can “fearlessly examine systems” with a particular set of values.
“Lots of people are creative, but there is a common specialisation which artists have which can challenge the cultural values driving unsustainable economic models of living – and which don’t have to cost money,” she said.
Ms Whitehead began the embedded artists initiative in 2006, as a result of work she undertook in Cleveland, Ohio, which she then applied in Chicago. Her project is run in partnership with the School of the Art Institute and the City of Chicago.
Her own home is considered to be a model of green design, as it is reclaimed from a brick warehouse on a plot of land once contaminated by an underground gas tank. Some 50 per cent of the house’s energy is supplied by geothermal heating and cooling systems, wind turbines and solar panels on the roof – where her partner keeps bees.
