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By investing in artists and a community of practice, NEFA is contributing to the evolving field of public art and inspiring more vibrant public spaces and public life throughout the region.
Guided by NEFA’s organizational values, articulated in the 2018-2021 strategic plan, NEFA’s vision for our public art programs is rooted in the beliefs that:
NEFA acknowledges that the arts sector has a legacy of benefiting from and perpetuating white privilege, and therefore we are committed to working towards racial justice.
The Public Art Team at NEFA aims to uphold and hold ourselves accountable to these values through our public art program design and grantmaking.
Through our public art grantmaking and field-building opportunities NEFA aims to:
The Newell Flather Award for Leadership in Public Art annually honors two Massachusetts artists/curators/arts administrators in public art who have demonstrated leadership in contributing to the evolving field of public art and inspiring more just, vibrant, and welcoming public spaces and public life. Each recipient is awarded $5,000 of unrestricted funds in celebration of their extraordinary service.
Learn more about Newell Flather Award for Leadership in Public Art
Collective Imagination for Spatial Justice grants support teams of artists, creatives, culture bearers, cultural organizers, and/or community-based collaborators to do the important work of imagining public art that fosters and contributes to more just futures for our public spaces and public culture.
The work of imagination is a journey. Project deliverables are not expected or required to begin this journey.
Collective Imagination for Spatial Justice grants range from $2,000-5,000.
Public Art for Spatial Justice grants support Massachusetts artists and artistic collaborations to create public art in Massachusetts that fosters public imagination and contributes to more just futures for our public spaces and public culture.
These grants may or may not support the outcomes of a Collective Imagination for Spatial Justice grant.
Public Art for Spatial Justice grants range from $5,000-$15,000.
The Public Art Learning Fund provides grants to support professional development opportunities for New England artists to strengthen their public art practices. By investing in individual artists, NEFA aims to see the ripple of more equitable, inclusive, and vibrant public spaces and public life throughout New England.
Public Art Learning Fund grants range from $500-$2000.
During the pandemic, we’ve decided to push pause on a few of our public art programs as we launched new programs to better meet this particular moment. Currently, the following programs are not accepting applications:
In addition to grantmaking, NEFA also engages in collaborations to continue fostering a more equitable and inclusive field of public art.
CreativeStudy (formerly known as Art World Learning) is a subscription-based online video library created to help artists, designers, and cultural producers navigate the business of creative careers. CreativeStudy explains the ecosystems of funding, finance, and business in a way that’s approachable, nonjudgmental, and applicable to creatives and freelancers who often find themselves torn between doing their work and tending to administrative details.
Learn more about how to access CreativeStudy for FREE
Enrollment is limited. Applicants will be accepted on a rolling basis through April 24, 2022, or until all slots are filled.
Through a collaboration with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council’s (MAPC) Arts and Culture Department and Forecast Public Art (FPA), Making it Public (MIP) offers artists and select municipal staff a five-week workshop series aimed at strengthening a more diverse and equitable public art ecosystem. The artists track of MIP supports artists who are interested in expanding their artistic practice into a public art practice and aims to equip more diverse artists in responding to public art opportunities. Parallel to the artist track, the municipal staff track of MIP trains municipal staff to prepare calls for more diverse public art, conduct equitable review processes and support artists through implementation. By equipping more artists to respond to calls for public art and training municipal staff in supporting calls for public art, we aim to foster more diverse, inclusive and equitable public artmaking across the state.
2020 marks the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s arrival on this land and reminds us all that our concepts of “public” are overlaid on stolen lands. Centering Justice: Indigenous Artists’ Perspectives on Public Art is a collaboration in partnership with artists and educators, Erin Genia (Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota) and Elizabeth James Perry (Aquinnah Wampanoag). This collaboration centers indigenous artists’ voices from regional tribal communities in this moment of reflection to examine the ongoing legacies of colonization and how it intersects with public art and our understandings of place, including the intertwined economic, ecological, cultural, and social impacts. Through a blog series (summer/fall of 2020) and web-based symposium (fall 2020) we will have the honor of hearing from several artists from regional tribal communities on these topics. To honor this process and actively model centering justice through public art making, this collaboration also aims to culminate in a collaborative public art installation by/for/with Indigenous artists.
Since 2017, NEFA’s Public Art Team has partnered with MAPC’s Arts & Culture Department to organize a series of discussions designed to broaden understandings of how art can contribute to planning, and provide new entry points for planners, artists, and cultural practitioners to work together on planning and community development projects, and explores intersections of public art and planning. The series aims to:
The series launched in 2017 under the direction of Carolyn Lewenberg, MAPC’s first Artist-In-Residence, with a focus on innovative approaches to planning challenges that emerge from artist leadership. The series is continuing under the direction of Emma Boast, MAPC Arts and Culture Fellow, with a focus on public art and public history as vehicles for social change.
For reflections, recordings and summaries of past public art discussions, professional development opportunities, and more check out NEFA Blog. Please note, this is not an exhaustive archive of past events and discussions but will provide a sense of some of the topics covered in the past.
Another way to receive updates on from NEFA including the Public Art program, is to sign up for NEFA's mailing list to receive these updates in your inbox.
NEFA’s public art program is made possible by funding from the Barr Foundation and the Fund for the Arts at NEFA.
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