I could say that the killing of Michael Brown by police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014, changed my life trajectory as an arts professional, but that wouldn’t be quite accurate. In fact, it was the local response—and the lack thereof—to Brown’s murder, from residents, business owners, policy makers, and creatives in my hometown of St. Louis, that forever clarified for me the capacity and the limitations of public art as an agent of change.

As an artist, I have used chalk, performance, sculpture, and writing to educate, disrupt, and honor. Yet what has interested me most has been understanding how I, as an artist and cultural worker, could help bring about tangible changes that would make the region safer for BIPOC folks and other marginalized members of my community. I’ve witnessed how public art can draw attention to issues of community safety, awaken empathy, mobilize a community, and even generate dialogue between people holding differing opinions. And yet I have also witnessed where such values and outcomes were not allowed, the rooms artists were not let into, the conversations that continued to happen behind closed doors no matter how potent the artwork or revered the artist. I desired to see artworks more candidly tackle the systems directly impacting community safety, from housing policy to environmental racism.

Despite the powerful work that artists and activists have achieved in St. Louis, a new report shows that from 2009 to 2019, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department was responsible for more killings per capita than any other of the 100 largest police departments in the nation.

Then, in May 2020, George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, not far from the office of Forecast Public Art (the publisher of FORWARD). FORWARD hadn’t planned to address community safety in this issue, but as concern grew for the safety of the community, and especially for BIPOC artists and culture bearers within it, the publication changed course. Issue #3 is now devoted entirely to how public artists are addressing community safety.

To select the focus areas under the broad heading of community safety, I began listening for stories about how communities were achieving greater safety for people who have been left out of the mainstream state frameworks and systems of “public safety,” and who, in some cases, have been the targets of state violence. From there I began to discover themes and relationships between the projects. Our six focus areas—policing, criminal justice, community control, freedom from harm, gun violence, and emergency response—emerged directly from these stories and projects.