PROGRAMMING HIGHLIGHTS
Our 2022 programming continued to thrive with the energy of our mission + vision, and leaders, media, and community members noticed. Racial justice work and Indigenous visibility was front and center in our artist grantees' projects, the work of our second Change Lab fellow, and in our two new FORWARD issues. This responsive and interconnected way of working across programs helped us deliver on our vision for more equitable public art practices and policies that benefit Black, Brown, Native, and Indigenous communities across the U.S. We sought out working with a full spectrum of people who make more equitable public art happen; whether they were an artist, designer, housing developer, librarian, or community member, Forecast’s team found creative ways to engage with them in this vital work to activate public art that advances justice, health, and human dignity.
ARTIST GRANT PROGRAM
2022 Forecast Grant Recipients
We are incredibly proud of the talented group of artists selected to receive Forecast grant funding in 2022. Sixteen artists are recipients of Forecast’s 2022 early- and mid-career grants totaling $86,000. Public artists are essential in helping us relate to one another, tell stories, and connect us to the land we are on. Our grant program gives public artists time and space to develop research and locally-connected projects. This year’s incredible grant recipients planned projects to uplift their communities through storytelling, reclamation, mapping, space activation, and more.
Artist Grantees
- Mid-Career Project Grantees ($10,000 each): CarryOn Homes; Cecilia Cornejo Sotelo; Constanza Carballo; Mississippi Dreamers’ Muralshop; Dani Prados
- Early-Career Project Grantees ($8,000 each): Tom Bierlein and Mike Curran; Zamara Cuyún
- Mid-Career Professional Development Grantees ($5,000 each): Marcus Young 楊墨, Or (Laura) Levinson, and Don’t You Feel It Too? SEED Leadership Cohort; Christopheraaron Deanes
- Early-Career Research + Development Grantees ($2,500 each): Jessica Belt Saem Eldahr; Za’Nia Coleman; SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE; Shun Yong
Image (top row left to right): Peng Wu and Zoe Cinel (CarryOn Homes); Cecilia Cornejo Sotelo; Constanza Carballo. Second row: Mississippi Dreamers’ Muralshop; Dani Prados; Tom Bierlein and Mike Curran. Third row: Zamara Cuyún; Marcus Young 楊墨, Or (Laura) Levinson (Don’t You Feel It Too? SEED Leadership Cohort); Christopheraaron Deanes. Fourth row: Shun Yong; Za’Nia Coleman; SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE; Jessica Belt Saem Eldahr.
This activity is made possible thanks to generous funding from Jerome Foundation (early-career grants) and the McKnight Foundation (mid-career grants).
FEATURED 2022 GRANT PROJECT
Los Ancestros Mural at La Mexicana
2022 early-career project grant team Zamara Cuyún, Claudia Valentino, and Thomasina TopBear produced this mural affirming Latinx and Native identities and shared experiences. Located in the heart of the Minneapolis Latinx business district, Los Ancestros Mural at La Mexicana explores the relationships between local Latinx and Native communities.
For this mixed media project, the artists held interviews and mosaic workshops, and used both poly and spray painting techniques. The mural focuses on shared experiences with displacement and reifying home, and keeping heritages for the next generation. The design mirrors Thomasina's Dakota ancestors and Zamara’s Guatemalan ancestors, centering their grandmothers with the land they each come from. Constellations are also featured; the artists used the same stars, telling their peoples' own stories.
CHANGE LAB
JESSICA MEHTA, PhD
Indigenous Visibility in Public Art Research Fellow
Our Change Lab Research Fellowships aim to produce new research and policy suggestions to advance justice, health and human dignity in the field of public art.
A multi-award-winning Aniyunwiya interdisciplinary author and artist, Jessica is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation born and raised in the colonized land of what is today called Oregon. Space, place, and ancestry inform much of her work. We are excited about the work that Jessica has produced to bring visibility to Indigenous artists in public art, and look forward to together developing a national public art policy platform that is rooted in justice, health and human dignity for Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples.
“Information is at the root of public art policy reform. My hope is that, through interviews paired with supporting research from Forecast resources, my findings and paper will prove useful for helping to enact real change. I know that my fellow Native artists have stories to tell that can be the driving force behind change—after all, our stories… have always been one of our most powerful tools.”
—Jessica Mehta
FORWARD
FORWARD #4: REDEFINING SUSTAINABLE DESIGN IN INDIAN COUNTRY
As Joseph Kunkel writes in his opening essay, “the work happening in Indian Country showcases how tribally led and non-tribally led organizations are lifting up Indigenous ways of thinking, represented through design and the arts. My hope is that we as a country can all do a better job of listening—not only to our Indigenous populations, but to all of our under-represented communities—when we consider design, art, and architecture.” We are thrilled to release this exciting collaboration with MASS Design Group, the newest installment in the FORWARD series.
The publication features the vision of MASS’s director of Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab, Joseph Kunkel, who served as the guest editor. Browse through these beautiful pages to learn about exemplary projects around the country that elevate local voices and cultures to incorporate their shared stories, histories, and heritage into design. Plus, read a feature essay by artist, social impact strategist, and real estate developer Jeremy Liu, about how designers and civic practice artists can guide America back from bureaucratic racism and injustice. View guest curator Mary V. Bordeaux’s Public Art Now collection highlighting five artists who all announce Lakota identity to the world and expand upon popular understandings of public art. As with each of our issues, readers will also find a Toolkit packed with resources and how-tos.
FORWARD #4 TEAM
Publisher: Theresa Sweetland; Guest Editor + Writer: Joseph Kunkel; Project Manager: Jen Dolen; Curator of Partnerships and Programming: Mallory Rukhsana Nezam; Contributing Editor: Jon Spayde; Advisor: Karen Olson; Featured Essayist: Jeremy Liu; Guest Curator: Mary V. Bordeaux; Contributing Writer: Geraldine Slevin; Contributing Writer: Dan Murphy; Contributor: Lynn Cuny; Copy Editor: Loma Huh; Forecast Consulting Advisor: Jen Krava; MASS Advising Editor: Regina Chen; Accounting: Shauna Dee; Layout: Fred Pirlot
FORWARD #5: HOUSING
Created in partnership with NeighborWorks America, this issue highlights projects and partnerships that use art and creativity to raise visibility and spur action around critical housing issues. NeighborWorks vice president of community initiatives, Paul Singh, is our guest editor for the issue, which includes a featured interview with Dr. Lisa Yun Lee, cultural activist and executive director of the National Public Housing Museum (NPHM), and spoken word artist, emcee, and educator, Tiff Beatty, who is NPHM’s program director of arts, culture and public policy.
Along with inspiring case studies and a Toolkit packed with resources for working creatively in the housing sector, the issue includes a Public Art Now collection of selected works guest-curated by Jessica Mehta, PhD, a multi-award-winning Aniyunwiya interdisciplinary author and artist, and Forecast’s Change Lab Research Fellow focusing on Indigenous visibility in public art. For her collection, she selected five Native artists and their works who represent a broad spectrum of the exciting, Indigenized, de-colonized happenings taking place in public spheres across our shared lands.
FORWARD #5 TEAM
Publisher: Theresa Sweetland; Guest Editor + Writer: Paul Singh; Project Manager: Jen Dolen; Curator of Partnerships & Programming: Mallory Rukhsana Nezam; Guest Curator: Jessica Mehta; Contributing Writer: Camille LeFevre; Contributing Writer: Geraldine Slevin; Contributor: Scott Oshima; Editor: Jon Spayde; Copy Editor: Loma Huh; Forecast Consulting Advisor: Jen Krava; Accounting: Shauna Dee; Layout: Fred Pirlot.
FORWARD PROGRAMMING
Public Art Now with Amina Cooper
A talk with the guest curator for Public Art Now in FORWARD Issue 3, with artists Lava Thomas and Martha Jackson Jarvis
FORWARD #3 Public Art Now guest curator Amina Cooper, Forecast's 2021 Change Lab Research Fellow, was joined by artists Lava Thomas and Martha Jackson Jarvis for a discussion about contemporary public art policy, their experiences as Black artists entering this field, challenges, and policy changes they would like to see.
Art, Design, and Justice
A FORWARD series panel discussion about how the built environment can uplift a community's notions of art, culture, and place.
How can we center artists & culture bearers alongside designers to overcome bureaucratic racism in the design field? Design impacts peoples’ lives. Let’s talk about it. Joseph Kunkel is the director of MASS Design Group‘s Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab and citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation. Joseph also served as the guest editor of FORWARD Issue 4. Jeremy Liu, is an award-winning artist, social impact strategist and real estate developer. Jeremy also served as the featured essayist of FORWARD Issue 4. Angela Two Stars, an artist, curator, and director of All My Relations Arts, is an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate.
Not Just Housing: Artists Addressing the Housing Crisis
A FORWARD series panel conversation about how artists are helping to address the housing crisis.
Amidst a national housing crisis, artists continue to push for bold solutions that aim at alleviating the root causes of housing instability and inequity. Learn how artists are partnering with housing organizations and others to make changes to help bring about housing justice. With:
- Dr. Lisa Yun Lee (National Public Housing Museum, featured interviewee in FORWARD 5);
- Tiff Beatty (National Public Housing Museum, featured interviewee in FORWARD 5);
- Mark Valdez (artist, and co-creator of The Most Beautiful Home… Maybe, featured in FORWARD 5);
- Jennifer Lamb (Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership, and helped create A Prairie Homeless Companion, featured in FORWARD 5);
- Moderated by Paul Singh (NeighborWorks America, and FORWARD 5 guest editor)
MAKING IT PUBLIC WORKSHOPS
Piloted in 2014, the Making It Public workshop was originally designed with the intention of equipping Minnesota artists with essential place-making tools for utilization in their own communities. Over the years the workshop curriculum has developed nationally to serve artists who are interested in exploring or expanding a public art-making practice as well as arts administrators who are interested in strengthening local practices to support, create, and promote public art opportunities.
The two individual workshops have been attended by hundreds of artists and arts administrators across the U.S. at the request of municipalities, state arts agencies, non-profit organizations, and private developers. The 5-week Zoom educational experience consists of 90-minute presentations covering practical and tactical subject matter including local and national arts industry guest panelists.
2022 Making It Public sessions
Louisiana Art Administrator + Artist workshops
provided for state arts agency of Louisiana, the Louisiana Division of the Arts.
Maryland Administrator + Artist workshops
provided for state arts agency of Maryland, the Maryland State Arts Council.
Massachusetts Art Administrator + Artist workshops
provided for state arts agency of Massachusetts, the New England Foundation for the Arts.
Forecast consulting team members Candida Gonzalez and Aki Shibata led these virtual workshops with local and national guest panelists.
Banner image: 2022 Grantee Constanza Carballo’s team mural in Saint Paul engaged the neighborhood and gave hands-on experience to two aspiring muralists. Artist grant program featured project images: Photos by Dan Ploof. FORWARD images: Covers: (Issue 4) preliminary design work for the Northern Cheyenne Healing Trail, rendering courtesy MASS Design Group; (Issue 5) The Most Beautiful Home…Maybe, photo by Rich Ryan, 2021, courtesy Mark-n-Sparks. Featured FORWARD programming: (Public Art Now with Amina Cooper graphic): Martha Jackson Jarvis photo by Grace Roselli. Workshops and Trainings image: Photo by NeDahNess Rose Greene.