As an amateur art critic and an art history buff, I like public art. Learning to harness this for your city or town is key. Projects like murals, painted items like UFOs, Bears, Deer, and so forth, even Skeletons locally have been used to foster civic pride and the arts.
Graffiti and tagging has long been associated with blight and the use of an old Arby's by a graffiti artist locally was seen as hostile. Harnessing this energy and using ways to create art productiively is key among youth advocates and the arts community. We need to embrace the possibility and creativity and chanel it to appropriate venues. There are a lot of ways to do this but having a public arts committee is a great start to having these discussions in your city or town.
This space will be updated with some thoughts and resources on this issue shortly.
