International District Artist - Facilitator RFI

International District Artist - Facilitator Request for Information (RFI)
Call for Artists: Community-Designed Art Project

Deadline: November 25, 2024 at 5:00 p.m.
Submit Information

The upcoming centennial celebration of historic Route 66 includes redevelopment plans, a new park, and increased art activations along Albuquerque’s Central Avenue. The City’s Public Art and Urban Enhancement Division is now announcing it will place a community-generated public art work at the southeast corner of the new International District Park next to the library. To ensure the artwork accurately represents the surrounding neighborhoods, Public Art is issuing a Call for Artists to participate in a “restorative design” process with community.

Restorative design revitalizes communities by promoting wellness, connection to nature, and the tangible benefits of creating infrastructure for the local community while minimizing environmental impacts. As neighborhoods grow, the City recognizes the essential role that local voices should play in representing the community via its lived experience and self-determination.

Project Intent/Theme
As the City of Albuquerque explores new ways of representing the diverse peoples who sustain our unique culture, we seek to reclaim public space for local community’s creative visions. For many Burqueños, the complex realities of everyday struggle and their distance from urban renewal initiatives mean the perspectives of those whose lives and histories are most impacted are often omitted. A new community-based art project aims to integrate cultural and class considerations into decision-making, so neighborhoods can utilize public art and historic preservation to tell their own stories.

This call for artists is a request for information (RFI) for applicants who have special ties to Albuquerque’s International District through their family ties, work, school, or community affinities. Artists will be required to work collaboratively with three project partners: City of Albuquerque’s Public Art Urban Enhancement Division (CABQ), Friends of Orphan Signs (FOS), and the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP).

Four artist-facilitators will work with project partners and an embedded community artist/project manager, to create design workshops in and for the ID community. FOS and CABQ will connect each artist to an ID community organization who will host a workshop with community members. Community will be invited to each workshop, where art activities like sketching, collaging, and coloring may be interspersed with discussions to find out what is most important to reflect in the ID sign-inspired artwork. FOS and the project manager will work with each artist-facilitator to design, conduct, analyze, and report on the design workshops. The project team, artist-facilitators, and a jury will choose final designs to be adapted into a physical ID sign-inspired artwork fabricated by CABQ and installed in the new International District Park, at Central Avenue and Dallas St, by 2026.

The artwork design will be empowering, expressive, and meaningful to the immediate communities. To guide the process of the artwork’s creation, the project team will prioritize and platform local voices to help design a large-scale public art piece/sign that reflects then ID’s specific worldview.

Submission Materials/Process
Interested artist-facilitators should submit a short summary of their interest (up to 500 words) for how their work interfaces with the ID and Albuquerque. Please include any past teaching or community experience, and any experience in graphic design, collaborative art processes, or project management.

Please include a rationale for how to best create an artwork that represents the ID. Each answer to the RFI can contain 1-5 images of work samples or process.

Application: coacommunityevents.wufoo.com/forms/international-district-sign-artistfacilitator-rfi/

Deadline
Deadline for submissions is November 25, 2024, 5pm MDT.

Project Timeline
A jury of project team, arts board members, and community will evaluate RFI and choose four artist-facilitators by December 31, 2024. Artist facilitators will be invited to attend a project design summit on January 25, 2025, 1-5 pm at the International District Library.

Funding
Each artist-facilitator will be paid $3500 for their participation in the project. Artist-facilitators will be included in national media and promotion of this project, which is partially funded with an Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and is a signature project for CABQ’s Route 66 Centennial celebrations.

Questions
For more information about this call for artists, contact Aiko Jio, ID Rt 66 Sign Project Manager at [email protected], or Amanda Sutton, Route 66 Centennial Project Manager at [email protected].