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Public Art Master Plan for Seattle Public Utilities Drainage and Wastewater

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Commissioned by the City of Seattle
Office of Arts & Culture

Seattle Public Utilities
Written by Vaughn Bell
Graphic Design by Amy Harrington

Executive Summary:
The Drainage and Wastewater Art Master Plan guides 1% for Art
investments related to Drainage and Wastewater’s work. The Plan was
developed through a comprehensive, months-long process of research
and staff and stakeholder discussions. Book 1, the Vision for Public Art
in Drainage and Wastewater, provides a unified conceptual framework
within which public art unfolds and offers guidance on the conception and
execution of public art projects and programs. Book 2 presents a catalogue
of Opportunities for Public Art.

Following are some key aspects of the Vision for Public Art:
Equity, Accessibility, Relevance and Engagement
Artworks should be accessible to a diverse audience while maintaining
rigor, relevance, depth of meaning, and aesthetic value. To go further,
public art should engage people and communities across cultures, especially
youth. The Drainage and Wastewater public art program seeks to address
fundamental issues of equity and environmental justice by applying an
equity lens to all aspects of the public art process, and by actively seeking
out opportunities to engage communities in these issues through public art
projects.

The Vital Work of Drainage and Wastewater in Seattle
Seattle Public Utilities Drainage and Wastewater manages and maintains
the flow of water through our city. By zooming out to see the connection
of clouds, pipes, streets, swales and Sound, we begin to grasp the scale and
importance of the work that drainage does. Seattle is a city of water, with
plentiful rain and interlaced with creeks, lakes and Puget Sound.
The context of Seattle as a city, the unique environment in which we are
situated, and the history we inherit all inform how public art practice takes
place here.

The Vital Work of Public Art
Through public art, we imagine and experience our place in a new way.
Public art provides an opportunity for awareness of ecology and community
to blossom. This Plan embraces a vast range of artistic modes, methods, and
media. Rather than dictate artistic process or identify ‘messages’ that SPU
wishes artists to express, this Plan instead presents inspiration and materials
that serve as a sort of compost from which artworks may grow.

What Art Can Do Here
Art can make us experience water differently. We are in need of experiences
that make us see the water, and see the system. We need experiences that
erase invisibility and encourage comprehension of our place in our local
ecology. We need to notice how our home is part of the watershed, how our
car drives a street that is a stream. Witnessing the work of Seattle Public
Utilities Drainage and Wastewater, and seeing the flow of water through
our environment, offers us the chance to experience our place as a complex
ecology. Likewise, art can make the connection to science through acts of
translation and creative communication.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.