PUBLIC ART IN SCHOOLS
 One way to recognize the value of our places of learning is to integrate art into the public schools – art that is created with and by students, staff, and the surrounding community – reflecting its users and the importance of the campus. Using collaborative public art in the schools helps create engaging facilities that the students, faculty, staff and communities find attractive, even exciting.
Education is the heart and soul of the community; it is the greatest resource we have for improving our country and helping our kids. School buildings are a major factor in our children's education because they not only fulfill functional and curriculum requirements, but they set the tone to encourage imagination, enthusiasm and growth. Of course, schools aren't just for formal education. Clearly our schools are vital to the community – they are busy, active places; places for daycare, preschool, public meetings, sports, activities, clubs, etc. In other words, schools can reflect the best in the community and therefore, they should be important, inspiring buildings.
By integrating professional quality art into the design of schools you can create inspiring and unique buildings. It is important to look for opportunities within the school site where a public art piece/treatment would add to the learning environment; places that can be enhanced by the lives, souls, and spirits of the people who live, work and play at the site.
Value is added to the art when the contributions of the site's users and the community's are transformed into public art. In other words, instead of hiring outside public artists, go to the community, to the classrooms, and invite the children and their teachers to be a part of the process.
The process – the talking, learning, designing, and making of the art – can supplement the curriculum; the traditional and formal education of the students. Instead of creating art for themselves or to take home and put on the fridge, students can contribute to pieces that become lasting, permanent additions to their school. Public artwork enhances school environments and creates pride, because students experience the process, the power and satisfaction of shaping their environment, right there at school, the place where they spend a substantial amount of their time. School environments should be colorful, intriguing and embracing rather than factory-like and antiseptic. When children realize that environments reflect the people who use them, they see that they can shape the environment around them.
Meaningful projects – even small ones –can be created in various places, like guard rails, gateways, signs, fountains, tiles, fences, pavers, banners, etc. So how do you find the meaningful project for a particular school? Look at the curriculum - the lessons already being taught. Look for opportunities to hook onto things the teachers care about and use in their lessons. You'll have more success when you try not to make more work for teachers, but instead capture their enthusiasm, interests and loves.
A common concern people often express is how can these art projects be accomplished in public schools when there is so little money and so many regulations and political issues? The best way to accomplish this is by planning early in the process where art might be incorporated– this should not be something added on; it's part of the design. If the designer/architect believes in public art and its value, the project will be presented earnestly, and a consensus can be reached early on. It is important to find ways to work with the staff without putting extra burdens on them. Encourage them by talking, guiding, sharing; show possibilities but ask for their ideas, and try to get them to think beyond the typical kinds of school art projects and to find ideas that have meaning to those kids, that place, that community and their experiences. Of course this is not easy to do. It takes a lot of effort, but it is well worth doing, to create a connection to the place where children learn.
It also takes creativity to fund these projects. Funding can be found in a number of ways – project/construction cost savings, bond interest money, city-district community art grants, city redevelopment agencies, fundraising through PTA, collaborating with a university, etc., as well as, donations in kind from merchants, vendors, and interested parties. But, perhaps even more to the point, you can create art projects for virtually no money. For example, concrete embeds and weaving into an existing chain link fences. What is important to note is that many schools that have included these projects in their initial design have consistently met construction schedules and budgets which allows the art integrations to proceed at a pace that re-enforces the school's belief that the public art is a valuable part of the design process and does not detract from their real goal of having a school available to teach children.
What is most important is that this kind of work is not an add-on, and it cannot come exclusively from the architect's office. It takes serious, hands-on, meaningful collaboration to be successful. The art should not be remote, cold and off-limits. It needs to be an interactive, engaging, part of the environment; things that shift in the wind, or that you can sit on. Collaboration garners not only beautiful and interesting art, but it also builds community and creates a place that becomes useful outside of it's initial intent; a place for the community to utilize, value and even showcase. The meaning, attractiveness, and value of the school building could mean additional income for the school if it can be used for outside events during it's off times.
Permanent public artwork contributes to stimulating school environments that reflect the spirit of students, faculty, and the surrounding community. Site users feel pride and ownership in their school. One indication of the pride of the students is the lack of vandalism. Very little tagging or vandalism is seen, especially in the projects that include the art made by the students in that facility. Other benefits of public art in schools are good publicity and press, positive comments to and from the school boards and politicians. It's also good PR. But most important, public art enhances the learning process, engages kids, makes real the connection between education and the world, to real caring adults in the community, and to professionals in many fields. It adds color and intrigue and life to school buildings that otherwise tend to be institutional and unattractive. In color and whimsy and beauty, public art says we care about schools and the kids housed there.
- Bill Gould, AIA
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