Climate Resilience, Public Art, and Under-resourced Communities
Forecast's third Change Lab Research Fellow, Paula Castillo, shared about her research on climate resilience and public art. As a Research Fellow, Castillo’s work is poised to make a significant impact. She has explored how our communities can foster more robust collaborations among public art agencies, public artists who are BIPOC and/or low-income and/or rural, and environmental justice researchers and activists. Castillo shared insights and recommendations for how to continue moving forward public art projects that address climate change. She was joined by Sherri Brueggemann, recently retired Public Art Urban Enhancement Program Manager for the City of Albuquerque, Cultural Services Department. Featuring: • A Latina artist based in Belén, New Mexico, Paula Castillo holds an MFA from the University of New Mexico; she creates performative and sculptural installations inspired by human geography and environmental research. Her recent public-facing work includes Reverse the Curse, a transformative ritual-based participatory performance that critically examines the impact of mechanical applications on the Rio Grande River. Other recent public-facing work includes Glyph, Equis, and Trestle, three monumental permanent public sculptures for the Denver Art Museum campus, commemorating Denver’s rich Mestizaje community’s profound cultural, historical, and economic contributions to the development of contemporary Denver. Read Paula's Change Lab Fellowship report. • Sherri Brueggemann is a career professional in arts administration. She recently retired as the Public Art Urban Enhancement Program Manager for the City of Albuquerque, Cultural Services Department and has been managing art programs and public art projects in New Mexico for 20+ years. Sherri holds a master’s from UNM’s School of Public Administration with an emphasis in cultural policy evaluation. Sherri was a founding member of the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network and served on the PAN Council from 2000–2002. She is also a former printmaker, special events coordinator, winery owner, and has been a professor of practice at the University of New Mexico College of Fine Arts, Arts Management Program from 2008–2016. She has served as a board member for numerous arts, cultural and civic non-profit organizations in the Southwest, including the New Mexico Route 66 Association, the New Mexico Winegrowers Association, the Albuquerque Arts Alliance and 516 Arts. She helped spearhead the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Arts & Cultural Industries Economic Impact Study, the ABQ Cultural Count Task Force, the New Mexico MainStreet Downtown Arts & Cultural District, and Albuquerque Convention and Visitor’s Bureau Cultural Directors’ Tourism Steering Committees. Sherri was recently appointed to the New Mexico Hospitality Association’s Space Tourism Committee. In her spare time, she manages the InterGalactic Cultural Relations Institute, which she founded. This conversation is from Forecast’s Change Lab. Change Lab Research Fellows go deep into an area of critical importance, and apply findings to collectively develop a national public art policy platform rooted in justice, health and human dignity for Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. ____ Please consider a gift to Forecast to make a public art policy platform created collaboratively and with community input a reality: https://bit.ly/DonateFPA _____ From the chat: Download Paula's report: https://bit.ly/FPAfellow3 "Thank you so much Paula for this inspiring talk .. infrastructure not ornament. Act instead of describing. Resilience is about what can be in the future. So many lessons I can’t wait to read the full report and share [it]." "Thank you Paula, your presentation has reignited my love and passion for public art and the deep unruly labor of community based work :-)" "I would reiterate something Paula said earlier - creativity is hope."
