City, OJH partner to bring public art to Downtown Jackson
Our Jackson Home and the City of Jackson have officially teamed up to bring some type of systematic planning and cohesion to the public arts efforts in the City’s Arts District.
The Arts District and Downtown aren’t exactly the same area, but there’s a lot of overlap between the two areas, and Mayor Scott Conger’s leadership team is trusting Our Jackson Home – an entity that started as a podcast and online blogging site about Jackson a decade ago and has progressed to a quarterly magazine and website that celebrates the Hub City and helps with public initiatives like 731 Day and Porchfest – with executing the plan.
“The plan was actually put together by Dr. Sean Pitts, who’s in McNairy County but has years of experience in this kind of work of planning public art,” said Lizzie Emmons, the content director at Our Jackson Home. “He put together a five-year plan, and this year, we’re set to start that.”
Claire Pierson is the community development coordinator for the City of Jackson.
“This is something that I’ve wanted to be involved with for a long time, and I appreciate Mayor Conger having the vision to see that public art can have a positive effect on a city and on areas it’s displayed in,” Pierson said before relating a personal story of her own about feeling safer and more trust in an area with public art. “Earlier this year I was visiting Knoxville and ate at a restaurant there, and I was with a couple of friends, and we went to leave through a different exit than the way we came in.
“We opened the door and it opened into an alley and started to go another way out until one of us saw there was public art out there, and we all said, ‘OK, let’s go out this way and see what’s here.’”
Pierson went on to explain areas with public art tend to have higher traffic with people taking pictures and the people of the city caring more about the area’s well-being to protect the art that’s in place.
“And that’s before we’re talking about any measures that will be put in place by the City itself like police patrol or lighting,” Pierson said.
Pitts’ plan was put together after more than a year of data collection by the arts community of Jackson in which they took surveys of people who attended arts events asking what they wanted to see and experience, what’s keeping them from experiencing more, what are they liking already and not liking and how can things improve.
That and other researched data was given to Pitts, who used tha.t to put the five-year plan together.
In August, the Jackson City Council approved $150,000 to fund the project for this year, and Our Jackson Home will use that to pay artists for commissioned pieces, supplies, marketing and other needed activities.
Pierson said the plan is for the City to fund the initiative with $150,000 per year for the next five years while Our Jackson Home carries out the plan.
This year, the plan is to focus on the area of the Arts District around The West Tennessee Farmers’ Market and The AMP.
“We probably won’t have any art put out there this fall because cold weather can affect a new piece of art negatively,” Emmons said. “So we’ll probably have our first unveiling out there in the spring.
“But once we have that first unveiling, I think people can look forward to more art being seen around the area.”
All public art will be placed in public areas to protect all entities involved, particularly the artist.
“For the most part, we’ll be looking for local artists to do these pieces and projects, and we’re looking forward to how this plays out once we get it going,” Emmons said. “Jackson has a lot of talented artists here just waiting for a place and time to shine, and we’re hoping this partnership will result in more opportunities for that to happen.”
Public art is anything in town that can be viewed by the public such as a mural or the painted crosswalks at the intersection of Main Street and Church Street in Downtown to sculptures displayed in a park.
Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news
