GUEST POST by Nicole Nugent

This past spring the MacKenzie Art Gallery collaborated with the Regina Downtown Business Improvement District (Regina Downtown BID) to present reproductions of artworks from the MacKenzie Art Gallery Permanent Collection in the city’s downtown core, a project lovingly penned art{outside}. Our hope is that each visitor will connect with something in the outdoor artworks, with the ultimate goal to inspire audiences to think differently about the world around them, more specifically the city and environment they connect with every day. This project was inspired by the work of our colleagues at the Detroit Institute of Arts and their Inside Out program.

There were two project leads, myself from the MacKenzie and my partner Lovella from the Regina Downtown BID. Together we worked with our Directors and members of our respective staff to select, produce, and install seven artworks, two at City Hall, four in Victoria Square Park, and one behind the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Wascana Park. The artworks will remain in these locations for the next year.

This was by far the most internally collaborative project I have ever worked on in my 15 years at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. All departments were actively engaged at almost every stage of the project. Our Head Curator selected the artworks and wrote didactics (with passionate input from myself and our Director of Development and Communications). Our Collections Manager secured copyright for the images. Our Director of Development and Communications worked with her staff and an external design firm to develop the project brand and visual identity. Our Installation Officer did the majority of the heavy lifting, researching and facilitating the production, framing, and installation of the artworks. Lovella and her staff at Regina Downtown BID secured grant funding for the project, worked with the City of Regina to secure permits and permissions for the locations, arranged for and oversaw installation of the posts for the artworks, and worked collaboratively with the MacKenzie on programming and communications.

Many hands do make light work. They can also make communication more difficult with so many players at the table, both internally, and with external partnerships. The partnership between Regina Downtown BID and the MacKenzie started as brand new, experienced challenges and bumps in the road, and grew into a healthy collaborative relationship. Our organizations are vastly different. Our structures, policies, working methodologies, and even the language we use are different. It took us some time to learn about each other, to trust each other and to develop a common language. Once we did, we were able to understand the strengths each partner brought to the project, and progress became much more fluid. Internally, the collaborative nature of this project was an opportunity to bring many departments together towards one intended outcome. We can often find ourselves fairly isolated and in our department ‘bubbles’, and art{outside} brought us all out of our offices (literally). The result was a shared ownership of and accountability for every stage of the project, which honestly made it more fun.

We installed the artworks this past September, launching the project during Culture Days. Research, writing, and production happened over the spring and summer months. A representative from the City of Regina unveiled one of the artworks at City Hall during the Culture Days ceremonies, followed by a walking tour of the downtown artworks by our Head Curator. We had trained Gallery Facilitators deliver walking tours throughout the Culture Days weekend, both on Saturday and Sunday. We developed an eye-catching brochure and a social media campaign for the project.

What did art{outside} teach us about partnerships?

Bring in the experts early.
Never stop communicating.
Likewise, listen. Listen with an open mind.
Be as transparent and honest as possible.
It is important to give new relationships time to grow and develop trust. Be patient.
The process is not always going to look like you imagine it will. Be open to new processes and pathways.
Detailed timelines that can be flexible are a good thing.

What did art{outside} teach us about outdoor walking tours?

It is extremely important to consider where you start a walking tour. Think about foot traffic. Don’t start your tours in locations that are either too out of the way, or right in the middle of high foot traffic. Test out your start location beforehand.
Use a sandwich board or pop up signage to identify tour locations and upcoming tour times.
Equip your tour guides with maps to hand out to participants.
Be open to adjusting tour start and end times. Listen to your visitors.

These are just the tip of the iceberg. There are still many more lessons to be learned throughout the next year. Now the community has a chance to live with these artworks, to glance at them quickly on their way to work, use them as a meeting point, conversation starter, picnic location, and everything in between. Our next step is to focus on evaluation, to capture the stories and memories that these artworks produce. Stories like this one:

In the very first week of installation, I observed a man who works for the City of Regina Parks Department standing in a flowerbed, with his nose right up against the Allen Sapp artwork we installed near City Hall. Sitting on a bench nearby, I smiled when he met my gaze and quickly introduced myself. Once he understood that I worked at the MacKenzie, he was eager to relay the importance of Allen Sapp’s work to his childhood memories, including how he grew up on a Reserve near North Battleford and often visited the Allen Sapp Gallery as a young boy. Now, it is his “job to make this park beautiful”, he shared with a proud smile. It was very apparent how pleased he was to bring the two experiences together. I was grateful for this moment that happened outside of the gallery, in the life space of this individual, meeting him within his everyday life. It demonstrated that art experiences could be anywhere, that galleries can in fact meet their visitors on their terms, and the experience can be just as meaningful.

-Nicolle Nugent, Coordinator of Public Programs and Community Engagement, MacKenzie Art Gallery