When Street Art & Government Clash

The City of Dayton seems to be stuck somewhere between two forces.  The first is a government mired in an old bureaucratic attitude and uncreative culture with strict rules that focus on regulating instead of facilitating, perhaps from a different era when old captains of industry controlled things in the community.  The other is a new generation of a few progressive-thinking city staffers & officials, a citizenry made up of those who create music and art, and those who enjoy living where creativity (sometimes spontaneous) is embraced and encouraged.  The same subset of city residents that actually CHOOSES to live in the city for the love of an urban environment, despite the enormous challenges that the city faces.

Last month, the Delectable Dayton blog did some great reporting on the spontaneous “knit graffiti” (or “yarn bombs”) that popped up in the Oregon District, and the subsequent heavy-handed reaction by public works employees who allegedly responded to a few complaints by removing this spontaneous street art and threatening to bill the “offending artist” for said removal.  The final chapter in this saga ended with the issue moving from the stand·pat publics works department to the more progressive planning department and a call for this kind of situation to be resolved in the future by community stakeholders instead of city staff.  This was a great example of an issue going viral on the social networks (Facebook, individual blogs, etc.), and the social network reaction is what caused the change in this incident’s trajectory within the city government.  Yes, the more progressive factions of the city government are very plugged into online social networks and I predict we’ll see more actions and reactions come from these online discussions.

Getting back to the OD yarn bomb incident – it is my opinion that we must have a major shift in attitude when it comes to street art in this town.  While the old guard tends to favor more planned, less risque and established out-of-town artists when it comes to public art, the new generation of creatives wants public art to be more spontaneous, thought-provoking, unique and most importantly – done by local artists.  This isn’t to say that city government has always come down against this new generational attitude as Garden Station is a perfect example of city government acting as an enabler.  But other efforts such as c{space have run into a strange combination of conflicting attitudes within city government; regulators vs facilitators, squashers vs champions, traditional vs progressive.  And then there is the OD Yarn Bomb Incident.

Street art can be controversial yet it is important to any urban environment – it differentiates an authentic downtown from the more sterile environments found in typical suburban shopping malls and corporate-driven lifestyle-centers like The Greene.  Nothing against those environments – different strokes for different folks.  But the more diverse lifestyle options a region can offer, the stronger it will be in attracting a talent base necessary for economic growth – and a strong, viable and authentic urban core is an absolute necessity to any region’s economy.  So how do we strike the proper balance between encouraging our local artists when it comes to spontaneous public art, and ensuring that we are creating a truly inspiring urban environment that doesn’t offend the sensibilities of the average resident or visitor?

A possible solution to the public art dilemma could come in the form of a public street arts council – a group of community stakeholders (local artists, residents, business owners) that could be responsible for evaluating potential planned public art installations and quickly approving permits to local artists.  Organization and communication could be done easily, cheaply and rapidly online as opposed to traditional committee meetings and public townhalls.  And this same council and communication system could be used to handle spontaneous street-art incidents, perhaps with online polls that empower citizens to evaluate – hopefully with a sensible yet more laissez-faire attitude than a government bureaucracy.  Whereas typical vandal graffiti would get a majority thumbs down, completely harmless street art like knit graffiti would likely get a pass (as can be seen by the quick poll set up at Delectable Dayton).

As our city continues its transition from old to new economy, we must be looking forward and implementing solutions such as these – lest we lose for good those who make our city more interesting and those who truly appreciate our urban core.

UPDATE: In case some of you haven’t actually clicked on the links in this post, check out the simple solution that Bristol implemented to deal with rogue street art after the fact: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/aug/31/graffiti-art-bristol-public-vote