Smart Growth America is excited to announce the selection of five artists for our Arts & Transportation Rapid Response initiative. These five artists will be working in tandem with five local transportation agencies to design and implement projects that address pandemic-related transportation challenges and systemic inequities.
Each of the five proposed projects seeks to address COVID-related transportation challenges and systemic inequities and do so in unique, creative ways—with the support of one of these five local artists. Selected by Smart Growth America, in partnership with Forecast Public Art, the artists are (pictured above from left to right) as follows:
Tosha Stimage will be working with San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA to pilot a community-informed intervention strategy to deconstruct racial prejudices worsened by COVID-19, and normalize the culture of mask wearing on transit.
Jonathan Brumfield will be working with Oakland Department of Transportation in Oakland, CA to design a new Oakland Slow Streets “look and feel” that better reflects the unique community identities across Oakland, rather than bringing to mind construction sites.
Ashley Hairston Doughty will be working with the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas, NV to design and implement artwork and signage at the Bonneville Transit Center—a major transit hub serving frontline workers, residents, and tourists—that will educate the public about social distancing and safe transit riding practices. Mark Salinas will be working with Ashley behind the scenes to provide guidance and knowledge from his experience as a seasoned public artist and arts and culture administrator.
Naomi RaMona Schliesman will be working with West Central Initiative (WCI) in west central Minnesota to create a reusable community engagement kit consisting of both virtual and physical tools that can be used while social distancing is required. With the help of the kit, WCI staff is seeking to reach a more diverse range of stakeholders to better inform their transportation planning—specifically active transportation—across the nine-county region.
Ndubisi Okoye will be working with the Detroit Department of Public Works in Detroit, MI, to implement creative wayfinding to connect major bus stops to nearby community recreation centers. These recreation centers provide access to critical services such as food, employment resources, cooling centers, and other programming for vulnerable community members, many of whom are accessing these centers for the first time during the pandemic.
Photos in the above graphic courtesy of (left to right) Tosha Stimage, Jonathan Brumfield, Lonnie Timmons III/UNLV Photo Services, Naomi RaMona Schliesman, and Ndubisi Okoye.
Meet the artists
Mark Salinas, supporting Ashley’s work behind-the-scenes, is a governor-appointed Board Member of the Nevada Arts Council and the former founding Director of the Carson City Department of Arts & Culture. As a public arts administrator, Salinas has founded community-affairs organizations within government, non-profit, and commercial sectors utilizing over 25 years’ experience as a creative contributor to the museum, gallery, fashion, film, and theater industries. Prior to his 2016 relocation to Carson City, Salinas lived in Queens, New York, having worked for such organizations as Pace Gallery, Brooklyn Art Museum, and the World Trade Center Site Memorial Design Competition. He is the founder of the non-profit community organization, 7Train Murals. Salinas is a 2019 recipient of the Nevada Humanities Rising Star Award and the first Nevadan inducted into the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures (NALAC) Leadership Institute.