Creative Greensboro Annual Report 2021-2022

IN THE COMMUNITY PARTNERS

ART EVERYWHERE

The City’s Cultural Arts Plan calls for Creative Greensboro to enhance our environment through public art and creative place making. To do that, in 2021 2022 we launched the Downtown Arts program. A selection committee of City Communications and Marketing staff and Cultural Affairs Commission members chose pieces from 10 visual artists to be featured throughout the center city on 11 digital kiosks (see art on report back cover). Each artist received an honorarium. The works – including textile art, watercolor, digital design, photography, Sharpie illustration – will rotate through the kiosks until early 2023. So far, the first four pieces have been showcased for 5,678 hours, an in-kind promotional value of more than $17K . One artist, Raman Bhardwaj, was commissioned to create an original work based on his reflections of Greensboro in 2021. The digital piece, “Moving Forward with Hope, Joy, and Harmony,”was enlarged to 10 feet by 20 feet and installed in the Melvin Municipal Office Building (see art on report cover). It will be on display there through early 2023. A smaller version of the work will become part of the City’s permanent art collection.

I enjoy the diversity of Greensboro and see it as a melting pot of various cultures. Here, I not only see various cross-culture friendships and partnerships, but I also witness businesses and city government creating growth and opportunity for people of differing identities. I have attempted to capture the love and peaceful co-existence of diversity in this artwork.

— Raman Bhardwaj Visual Artist

Programs like Downtown Arts are important to give local artists visibility. As a working artist and a teacher, I appreciate having these opportunities to show my work and to model for my students how artists participate within the community and develop relationships.

— Steven Cozart Visual Artist

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