Mission: 
Organize a temporary public art project in Tulsa’s historic downtown as a pilot project to encourage temporary public art in Tulsa.

Objectives:

• Build on existing efforts to revitalize Tulsa’s urban core.

• Help city leaders, stakeholders and public see public art as a catalyst for changes that contribute to a dynamic downtown. 

• Provide public art opportunities to artists.

• Promote the creative profile of Tulsa.

• Enrich the public environment visually.

• Engage a broad audience.

• Increase accessibility to art

• Create thought-provoking new visions of the city

• Animate and rejuvenate downtown and improve local business viability.

• Add surprise and delight to the everyday routine.

Economic Impact:
All of the above objectives are tied to economic development. Connections among the fields of planning, economic development and arts and culture are widely recognized.  

Some of the most recent studies of these links include the following:

• “New Engines of Growth: Five Roles for Arts, Culture and Design,” The National Governors’ Association, April 2012.

• “The Arts, New Growth, and Economic Development,” May 2012.  A symposium sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the National Endowment for the Arts.

• “How the Arts and Culture Sector Catalyzes Economic Vitality,” American Planning Association, 2011.  One of a series of briefing papers on arts and culture.

• “Soul of the Community”, Knight Foundation, 2010.   A study that found the aesthetics of a place is a driver of attachment to a community and a leading indicator for local economic growth.

Project Theme:
Tulsa’s downtown provides a rich resource for developing a project theme focused on history.  Emerging as a major metropolitan area in the 20s and 30s, Tulsa built an impressive urban environment.  Today it is actively seeking to revitalize its unique downtown. The aim of this theme is to enrich and celebrate downtown sites by combining history and art to know and tell downtown stories in new ways.  
Contemporary interpretations of sites might link past and present with new visions and expressions for the future.  While artists must relate to sites in engaging ways, their creative investigations might take them in far ranging directions – from tributes to individuals, to architectural expressions of an era, to terra cotta decorations to timelines.