Reflecting, Together.: Essays in Response to Created, Together.

Created, Together. was a national assembly for artists and creatives working with communities. On Friday, October 20, 2023, roughly 200 participants from the United States and Puerto Rico visited public art projects in Philadelphia. On Saturday, October 21, they gathered at Friends Center for a day of learning and dialogue. The event was hosted by the Mural Arts Institute, which is dedicated to sharing knowledge, ideas, and experiences that have shaped the organization’s approach to community centered artmaking with a global audience.

The convening was structured to foster learning through exposure to content and method. Its design immersed participants in processes often used in participatory public artmaking. In particular, I noted the use of emergence: allowing each moment to drive the next, providing the minimum necessary structure to support participants bringing forth the topics most important to them. Created, Together. was literal: we did, in fact, create it together. Mural Arts Institute Senior Program Manager Joseph Iacona reflects on the design of Created, Together in the first essay in this compilation.

The Institute’s staff invited me to serve as editor of a series of essays documenting some of the conversations that occurred on Saturday. Six facilitators hosted break-out sessions tackling questions related to participatory public art. Institute staff hoped to capture key takeaways that might be shared back to assembly participants and with the field. We collaborated to identify the writers. First, the Institute put a call out to invited artists, to see if any of them would be interested in serving as writers. Two responded with interest. We engaged the remaining four by
invitation, seeking out people with knowledge of Mural Arts, expertise
in participatory public art, and experience as writers. The list
includes Jared C. Diaz, Aislinn Pentecost-Farren, Qiaira Riley, Katelyn Rivas, Sarah C. Rutherford, and Patrice Worthy.

Each writer was tasked with describing a session and capturing learnings in about 500 words. They were given freedom to work in whatever voice felt most authentic to them, and to share as much about themselves and their experience of the session as they would like.

Aislinn Pentecost-Farren initially planned to document garima thakur’s session. In her writing, she organically moved outward, offering a broader reflection on how navigating power dynamics often arises at forums that bring participatory artists together. I suggested we use the essay as a coda. I had coincidentally participated in garima’s session, and volunteered to write the summary in Aislinn’s place.

For anyone who has ever agonized over which breakout group to attend at a conference, this piece is an antidote. The six essays documenting sessions are vignettes, both distinct and interconnected. Like Aislinn, I see common themes. Together, they give the impression of a community of people searching for connection, for understanding, for progress, to be at once affirmed and challenged. I hope they are received as an opening: as a call for more dialogue, for more forums where artists and creative workers can surface and process the complexity they encounter in participatory work.