The Public Arts Committee met 08/03/2022.
The main purpose of the meeting was to informally discuss plans for placing new images in the Houdini Plaza Welcome Tower. The current “Rhythms of the World” photos were placed there in Spring of 2022. Per City Planner Jessica Titel, pictures usually stay in the tower for about a year. It takes a while to pick out new pictures, get them printed, and then swap them out, so they wanted to start deciding now what they were going to do. Ms. Titel had submitted a memo to the committee outlining a number of possible ideas.
The committee decided they wanted to hold a photo contest soliciting images from Appleton residents on the theme of “Images that Define Appleton,” perhaps with a focus on arts and culture such as by focusing on things like the performing arts, murals, Mile of Music, etc.
They also wanted to incorporate the “Photos from Kids” theme by explicitly requesting submissions from people 18 and under and reserving some spots on the tower specifically for photos by kids. They didn’t want to only have photos by kids because they were worried they wouldn’t get enough submissions, but, at a minimum, they wanted to hold a contest that had an 18 and under age category and an over 18 category.
Finally, the committee discussed ways to try to make sure that the photos residents submitted were the appropriate resolution and cropped to a square. For the last contest they held, they requested that entries by cropped to squares and 3/4th of them were, but 1/4th of them were not. They could crop them themselves; however, they preferred to have the actual photographers submit the final image that they wanted displayed.
The committee planned to met again next month to finalize and formally vote on a plan for filling the tower.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=984117&GUID=5FBFDABB-E820-4EC7-9A77-F2EF49FFC921
Be the first to reply