Public Arts Committee Finalizes Rules For Photo Contest To Fill Houdini Plaza Welcome Tower In 2024 – Theme Will Be “Recreation In Appleton”

The Appleton Public Arts Committee met 01/03/2024 and voted to finalize plans to select pictures to fill the Houdini Plaza Welcome Tower in 2024.

They decided to hold a photo contest (something they have done several times in the past), this time with the theme of recreational activities within the City of Appleton. As with the last photo contest they held, they will again be dividing entries into 17-and-under and 18-and-older categories.

The contest will open sometime this spring with a deadline of June 14, 2024 for submissions. The committee’s hope is that by waiting for warmer weather, they will receive pictures with vibrant colors and activity more often found in warmer months than in the dead of winter.

I’ve prepared transcripts of the 12/06/2023 Public Arts Committee meeting where the plans were initially discussed and the 01/03/2024 Public Arts Committee meeting where they were finalized:

Houdini-Welcome-Tower-Contest-Appleton-Public-Arts-Committee-on-2023-12-06-Transcript.PDF Download

Houdini-Welcome-Tower-Contest-Appleton-Public-Arts-Committee-on-2024-01-03-Transcript.PDF Download

Both the meeting in December and the meeting in January were relatively brief. During the 12/06/2023 the committee discussed potential photo contest themes as an information item. Principal Planner Jessica Titel, the city staff member who works with the committee, provided a number of different potential themes including (1) Favorite Buildings/Structure, (2) Appleton Riverfront, (3) Recreation in Appleton, (4) Favorite Images of Appleton, and (5) Photos from kids. Additionally, the staff at Appleton Downtown Inc provided a few suggestions including (1) My Downtown Neighborhood, (2) I Love Downtown Living, and (3) Pets.

The committee honed in pretty quickly on the concept of recreation because it involved action and activity. As Ms. Titel pointed out, a lot of the pictures in the past have been of landscapes and structures and not so much of people doing things (with the exception of the Rhythms of the World theme).

Committee member Beu Vang liked the idea of a recreation theme, saying, “I think oftentimes, our recreation is so individualized, where we’re only enjoying it for ourselves, you know, and someone may see something up there that they think “Hey, what is that?” You know? So, it’s very broad. It could span a lot of cultures, as well as, you know, what Appleton is known for.”

They briefly discussed adding pets in with recreation, but then decided that people love their pets so much it would probably overwhelm the recreation focus. Committee member Catherine McKenzie raised the possibility of doing a pet theme in the future.

At the suggestion of Ms. Titel, the committee decided to push the contest out to late spring/early summer in order to hopefully get some different types of images and “try to catch people as they’re getting out and getting active for the spring and maybe get some green on the […] trees.”

They also decided to have a 17-and-younger and an 18-and-older category, but they would not decide how many pictures to use from the children’s category until they reviewed the entries.

In the past, they’ve received 30-40 total entries and chosen 12 finalists and 2-3 runners-up which they used if they were not able to get high enough quality images of the finalists.