Calling All Artists! Main Street Seating
As part of ongoing efforts to revitalize Fitchburg and its Main Street, the City desires to create vibrant public spaces that encourage people to congregate and linger in downtown. The City of Fitchburg recognizes downtown lacks public seating and seeks to commission an art installation that would imbed art in the form of permanent seating. The selected artist must have the ability to design, fabricate and install seating that will be located along Main Street. The ideal proposal will include at least two but as many as four seating pieces that encourage people to gather in groups.
Background and Recent efforts:
Fitchburg’s downtown has a long history of supporting public art, with numerous monuments and sculptures in public spaces including the Upper Common and Monument Park. Not only can public art spur economic development as a magnet for growth, it has also been demonstrated to provide important benefits to residents including improved public safety and wellbeing and giving and opportunity for self-expression to historically excluded residents. In recent years, the City has further embraced a wider range of public art as a type of place making, and has strategically set aside funding through its Community Development Block Grant program and other sources, to create public art in downtown, recently through a number of murals. Fitchburg’s downtown will also be the focus of a cultural district currently in the planning phase; and to that end, the City is encouraging arts and culture based businesses to cluster in downtown.
In recent years, several arts and culture initiatives have taken root in the downtown. The Community applied for and received a Creative Cities grant through MassDevelopment and the Barr foundation, this initiative is about to enter its 3rd year and works to foster leadership and partnership in creative for-profit and non-profit activities. Fitchburg Arts Community in currently under construction at the former BF Brown school, bringing 68 units of artist preference housing to the area, and numerous arts organizations are located, or are soon to locate in the downtown including the Fitchburg Art Museum, the Fitchburg Cultural Alliance, the Boulder Art Gallery, Stratton Players, New Players Theater Guild, the Gallery Marque, and Coffee Corp. Numerous festivals are also hosting in the downtown area throughout the year, including Civic Days, the Lights festival, River City Rhythm & Rock Festival, the Forge In, the Brewers Festival, Juneteenth, and the Latino Cultural Festival.
The City seeks to further diversify its public art by creating three dimensional art that the public can directly interact with as seating. Based on feedback from the community and in an effort to plan for a future cultural district designation a request for artistic downtown public seating has been created. This artistic public seating should be highly visible, attractive and engaging, and create a space comfortable for residents and visitors to sit and engage with each other, take pictures, eat outside, and leave a positive impression. This is a collaboration between the city of Fitchburg, the Creative Cities partnership and Intown Fitchburg.
Please see the full call here for more information about the call and how to submit a response.
