Our Jackson Home Partners with City of Jackson to Create & Support Public Art
Written by Lizzie Emmons
Photographed by Maddie McMurry
Our Jackson Home has been known to our community as the program that helps celebrate and tell the stories of Jackson. That simple initiative has taken many forms throughout the years - a community-driven journal, Porchfest, films, mural installations, social media and blog content, storytelling nights, and collaborations with local organizations and businesses. For years, Our Jackson Home has harnessed the storytelling abilities of our local artists and creatives to paint a collective picture of all that Jackson has to offer. With the writing, speaking, photographs, paintings, illustrations, and performances of our most creative neighbors, we have built a culture of pride in calling Jackson our home.
On the eve of Our Jackson Home’s 10 year anniversary, a new chapter is starting for the program that will open more opportunities for artists to transform our city. On August 6th, Jackson City Council unanimously approved to contract the Our Jackson Home program at theCO to install and manage public art for the City of Jackson.
What does that mean exactly? It means Our Jackson Home’s programming will all continue, but we’ll also be adding more public art to the mix. Let’s give a little backstory here for context.
In January 2024, the City of Jackson began a public art consulting process with Dr. Shawn Pitts - an arts and humanities leader, avocational folklorist, writer, artist, musician and nonprofit founder, with three decades of experience in community arts advocacy and planning (AKA, one of Tennessee’s best arts planning experts). Dr. Pitts laid out a detailed plan to expand public art in Jackson with the feedback from the City of Jackson, a group of primary public art stakeholders, and Jackson citizens. You may have seen Our Jackson Home pop up at events during this planning period asking what kind of public art you want to see in Jackson. We helped gather feedback during this process to make sure the voices of our neighbors were heard and considered in this plan.
The final public art plan includes key partnerships, goals for a new public art program, what kind of art, and where the community wants to see more art in Jackson over the next five years. It’s called “Unifying Spaces: 25/30”, with the name signifying the ability of public art to create unifying spaces in our city, and a commitment from the City to see out a public art program for the next five years (fiscal years 2025 - 2030).
Dr. Pitts identified Our Jackson Home at theCO as a key partner to public art. Not only has Our Jackson Home been leading some of the strongest community-building efforts with our local creatives, but we also have a makerspace and resources at theCO that can assist artists with public art creation and provide essential support to working artists growing their careers.
“So, what does all of this actually mean for Jackson?” you may ask.
For the next year, this means artists will get paid to create four to six new public art installations in the Arts District on public property, with a priority of hiring local artists for the jobs, and with the plan for many more art installations to come within the next five years. Our Jackson Home will manage these projects, in direct partnership with the City of Jackson and their Public Art Commission, providing resources and ongoing support to the artists hired to do the work. We’ll make sure there is a plan for the new art to be protected and maintained for years to come. We will release calls to artists for each project in the near future, and work with our community to decide which artists are selected for the jobs. In true Our Jackson Home fashion, we’ll be telling the stories of these artists from beginning to end of each installation via digital and print media. We will also host public art workshops for local artists and events for our community to help with new art installations.
You’ll be seeing a new, colorful, and lasting Arts District unfold.
So we want to know - how do you engage with public art in Jackson? Do you take pictures in front of murals? Change your walking route to walk across the new crosswalk art downtown? Run past public art while you exercise? Learn about our Jackson history through our public art? Share about your favorite Jackson public art installations, tag Our Jackson Home, and let’s get excited about adding more art to our shared spaces together!
Artists can learn more about future projects here.