Alexandria, VA, Office of the Arts
A key planning tool for Alexandria’s public art program is its annual plan, which looks ahead three years at the projects the program will do. The work plan helps the program manage funding and workflow, while ensuring it has a steady pipeline of long and short-term projects, dispersed throughout the city an in a variety of permanent and temporary genres. Alexandria has asked Bressi to work with staff and a special task force to develop this plan each year for the past decade.
Date | 2014-2025
Client | Diane Ruggiero, Deputy Director; Alexandria Recreation, Parks and Cultural Affairs
In 2013, Bressi and collaborator Via Partnership helped the City of Alexandria create its Public Art Implementation Plan, which included a robust set of processes by which the City establishes its public art priorities and manages its portfolio of projects.
Alexandria’s public art program is unique in that the City allocates a lump sum of funding to the program each year. Therefore, one of the key tools the Implementation Plan introduced is a process for creating an Annual Public Art Work Plan – which identifies priorities and projects going forward.
Since the implementation plan was adopted, Bressi has continued consulting with Alexandria to help its public art staff and its Commission for the Arts develop the annual plan. Each plan identifies priority projects for the coming year, and also includes a two-year look ahead so that the staff and commission can ensure there is a diversity of projects in regard to geography, theme, scale, and temporality. In addition, the look-ahead allows the program to do forward planning for future projects.
The Work Plan is developed in collaboration with a Task Force that meets four times to assess opportunities, visit potential sites, develop recommendations, and review the draft of a plan. As part of the process, Bressi joins the staff in interviews with capital project managers and planners from various City departments and reviews city planning and private development initiatives. Over the years, the program has assembled a comprehensive mapping of infrastructure, facilities, and public art projects, providing easy spatial analysis.
