Lewisville Public Art Master Plan and Update
Lewisville, a prideful city near Dallas, is expanding its successful performing and community arts programming to include public art. Bressi created a master plan that shows how public art strategies can from Lewisville’s innovative comprehensive plan, while maintaining a community spirit. Five years later, he helped update the plan, identifying new opportunities and streamlining processes.
Date | 2019, 2024
Client | City of Lewisville
Lewisville, Texas, like many of its peer cities in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex and throughout the state of Texas, proudly manages a public art program, which it launched about six years ago. This report, a five-year update to the City’s Public Art Master Plan, provides a strategy for building on success to date. Executive Summary.
By most metrics, the City can take pride in the progress that its public art program has made. Lewisville’s public art program can boast:
• Solid accomplishments with a diversity of acquisitions, commissions community-oriented projects•Stable funding, staffing, and support
• Accomplishments consistent with those of its peers in the region
• Growing partnerships with arts and community organizations in the City and the region
The challenge that Lewisville faces is how to take its public art program to a higher level — to increase the impact of its work and its engagement with the community. To that end, this Public Art Master Plan Update recommends the following key strategies:
• Provide more capacity to manage the program and implement projects, especially from public art professionals
• Improve the use of tools already set out in the Public Art Master Plan— the Annual Work Plan, Project Plans, community engagement and education strategies, conservation and maintenance protocols
• Introduce new tools/models for recurring public art projects, mural grants, and community-initiated public art projects
• Collaborate more closely with City departments to secure commitments for public art in civic projects and major private developments early in the project planning process•Initiate a signature temporary public art project
• Initiate a regular maintenance and conservation process
The Update also provides an updated list of opportunities that the Public Art Program can anticipate over the next few years. Some are new possibilities that have emerged in recent years, others reflect recommendations in the 2018 public art plan that have come into better focus.
People in Lewisville — in City departments and in the community at large— are excited to talk about public art. They clearly see how public art can strengthen their attachment to a place that they love and elevate that place in the eyes of the region. The recommendations in this plan update how to build on Lewisville’s progress so far, and the enthusiasm people continue to feel for the potential of public art.
