City wants 'narratives' in $10M public art buy for Stage 2
Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: March 13, 2019
The city’s $10-million public art program for the Stage 2 transit expansion is going international to find artists who can stitch together “narratives” for the rail lines.
Just days after council voted to expand the Confederation Line and Trillium Line last week, the city sent out requests for artists to be pre-qualified on the art procurements for the $4.6-billion rail expansion project.
Julie Dupont, the city’s manager of the public art program, said one of the lessons learned from the Stage 1 LRT public art program was to start the artist search early.
“It gets the artists on board with the design team sooner so it gives them a much better opportunity to integrate art into the overall design,” Dupont said.
Instead of a national call-out like in Stage 1, the city is going worldwide in its search for artists for Stage 2, something Dupont said is a best practice.
The budget for the Stage 2 Confederation Line public art program is $6.36 million, while the art program for the Trillium Line expansion is $750,000. The budgets don’t include sales tax.
According to a city hall policy, the city must put aside one per cent of municipal construction budgets for public art. Studies and land purchases aren’t included in calculation for the one per cent. It only applies to the so-called “hard costs.”
A council-endorsed report in March 2017 outlining the Stage 2 procurement plan said there would be $10 million available for public art. The projected art budget was based on the Stage 2 construction estimate at the time.
Fast-forward two years and the Stage 2 LRT project is $1.2-billion more than what the city estimated before taking construction bids. The city is paying about $2.2 billion for Stage 2, with both upper levels of government together providing about $2.4 billion.
Dupont said the city’s public art budget remains $10 million and to her knowledge it still complies with the one-per-cent policy. The hard costs relate to the city’s contribution to constructing the stations, she said.
(The city paid $7.3 million for various art pieces across the 13-station Stage 1 line. There are 24 new stations being constructed in Stage 2).
Where the Stage 1 art procurement asked for concepts on a station-by-station basis, the Stage 2 art program will group stations together to form “creative narratives” for artists to dream up.
There will be three groups of stations on the LRT extensions and each group will have an artist. In the east, the group of stations will be those being built at Montreal Road, Jeanne d’Arc Boulevard, Orléans Boulevard, Place d’Orléans and Trim Road. In the west, a station group will be Westboro, Dominion, Cleary, New Orchard and Lincoln Fields, and the third station group will be Moodie, Bayshore, Pinecrest, Queensview, Iris and Algonquin College.
The request for qualifications for the Trillium Line only calls for art at three new rail stations — Gladstone, South Keys and Bowesville — and the tender is specific to “digital media artworks.”
“Those were the best locations where we would be able to include public art and we also already have public art in some of the existing stations,” Dupont said.
“Going through all of that and looking at the budget, we decided we would focus on those three stations in particular.”
As for the digital media component, Dupont said it’s a chance to acknowledge Ottawa’s strong ties to the digital media industry through Bayview Yards and post-secondary programs.
Dupont said another lesson learned from Stage 1 was that throwing artists into a massive project was daunting, so for Stage 2 the city is asking artists to include in their proposals technical teams that would help with, for example, engineering or landscape architecture. During Stage 1, some artists had to source their own technical experts on the fly.
“It’s really going to help the project be more efficient with the workflow so they can keep up with the different milestones along the way,” Dupont said.
Dupont said the city is looking for better engagement opportunities with the community and good partnerships with the construction groups building the Confederation Line and Trillium Line extensions. The city wants to celebrate key construction milestones and involve artistic components, like student projects, music and other performances, she said.
The city is planning a special art project for the Byron Avenue/Richmond Road corridor, where a train tunnel will be built using a cut-and-cover technique. Dupont said the city will ask an artist to work with the surrounding community over the course of the design process to reflect residents’ input. The project has a separate $1-million budget.
Another of the initiatives included in the Stage 2 art program is a public art learning series, which kicked off last November. Dupont said there will be more sessions, workshops and keynote speaker events. She hopes artists from Stage 1 and Stage 2 will talk about their experiences developing art for the transit system.
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