In 2025, I was awarded a Rank Memorial Award to undertake research into the public art sector, guided by that year’s theme, “Igniting Change: Learning from Inspiring Leadership from Across the Globe.” The award provided an opportunity to critically examine how different models of leadership, collaboration and cultural production shape the development and delivery of public art.

July 2026, I travelled to New York City and Philadelphia for four weeks, undertaking meetings, site visits and conversations with artists, cultural institutions, contemporary galleries, and community-led and city-led organisations. Across these contexts, I explored how public art is defined, commissioned and delivered, paying particular attention to how different approaches shape relationships between artists, institutions and the communities they work with.

One organisation I followed closely was Groundswell NYC, a New York City-based community arts organisation founded in 1996 by artists, educators and activists. Groundswell brings together young people, professional artists and community organisations to develop collaborative public artworks. I was particularly interested in its use of murals as tools for social change and youth development, and how its approach creates opportunities for young people to shape the places and communities around them.

I spent time with Groundswell’s Summer Leadership Institute (SLI), a programme that employs 15 to 20 young people as apprentice artists between July and August, providing hands-on experience of developing and delivering public art alongside professional artists. As part of the 2026 programme, participants were commissioned by Weeksville Heritage Centre to create a large-scale public artwork on the exterior of the centre’s building.

Weeksville Heritage Centre is a historic site and cultural centre in Central Brooklyn, located on the site of one of the largest free Black communities in pre Civil War America. The centre preserves the historic Hunterfly Road Houses, which date from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, alongside a wider programme of exhibitions, education and community engagement.

As the young artists began developing their commission, they took part in a mural walking tour in Brooklyn, visiting and discussing artworks created by artists commissioned by Groundswell through previous projects. The walk encouraged them to look beyond the visual qualities of the murals and consider how they had been developed, how stories were communicated through imagery and composition, and how artworks could evolve in meaning and remain relevant within a neighbourhood over time.

The group also met local residents who shared their relationships with the murals and the people represented within them. These conversations highlighted how public artworks can hold different meanings for different people, and how representations of real individuals can generate discussion, disagreement and debate about their histories, legacies and place within a community.

For the young artists, these encounters offered an opportunity to consider how their own mural might be interpreted by those who encountered it. They were encouraged to think about the responsibilities involved in representing people, histories and experiences in public space, and how different perspectives might be acknowledged without reducing the complexity of those histories.

What struck me was how research, observation and dialogue were integrated into the creative process. Civic engagement was not treated as a separate consultation stage, but as part of how the artwork itself was developed. Listening to community perspectives became a creative skill, informing how the young artists understood their subject matter and approached the decisions ahead of them.

I was particularly struck by how this process supported the development of confidence and agency; the young artists were not simply being asked to contribute to an existing vision. They were given the tools, knowledge and space to develop their own perspectives and make informed creative decisions. One of the most significant lessons I took from Groundswell was that meaningful participation requires more than giving young people a voice. It requires creating the conditions for them to develop the skills, knowledge and confidence to influence what happens next. Groundswell’s model demonstrates how public art can operate simultaneously as a creative practice and a civic learning process, enabling young people to develop agency while contributing to the cultural life of their communities.

Following the mural walks, the group moved into a series of exercises exploring compositional and shading techniques. Guided by professional artists and educators, the young people were introduced to different approaches and encouraged to experiment, consider the effects of their choices and articulate why particular techniques might work. They explored different ways of organising imagery, considering how composition could influence movement, depth and storytelling.

While the artists and educators provided direction and technical support, they did not impose a fixed visual outcome. Instead, they created a framework in which the young artists could explore possibilities, question ideas and make decisions for themselves. The group was encouraged to listen to different perspectives, challenge one another’s thinking and reach decisions collectively.

These exercises gave the young artists a shared language for discussing their ideas and evaluating different approaches. Technical learning became part of the creative decision-making process, helping them translate their earlier research and observations into choices about the direction of the mural.

This offered an important insight into the role of professional expertise within participatory public art. The artists and educators were not stepping back from their responsibilities or leaving the young people to make decisions without support. Rather, they used their knowledge to build the skills and confidence that would enable the young artists to exercise their own judgement.

This distinction is important. Creative agency does not mean removing professional guidance or leaving young people to make decisions without support. It means using professional expertise to build the knowledge, skills and confidence that enable others to make informed decisions for themselves. Groundswell demonstrates how this can happen progressively: young people first develop knowledge and technical skills, then apply them through creative decision-making, before taking responsibility for facilitating their peers and contributing to the direction of the wider project.

For me, this distinction reframed how I think about leadership within public art. Rather than concentrating authority in the artist, curator or commissioning organisation, leadership could be distributed through a process in which professional expertise supports others to develop their own creative agency. The role of the professional is not necessarily to determine the outcome, but to create the conditions in which others can contribute to shaping it.

With a growing understanding of mural making and the possibilities of their collective voice, the young artists visited Weeksville Heritage Centre to explore the historic grounds of the Hunterfly Road Houses and develop a deeper understanding of the site. The visit gave them an opportunity to engage directly with its history and significance, as well as meet community members, centre staff and members of the board.

These conversations helped the young artists understand who they were creating the work for and the wider context in which the mural would sit. They learned more about the history of the site and the centre’s role within the community, while asking questions about what the mural could contribute. This knowledge informed their thinking about the narrative they wanted to communicate and how the artwork could respond to the identity, history and aspirations of the place.

The visit also demonstrated the importance of understanding a commissioner and community as part of the creative process. Rather than developing the mural solely from their own perspectives, the young artists were encouraged to interpret the information they gathered and consider how it might inform their creative decisions. Their role was becoming less about receiving information and more about making judgements about how that knowledge could be represented.

The group was subsequently divided into smaller teams, with each team working collectively to develop a mural concept. The young artists discussed their individual ideas, built on one another’s contributions and prepared proposals to share with the wider group.

Leadership was deliberately incorporated into this structure. Each team appointed a young person to facilitate discussions, encourage participation, listen to different perspectives and help the group reach decisions. Rather than directing the creative outcome, these young leaders were responsible for supporting the collaborative process and ensuring that different contributions could be heard.

Each group then presented its concept to the Weeksville Heritage Centre team, explaining the vision for its design, the thinking behind its development, the techniques it intended to use and how the work might connect with the wider community. Presenting directly to the commissioner required the young artists to articulate their creative choices, respond to questions and consider perspectives beyond those of their immediate group.

This placed them in a more active position within the commissioning process. They were no longer simply learning about public art or developing ideas in a supported workshop environment. They were presenting proposals for a real site and audience, and beginning to experience the responsibilities involved in developing work within a wider cultural and community context.

The feedback from each group was then brought together to inform a collective mural design. Rather than selecting one team’s proposal, the young artists identified ideas and elements from across the different concepts that could be incorporated into a shared composition. This required them to negotiate creative differences, consider the strengths of different approaches and decide how individual contributions could work together as a cohesive whole.

The collective design process was particularly significant because it required the young artists to move beyond individual authorship; they had to consider not only what they wanted to communicate, but how different ideas could coexist within a shared outcome. Leadership became visible in the process of reaching agreement, with responsibility distributed across the group rather than held by one individual or professional artist.

The process continued through a community paint day, where members of the Weeksville community were invited to contribute directly to the mural’s development. This extended the collaborative process beyond the SLI participants and into the wider community. The young artists were not only contributing to the production of the artwork, but also helping create opportunities for others to participate in its making.

Taken together, these stages revealed how leadership could develop progressively through a public art project. The young artists moved from observing and researching existing work to experimenting with techniques, facilitating their peers, presenting proposals to a commissioner, negotiating a collective design and supporting wider community participation. Professional artists remained central to the process, but their expertise enabled the young people to take on increasing responsibility for shaping the work.

One of the most significant lessons I took from Groundswell was that meaningful participation requires more than giving young people a voice. It requires creating the conditions for them to develop the knowledge, skills and confidence to influence what happens next.

The SLI demonstrated how this can be achieved through the structure of a project itself. Opportunities to research, experiment, question, negotiate and make decisions were built into the process, allowing the young artists to develop their capacity to contribute meaningfully. Participation was not simply an invitation to respond to an existing vision; it became a process through which they could help shape that vision.

For my own practice, this has reinforced the importance of thinking beyond the artwork as the primary outcome of a public art commission. I want to pay greater attention to how a project’s structure distributes responsibility, supports collective decision-making and enables people to influence its direction. Groundswell showed me that these possibilities need to be considered from the outset, so that participation shapes not only the final artwork, but the process through which it comes into being.