To Govern Artfully. Linking Relational Public Art to Urban Governance Toward New Forms of Civic Participation

The paper describes preliminary results of an interdisciplinary research (involving sociologists and architects), funded by the Autonomous Region of Sardinia. The analysis focuses on the experiences of relational public art (or community art), studying the strategies that artists activate to enable citizens' engagement in the transformation of urban spaces. These strategies are able to "revitalize" models of urban governance in which participation often translates in a mere consultative process. We are facing emergent phenomenons that are not only "counter-cultures", but could also feed into processes of policy formation and decision making. Indeed, the "new genre of public art", represents a new way in which citizenship is practiced: artists ask the audience to become co-actors in the construction of their works, taking in charge problems/conflicts related to urban spaces, intercepting needs and experiences of people who live in these spaces, and activating citizens’ awareness of their role in the transformation of urban spaces.
Starting from a background analysis of significant national and international case studies, the research focuses on Sardinian experiences activated in the urban "border areas". The aim is to investigate – through interviews to the "citizen-artists" and the other actors involved in the artistic intervention – the practices of production and consumption (active/participatory); the shared meanings of participation, politics, community, territory; the representations of the other actors; the discourses related to objectives and results; the communication strategies; the interaction with the reference contexts.
The process of analysis will conclude with the production of three outputs: a "Participatory Research Laboratory" which involves artists and other actors of the urban governance (architects, sociologists, public administrators, stakeholders); an online platform containing informations (texts, video, images, georeferenced maps) about experiences we analysed and the modalities to activate similar participatory processes; a procedural tool for administrators, oriented towards a participatory territorial planning.