Make Art Public

I was doing some research earlier this week on Public Art in Canada and I came across this interesting Montreal based initiative. Check it out.

MAKE ART PUBLIC
Make Art Public’s (MAP) objective is to provide access to creativity emanating from different art fields by developing a distribution network to exhibit an artist’s work and enhance artistic awareness at the same time using public places and spaces. Our strategy and ability is achieved utilizing unused advertising space on billboards containing outdated filler-ads. This presents an enormous contemporary potential to inform, educate and inspire through visual cultural distribution.

Through collaboration with proprietors of urban pedestrian infrastructure, MAP accounts for a significant amount of outdoor advertising through agreements to show artistic images in approximately 15% of all annual vacant advertising space. This initiative will hopefully become one of the largest distribution projects of visual and cultural integration in the country.

An Introduction to MAP
MAP was founded in January 2006, in Montreal Quebec, it is a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of art and culture in everyday life. We employ methods used by advertising agencies, namely, street level advertising. One of our main goals is to cut-through social barriers in order to create bonds and emphasize commonality amongst differing workforces.

With the financial support of our partners both active and silent, MAP offers artists the opportunity to present their work in a forum that will reach hundreds of thousands of viewers for an extended term and/or in combination with special events, thereby offering artists new avenues for their works within their own urban community.


Advertising plays an important role in promoting Western society’s liberal ideals in through commercial, economic, political and social messaging. It is omnipresent in homes through television, the Internet and radio; it is also omnipresent through outdoor advertising-- particularly advertising oriented street structures such as bus shelters, advertising billboards... All of which creates interest by their availability to users, since they are directly employed on main, frequently used, thoroughfares.

This upcoming exhibit MAP2 Try Harder will launch in Montreal, Toronto, Quebec City, Ottawa, Vancouver and Calgary simultaneously.

Universality and Development
The presence and availability of advertising on public roads and in public areas constitutes a universal phenomenon, common to all the great cities in Canada and elsewhere. Consequently the project set-forth by MAP is highly exportable. Plans are already underway for international exchange with cities such as Mexico, Buenos Aires, etc. Europe to come in 2009.

For more info check out the MAP website:
http://www.mouvementartpublic.com/makeartpublic/