NRPACYBRARY

Parks and the Arts:

How Public Parks and Spaces
Encourage Arts and the Humanities
 Contents
Parks and the Arts:
How Public Parks and Spaces Encourage Arts
and the Humanities
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ii
The arts are perhaps the purest and most enduring contribution of any human society.
It is no wonder, then, that some of the greatest public spaces in any successful culture
are often associated with the arts, from the ancient theaters of Greece to New York
City’s Central Park.
- John Thorner, JD, CAE
Executive Director, National Recreation and Park Association

Part I
How the Arts Can Help Parks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Parks make for a particularly appropriate setting for the arts. Indeed, the country’s
finest parks—as Frederick Law Olmsted argued throughout his life—are works of art in
their own right.

Part II
How Parks Can Help the Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
The relationship between parks and the arts goes both ways, for not only can the arts
make parks better, but parks can also make a community’s arts and humanities sector
healthier and more vibrant.

i
Mission
By providing venues for musical and theater performances, introducing

audiences to the arts and cultural events, and offering gallery and work

space to artists, public parks play an important role in promoting arts and

the humanities in America. This publication documents the symbiotic

relationship between parks and the arts, and gives public park and

recreation agencies and citizens solid ideas on how they can enhance the

arts in their communities.

For more information

The National Recreation and Park Association produced this publication in

cooperation with author David Rivel, executive director of the New York

City-based City Parks Foundation, a nonprofit organization offering

programming in parks throughout the city’s five boroughs. For more

information on the involvement of public parks in promoting arts and the

humanities, please e-mail cybrary@nrpa.org.

Foreword
T he arts are perhaps the purest and most enduring contribution of any human society. It is no wonder,
then, that some of the greatest public spaces in any successful culture are often associated with the
arts, from the ancient theaters of Greece to New York City’s Central Park.

Theater, musical performances, sculpture. There are as many types of artistic activity as there are rea-
sons to feature the arts and humanities in parks. Not only does a lively performance draw a crowd of
spectators to a park, it also opens up new worlds of artistic possibilities for the previously unitiated,
and can breathe new life into a formerly abandonded or under-used site.

As you will read in the pages of this publication, the best-conceived arts programs complement the life
of a park, making it a vital community asset, the place where a community expresses its cultural identity.

Parks, said Charles Jordan, the former director of Portland (Ore.) Parks and Recreation, are the most
democratic spaces in society. It is a sentiment that perhaps best describes the symbiotic relationship
between public parks and the arts.

A word of warning: Come municipal budgeting time, the arts are oftentimes lumped into the same
“non-essentials” basket as are parks, and both are among the first to suffer slashes in funding.

Without people championing their parks, it is simple for city leaders to redirect resources to other sec-
tors with more persuasive advocates. Arts and the humanities can be among the keys to reversing the
cycle of neglect and substandard resources.

John Thorner, JD, CAE

Executive Director
National Recreation and Park Association

ii
 Introduction: An Artful Partnership
From the earliest days of park construction in America, green, open public spaces have been associated with arts and cul-
tural activities. Parades, cultural celebrations and musical performances filled the country’s first parks, virtually from the
moment of their openings. In New York City, for example, Mount Morris Park, Hamilton Fish Park and several other
Manhattan spaces held band concerts in the late 1850s and early ‘60s.

When Frederick Law Olmsted and

Calvert Vaux created their plan for
New York’s Central Park in 1858,
their drawings indicated a concert
ground in the park’s most prominent
location. And even though they gen-
erally eschewed buildings in favor of
natural structures, they also called for
the construction of a formal and
ornate bandstand.

The early concerts held there were

wildly popular, with one Saturday
afternoon concert series in 1873
drawing 45,000 spectators. People
overflowed the designated area, and
the guardians of the park, against
their better judgment, eventually had to allow spectators to sit on adjoining grassy areas.
New York’s Socrates Sculpture Park

celebrates 20 years. Today, there is hardly a large park in America that does not host outdoor musical events;
Photo credit: Steven L. Cohen some of these concerts and festivals are among the premier arts events in the nation.

It is not just musical performance, however, that is associated with parks. While parks have always been a setting for stat-
ues and monuments, the use of parks for sculpture and other formalized outdoor installations also has a long history.

The first organization created to support the placement of artwork in urban parks was likely the Fairmount Park Art
Association, founded in Philadelphia in 1872. In the late 1950s, again led by Philadelphia, cities created Percent for Art pro-
grams, which mandated that a certain percentage of the budget for capital projects had to be spent on public art; much
of that work found its way into parks and other public spaces.

Today, private organizations such as New York City’s Public Art Fund, which works with new and established artists to
increase access to contemporary art, routinely plan and install temporary art installations in parks.

When the new technology of film was developed around the turn of the 20th century, parks were again an important set-
ting. In fact, records of film showings in parks appear as early as the 1920s.

Today, technological advances have made the public exhibition of films in parks easy and inexpensive, giving communities
the modern equivalent of the drive-in theater. The technical requirements of theater and dance make outdoor presentation
relatively more difficult (and therefore less common), but there has nevertheless been an explosion of such activity in parks.

In New York City’s Central Park alone, there are dozens of alfresco Shakespeare performances every summer, from large
and famous programs such as the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park, to Shakespeare on the Run, where the audi-
ence moves from place to place for each successive scene of the play.

Parks and the Arts: How Public Parks and Spaces Encourage Arts and the Humanities 1
 Parks can also house museums and other cultural institutions. One of the best examples is Forest Park in St. Louis, which
hosts five major institutions, including an art museum and a 10,000-seat amphitheater. While it is common for parks to have
arts facilities, the concentration of so many in a single space has made Forest Park an important arts destination and has
helped build a large and enthusiastic constituency for the park.

Lastly, parks—especially indoor recreation centers located within parks—can provide an excellent location for arts educa-
tion activities. Drumming, film and video literacy, painting, dance and other similar activities, especially for kids in an after-
school setting, fill parks with structured activity. The familiarity of the neighborhood park setting makes these instruction-
al programs easy and accessible.

There are as many reasons to feature arts programs in parks as there are types of artistic activity.

The best-conceived arts programs complement the life of a park, making it the place where a community expresses its cul-
tural identity. Arts activity in a park can also bring life to a formerly abandoned or under-used site and highlight the poten-
tial of the space to become a vital community asset.

Parks can create opportunities for artists to work and perform and for audiences to be
The best-conceived exposed to art. While almost any artistic activity in a park is bound to have some worthwhile
arts programs impact, the best arts and cultural programs self-consciously combine one or more of these
key elements, to the mutual benefit of parks and the arts.
complement the life of
a park, making it the
place where a
community expresses
its cultural identity.

Outdoor cinema at Socrates Sculpture Park, part of an annual summer festival of international film, music, dance and food.

Photo credit: Chris Baker

2 Parks and the Arts: How Public Parks and Spaces Encourage Arts and the Humanities
 How the Arts Can Help Parks

PART I
How the Arts Can Help Parks
Considering the aesthetic nature of both parks and the arts, it seems logical
that a park would provide an appropriate setting for the arts. Indeed, the coun-
try’s finest parks—as Olmsted argued throughout his life—are works of art in
their own right. Some of the best example of arts and cultural programs in
parks make this connection explicit.

For example, the delightfully named Birds and Bards Festival in Boston brings
together nature-inspired poetry, self-guided parks tours and bird-watching. A
multi-partner collaboration among the National Park Service (and its Olmsted
National Historic Site), the Franklin Park Coalition, the Forest Hills Educational
Trust (Forest Hills Cemetery), Zoo New England (which operates the Franklin
Park Zoo) and the Boston Nature Center, the program was designed to bring
people to under-used parks. Participants are given booklets describing walking
tours of the spaces—highlighting spots for seeing birds, hearing bird-songs and
seeing notable architectural and sculptural park elements—accompanied by
poetry appropriate for each stop from Robert Frost, Joyce Kilmer and others.

A trend toward creating site-specific theater and dance performances for parks is
also emerging. For example, in Rochester, N.Y., the Rochester Museum and
Science Center Players and the Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery stage dramat-
ic walking tours and plays in Mount Hope Cemetery, the municipal burial ground Art-making workshop at Socrates Sculpture Park's 20th anniversary party.
of such famous Americans as Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony. There are
Photo credit: Chris Baker
also examples of theater (at Hamilton Pool in Prince George’s County, Md.) and
dance (in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park) staged inside park swimming pools.

Also in Boston, Art on the Emerald Necklace was a collaboration between the Boston Parks & Recreation Department and the
Institute of Contemporary Art. Designed to bring people into Boston’s Emerald Necklace park system, linked by waterways and
parkways, the program commissioned artists to create works that would give people a new perspective on the spaces, both set-
ting them off and commenting on their architecture and features. Works included banners that ringed the parks (including one
flown from an airplane), sculpture and performance art, all meant to highlight the related concepts of landscapes, waterways
and structures.

Barnaby Evans, one of the artists who participated in Art on the Emerald Necklace, is responsible for an unusual annual celebra-
tion in Providence, R.I., called WaterFire. Begun in 1994 and gradually expanded over the years, this sculptural project consists
of more than 100 fires burning on the surface of the three rivers that pass through the downtown area.

The Golden Ball, a project with a similar intention and approach launched in 1999, was designed to highlight New York’s neg-
lected and largely abandoned Bronx River, which travels from relatively affluent communities in Westchester County to the lower-
income neighborhoods of the south Bronx. The initial program consisted simply of an enigmatic 32-inch golden ball tugged 10
miles in a net through the considerable debris of the river. The artwork highlighted the possibilities for the river’s beautification
and brought together the disconnected communities that line the water’s edge. In the intervening years, as government and cit-
izens have banded together to clean up the river, the celebration has grown more elaborate, with simultaneous performances
and events on the banks of the river when the ball passes by.

Parks and the Arts: How Public Parks and Spaces Encourage Arts and the Humanities 3
 As the Golden Ball project suggests, there is more to the relationship between parks and the arts than pretty programs in pret-
ty spaces. Arts and cultural programs can be important tools in the revitalization of a failing park. To understand how, it is worth
looking at the necessary factors for successful parks.

In addition to the obvious importance of government capital and maintenance dollars in keeping parks healthy, public spaces
need the attention of a dedicated, active constituency in order to thrive. Parks fail, generally, because people do not use them,
or use them in inappropriate—or even criminal—ways. It is critical to establish a meaningful emotional connection between
parks and the people who use them, so that communities will become productively involved in the lives of their parks.

Without people championing a park, it is all too easy for government to redirect scarce resources to other sectors with larger
constituencies and better advocates. Arts and cultural programs can be among the keys to reversing the cycle of abandonment
and collapse. Arts activity can bring large numbers of people into a park, especially at night when they might be otherwise afraid
to enter a space perceived as dangerous, and can highlight the park’s potential to be a vital community asset.

Many film programs, for example, bring audiences to parks at night, thus helping to populate the space after dark. As part of
its extensive film programming in parks, Austin, Texas, has created Splash Party Movie Nights, where families can sit (or float) in
Deep Eddy Pool while enjoying family-oriented movies.

For years, the almost two acres of land that is now Socrates Sculpture Park along the Queens waterfront in New York City was
a neglected site used for illegal dumping. In 1986, a group of artists led by sculptor Mark di Suvero reclaimed it for artists and
the community. The thriving public park today houses a workshop area for artists and serves as the site for outdoor sculpture
exhibitions throughout the year, augmented by musical events, film showings and other artistic activity. Tens of thousands of
people annually visit this formerly abandoned space.

Watts Branch Park in Washington, D.C., was also reclaimed largely through a focus on the arts. The District’s longest municipal
park, Watts Branch—lining the stream of the same name—was until recently a largely abandoned space, with the crime, dump-
ing and ugliness that invariably accompanies such places. The nonprofit Washington Parks and People organization, sparked by
the discovery that the park had been a childhood haunt of singer Marvin Gaye, worked with the local community to program
concerts, parades and movies in the
park and created a natural hillside
amphitheater in the most danger-
ous section of the space. The cam-
paign to save the park culminated
in the successful passing of a com-
munity-led resolution to rename
the space Marvin Gaye Park in April
2006. The day was celebrated with
an appearance by the Malcolm X
Drummers and Dancers and per-
formances of Marvin Gaye songs by
local youth.

Similarly, Marcus Garvey Park in

New York City’s Harlem neighbor-
hood was reclaimed as a vital com-
munity resource largely through
increased programming of its his-
torical amphitheater, originally
Pianist Davell Crawford at the 2006 Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in New York City's Marcus Garvey Park, produced by the City

Parks Foundation. Photo credit: © Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos

4 Parks and the Arts: How Public Parks and Spaces Encourage Arts and the Humanities
 How the Arts Can Help Parks

Without people
championing a park, it
is all too easy for
government to redirect
scarce resources to
other sectors with larger
constituencies and
better advocates.
Fans of jazz and parks enjoy the City Parks Foundation’s 2006 Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in Marcus Garvey Park in New York
City's Harlem neighborhood. Photo credit: © Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos
donated in part by composer Richard Rodgers, who had grown up nearby. Initially, the
amphitheater was programmed primarily by the nonprofit City Parks Foundation, a city-wide
organization devoted to park revitalization, but over time, a growing number of the park’s pro-
grams were produced locally and reflected the rich cultural history of the neighborhood.

Efforts at Marcus Garvey Park helped to leverage more than $3 million in new public and pri-
vate investment and spurred the re-establishment of the Marcus Garvey Park Alliance to advo-
cate further improvements and increased activities in the park. Programming more than tripled at the park’s amphitheater over
a period of several years, bringing positive activity into the park and ultimately attracting high-profile events such as the Charlie
Parker Jazz Festival. As residents became more intensively involved in producing programming, they built the connections
between the community and the park and gradually became stewards for the space.

In each of these examples, arts and cultural programs were not the only factors in the revitalization of these spaces—commu-
nity organizing, advocacy and government reinvestment were critical—but they played a central, inspirational role.

Parks and the Arts: How Public Parks and Spaces Encourage Arts and the Humanities 5
 PART II
How Parks Can Help the Arts
The relationship between parks and the arts goes both ways, for not only can the arts make parks better, but parks can also
make a community’s arts sector healthier and more vibrant.

A 2002 study by Dr. Alaka Wali, Rebecca Severson and Mario Longoni
(one of the few on the subject) highlighted the importance of the
“informal arts”—defined as the presentation of arts activity in easily
accessible and familiar spaces such as parks—in developing artists and
audiences of the future. The study revealed that boundaries of age,
ethnicity and socioeconomic status are more easily bridged in the
informal arts than in established venues such as symphony halls, opera
houses and theaters. The researchers also found that performances in
parks can help artists reach new audiences and can help audiences
experience unfamiliar artists or art forms.

Through an ArtsReach artist grant, Squallis Puppeteers worked with young
people through Louisville Metro Parks and Western Middle Community School
Louisville, Ky., and the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts have
made this relationship between the formal and informal arts explicit by
creating ArtsReach, an ongoing program partnered with 50 communi-
ty centers, many of which are operated by Louisville Metro Parks. A
community center that participates in ArtsReach receives professional
development, which allows it to include arts education in everyday
programming.

to create larger-than-life puppets. Community center staffers learn about the arts through hands-on
workshops, gain experience in grant-writing, and mentor one another
through the process of bringing professional artists to their centers for
residency work. Community centers participate in the KCARD program, which makes tickets to Kentucky Center perform-
ances available for just $3. This program benefits those attending performances, but also fulfills the Kentucky Center’s goal
of growing and diversifying audiences.

One of the communities with the highest ratio of recreation centers to residents is Minneapolis, with some 50 community
centers for its population of nearly 400,000 residents. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board programs the centers
with hundreds of arts and cultural activities for kids, teens, adults and seniors year-round.

Parks can also provide direct support to developing artists and performing arts companies. The National Park Service, for
example, takes unused facilities in parks and lends them to artists for defined periods of time. The artists receive a creative,
contemplative environment in which to practice their art, and the public has a chance to visit artists at work and view their
art in a familiar, nontraditional setting.

At Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, for example, six artists are selected by a panel of professionals to spend two
weeks at the William Allen White cabin. At the end of their stay (which must include at least two public presentations of
their work), each artist is required to donate a completed artwork to the park.

A longer-term example of the same approach is taking place in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. In 2002
the National Park Service entered into a 10-year contract with the Peters Valley Craft Center in New Jersey in which the
center’s craftspeople would live in and maintain 25 historical buildings in the park. The artists are required to give regular

6 Parks and the Arts: How Public Parks and Spaces Encourage Arts and the Humanities
 How Parks Can Help the Arts
workshops and demonstrations to the public and to provide public
access to working studios. In return, the artists get valuable work-
space and exposure to the public and even get a chance to operate
a store for the sale of their work. Artists, the public and the National
Park Service all benefit from this arrangement.

An urban variation of this program, Chicago’s Arts Partners in

Residence systematically identifies underused parks and parks spaces
and then contracts with arts organizations looking for venues. Each
organization agrees to provide performances or educational services
in exchange for free space. The arrangement is strictly barter: No
cash changes hands.

The program has maximized the use of city-owned property, providing

Pennyroyal Arts Council received ArtsReach funding to partner with the Trail
of Tears Commemorative Park to present Native American artists to the
Hopkinsville Boys and Girls Club and a local 4-H club.
arts organizations with precious space and fostering arts activity. One
of the most successful partnerships is with the Albany Park Theater
Company, which helps kids create and produce their own theatrical
productions. The program’s mentoring component has been so effec-
tive that the level of college attendance among neighborhood resi-
dents has increased, with
many kids receiving the-
atrical scholarships.

Two of the most significant challenges facing the arts are the need to develop
new audiences and the lack of suitable rehearsal and performance space. Parks
can help with both of these challenges.

In New York City, the nonprofit City Parks Foundation recently launched two
new programs: CityParks Theater and CityParks Dance. The initiative supports
performances by local artists and arts companies in some of the city’s most
underserved parks. As is true in most cities, performance space in New York is
scarce and expensive, and many of the featured performers were not able to
show their work as frequently as they would have liked. The series allowed
them to rehearse and perform (and in one case develop a commissioned piece)
and bring their artistry to a larger audience. Neighborhood parks, many of
which had rarely had live dance or theater events, were filled with quality, pro-
fessional performances. Workshops for the community preceded many of the
performances, to make the transition to new work or unfamiliar artforms more
accessible.

Douglas Community Center, a Louisville Metro Parks site, offered young

people an intensive multidisciplinary workshop experience with the

Theater of Inclusion. These Indianapolis-based artists received an

ArtsReach artist grant to work with participants on leadership skills.

Parks and the Arts: How Public Parks and Spaces Encourage Arts and the Humanities 7
 Conclusion

In Conclusion
Despite the many demonstrable advantages of bringing arts and cultural
programs to parks, there is an unfortunate tendency to undervalue them.
Unless the programs take place in an established venue within the park
(such as an amphitheater with fixed seating), an event or piece of art may
be perceived as less professional and less worthy of attention than indoor
arts activity. In a society that wrongly associates financial value with emo-
tional or aesthetic significance, the fact that many of these programs are
free often fuels this perception.

To be sure, there are certainly examples of poorly produced concerts, ama-

teurish theater or ungainly sculpture in parks, just as there are examples of
bad art indoors. And while an outdoor setting can make it difficult for spec-
tators to focus, with the distractions of trees, landscape and sky, thought-
ful artists turn the potential disadvantages of outdoor presentation into
benefits, creating works that complement the space.

As artists and audiences become more serious about creating quality arts
experiences in parks, the programs will only continue to improve, and the
long history of arts and cultural programming in parks will have a very
bright future.

In all of these ways, the arts and parks enjoy a mutually beneficial and sup-
portive relationship. As examples from communities around the country
demonstrate, arts and cultural programs in parks can

1. Bring life to a formerly abandoned, neglected or abused site.

2. Highlight the potential of a space to become a vital community asset.

3. Give artists a place to rehearse, work and perform.

Artist Tim Thyzel’s “Bottlelites” were part of an emerging-artists exhibition at
4. Showcase the natural affinity between designed parks and artistic
Socrates Sculpture Park.
expression.

5. Highlight the cultural history of a community.

6. Develop new audiences, providing arts education opportunities and giv-

ing people a chance to experience art and artworks.

7. Build community involvement in and commitment to a public space.

8 Parks and the Arts: How Public Parks and Spaces Encourage Arts and the Humanities
About NRPA

The National Recreation and Park Association is a national nonprofit

organization dedicated to advancing park, recreation and conservation

efforts that enhance the quality of life for all people. Through its network

of more than 20,000 professionals and citizens, NRPA encourages the

promotion of healthy lifestyles and recreation initiatives and the

conservation of natural and cultural resources.

Headquartered in Ashburn, Va., NRPA works closely with local, state and

national recreation and park agencies; citizen groups; and corporations to

carry out its objectives. Priorities include advocating favorable legislation

and public policy; increasing public awareness of the importance of parks

and recreation; providing continuing education, professional certification

and university accreditation; and conducting research and technical

assistance. For more information, visit www.nrpa.org.

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