Public Art Policy

Karen Finzel0:00

Meeting Tuesday the 11th of March 2025 starting on time at 1:30pm. I'd like to declare the meeting open and acknowledge the Kabi Kabi Country on which we live, work and play and our values of their inherent connection and the land, earth and sky. I'm noting that we have the mandatory Councillors present at the table. Welcome Councillor Wilkie, Councillor Nicola and we've got Jessica Phillips online. Welcome. We thank have you. Have no observers. Karen, I just noticed that Tom has just jumped online. Yes, thank you and welcome. We have Tom, Councillor Tom Wegener in the room. Welcome Tom. Welcome, thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for joining us. We have the CEO with us. Welcome today Mr. Mayor. Thank you. And some of the executive staff. Do I have a confirmation of the Minutes? I'll move it Madam Chair. Thank you. Do we have a seconder? Thank you. Would you like to make a comment? No thank you Madam Chair. Would you like to hold your right of reply Sir? Let's get it done. We'll take it to the vote. All in favour? And that's unanimous. Oh Jess? Yes. That's a yes from Jess. From here. Yes, from here. Tom doesn't have to vote. Tom's an observer. Tom, you're an observer. You don't need to vote. But I love your enthusiasm. Thank you. Okay, so we're moving on. We've got to item five. There's no presentations, no deputations. We're coming up to item seven, Reports for consideration of the Committee. Item number 7.1, Public Art Policy. Welcome to the staff to the table. We have the author of the report, Mr. Paul Brinkman with us.

Thank you. Welcome Councillors. Good afternoon. So this report is for the new Public Art Policy. I'm seeking for endorsement. Through Noosa Council's cultural plan 2019 to 2023, Council recognised the value of art in public domain to promote and celebrate the community's identity, values and aspirations. Best practice public art provides a sense of place, enhances the vibrancy and character of the urban environment and engenders a sense of civic pride. You can also highlight the and heritage of a community for residents and visitors. So the adoption of this Public Art Policy will enable Council to strategically and transparently grow the valuable public art collection for future generations and so we seek endorsement of this policy to move forward.

Thank you. Look, I definitely think that Noosa is needing a Public Art Policy, particularly with the City Deal program which we've released recently. We've had 65 applications to that program which we're working through at the moment and so that really does show just how many fantastic, a lot of those local artists, just how fantastic an arts and creative community we have. So it'll be fantastic through that City Deal program to see some really high quality public art starting to be seen around and added to our urban environment.

Yes. So within the policy, we've written 1% of city projects above $2 million would go towards a public art fund or go towards a part of public art being a part of that civic infrastructure project. It is only limited to specific projects. So it's not all projects. And within the policy, it's quite descriptive about the kind of projects that initiative can be applied to. So repairing civic works like pipe work and things like that would not apply. Any sort of major projects or civic projects or building projects that we have that are funded through disaster recovery money or anything like that would not apply. These are really the projects that our community needs and this is really a way in which we can ensure that the Civic infrastructure that we build does more than just a single purpose. There are more aspects to it where we can bring in our Noosa Design Principles. Into some public art installations within that work. We're not talking about large sculptures or anything like that. It could be integrated into door handles of toilet blocks designed and fabricated locally by artists, those kind of things. Just to add another dimension to some of those civic works that we undertake.

Frank Wilkie8:53

Thank you Madam Chair. You're welcome. I think a lot of people would be interested to read in the report that there are 40 existing pieces of public art already in Noosa Shire and I think it's testament to the criteria against which they've been assessed that they don't jar with the landscape and they fit with their setting. So which indicates that there has been some sort of criteria applied already and there's obviously a lot that's been learned through that process but how much of that learning has gone into informing this Public Art Policy and guidelines.

I can talk certainly Frank about historically in selecting public art we've actually had a strong process in selecting it because you know we've got really good expert knowledge on within Council and externally to be able to select the advantage of the policy is that then it is an external face to that so we often get approached Paul, Michael, etc. et cetera, with great ideas for public art a policy helps them understand well what the Council actually consider importantly for us what the policy enables us to do is deal with maintenance and the very sensitive aspect of decommissioning a piece of public art can often be problematic in a community that's very attached to it and this ensures that we go through a process that's a considered process that the rights of the artist but also understands there's a point of time and which some pieces of public art can't be maintained any longer might need to be removed so the you know Paul used the word transparency I that's really important in terms of a selection process that people really understand that there's a process that we work through it doesn't mean to say that because a piece of public art wasn't selected that there's an issue with it either artistically it just means that it's not right for Noosa in the project that we're undertaking. Do you have any more to add to that to Paul? Add to that, Paul?

No, it's very important to have this as policy. You say for deaccessioning. We have over since the 70s pieces of public art have come to Council in a whole range of different ways through other departments, through donations and through just community goodwill. That the issue is that comes into Council through those lots of different channels and so we don't have a strategic approach to it. So this policy aims to funnel those proposals, not to dissuade them, but to make sure that we've got a proper strategy moving forward and also to actually properly document them because often I'll be approached to say hey you need to fix this piece of public art and I may not even be aware that it exists because our records are pretty poor historically on those and when it comes to deaccessioning the first right should go back to the original. The work should be offered that's just good practice and that hasn't necessarily always been the case so this policy puts that into a policy where if we do choose to remove something we will find that artist and we will offer to them first before we remove that work.

Well certainly the Bunya sculpture is probably our largest piece of public artwork and interestingly. Recently had to refurbish the base of that so the when we talked before about the 1% money that's not spent on that can't be spent on particular civic works for whatever reason can then go into a public art fund and that can be drawn on for these kind of works as well to help us maintain works other works what you see in the junction there are a number of sculptural pieces in the junction in fact probably the junction is our sort of epicentre of public art for Noosa there's a lot of pieces the Council has commissioned but also the local junction traders association have commissioned a number of murals on private sites through that space as well and that's where there's that intersection between artworks that are commissioned by local government authorities and private works on private walls that are still in the public domain but they're not the responsibility of Council they're the responsibility of the property owners so this also goes towards that as well. Other pieces of public artwork we recently restored or repainted one of the bubblers on Hastings Street in front of the visitor information the centre. Bubble gum one? Yeah, it's multi-coloured. It's actually by an indigenous artist that originally painted that but we had to go through a lot of process to get back in touch with her to get authority to repaint that or restore that work but interestingly that was a piece that was originally done through Unitywater and it was a good test case of how probably public art could be done better around that kind of process so that's another reason why the instigation of this policy sort of came about from those kind of situations.