Public Art Project Leadership

Through my work with Calgary Arts Development, I support public art projects that require both strategic thinking and highly practical delivery.

This includes coordinating artist processes, supporting assessment and selection, helping shape scopes of work, facilitating communication between artists and project teams, tracking milestones, managing documentation, and ensuring each phase has enough structure to move forward clearly.

The goal is not to make public art easier by making it smaller.

The goal is to make ambitious work more possible.

Artist & Curatorial Process Support

Public art projects ask artists and curators to navigate complex civic environments, technical realities, community relationships, timelines, approvals, and public expectations.

I help support those processes by creating clearer pathways between creative vision and implementation. This includes coordinating curatorial research, supporting artist-led engagement, helping identify practical constraints, organizing review points, and ensuring the right people are brought into the conversation at the right time.

Good process does not flatten the art.

It gives the art a stronger route into the world.

Civic Coordination & Stakeholder Alignment

Municipal public art involves many layers: artists, curators, City departments, public art staff, contractors, technical experts, communications teams, community members, project partners, and the occasional mystery stakeholder who appears from the civic fog holding a spreadsheet.

BadAss Creative supports alignment across these moving parts through clear communication, project documentation, meeting coordination, workbacks, budget tracking, and relationship-aware project management.

The work requires care, patience, translation, and a healthy respect for both creative ambition and municipal process.

Projects & Experience

DROP Containers

The DROP Containers initiative supports the development of a flexible public art platform connected to Calgary’s water, environmental, and civic priorities.

My work has supported curatorial coordination, container planning, RFP development, vendor selection, implementation planning, City relationship-building, project documentation, and alignment with broader Utilities and Environmental Protection priorities.

This project requires both creative stewardship and practical implementation planning: how the containers function, how artists and curators can use them, how City partners are engaged, and how the program can grow beyond its first iteration.

NE LRT Extension Public Art Opportunity

For the NE LRT Extension Public Art Opportunity, I support the early public art process, including assessment coordination, artist contracting, artist integration, engagement support, concept development, detailed design coordination, and project documentation.

This work helps connect artist vision with the realities of infrastructure, transit, design teams, technical review, community context, and long-term public presence.

It is public art at civic scale, where creative decisions need to be supported by clear process, careful coordination, and strong communication between many different kinds of expertise.

Public Art Festival

The Public Art Festival brings together curatorial development, artist research, programming, public engagement, communications, site coordination, vendor management, documentation, and implementation planning.

My role supports the connective tissue of the project: helping align the curatorial framework, artist processes, festival planning, City coordination, public programming, communications needs, vendor logistics, health and safety considerations, and post-event reporting.

In other words, the part where a festival stops being a beautiful idea in a document and starts becoming something people can actually attend.

Why This Work Matters

Public art lives in public space, which means the process has to hold more than the artwork alone.

It has to hold artists, communities, civic priorities, technical constraints, accessibility, safety, budgets, timelines, maintenance, communications, approvals, and the long-term relationship between people and place.

BadAss Creative helps hold that complexity without turning it into sludge.

The work is structured, relational, creative, and practical. It respects the artist’s vision while making sure the project has the scaffolding needed to reach the public.

Idea Alchemy

My role is part project lead, part translator, part process designer, part artist advocate, part municipal systems wrangler.

I help move public art projects through the messy middle: the space between vision and delivery where decisions need to be made, people need to be aligned, documents need to be accurate, and everyone needs to understand what happens next.

It is not just about managing tasks.

It is about stewarding public work with enough clarity, care, and structure that the creative vision has a real chance to land.

The Outcome

Through this work, BadAss Creative supports Calgary Arts Development in advancing public art projects that are better planned, better documented, more coordinated, and more prepared for public experience.

The work strengthens the bridge between artists, civic systems, communities, and implementation.

Public art needs vision.

It also needs someone watching the budget, the timeline, the contracts, the meeting notes, the stakeholder map, the installation plan, and the tiny procedural trapdoor no one noticed until Tuesday.

That is where I come in.