ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
There has been talk among the community for a long time regarding the desire for more public art and soon, that will be one step closer to becoming reality.
Last week, Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of Commerce David Toland announced $1,295,450 was awarded to 108 recipients in the latest round of Kansas Arts Commission (KAC) grant funding. The funds will support museums, arts education, music, dance, visual arts, professional and community theater, creative writing, murals, poetry and other creative projects. Grants were awarded in 42 counties, with funding going to counties in rural locations, including Seward County and the City of Liberal. Public Affairs Director Keeley Moree said the news of the grant is very exciting after so many discussions.
“On the City of Liberal's side, we'd started looking into a mural grant about a year ago. It was something we'd heard about from multiple people in the community, and something we continue to hear about is the desire for more public art and more imagery that's reflective of Liberal,” Moree said. “So we started doing some research and came across this grant, which we applied for in February through the Kansas Arts Commission, and it's part of the program under the Kansas Department of Commerce. We put together some ideas and plans and submitted the application mostly hoping for the best, and Liberal is one of 11 communities awarded with the Public Art Mural Grant – the City of Liberal received $6,165 from the Public Art and Murals Grant, and the Seward County Historical Society received $9,500 from the Arts Everywhere Grant. We did only very recently receive word about the award, so we haven't yet found out what the timeline is for being able to get our paperwork in.”
This grant ties into the city’s goal of increasing public engagement, Moree added.
“We want to create a piece of art for the community that really reflects what people feel about Liberal and what our community identity is,” Moree said. “Through the process of creating this mural, we'll be going through two different rounds of public engagement and voting – we'll first talk through and present some ideas and solicit feedback for different imagery we'd want to create and some different themes. The entire idea behind the design is the word 'Liberal' spelled out with different scenes painted in each of the letters, and there are so many different themes we can touch on. The first step in the public engagement process is to see what people feel should be represented on that mural, and once we get through that process and identify everything, we'll be working with our artist, Karem Gallo, who will put together a few different concept designs so we can come up with a variety of designs for people to select from, so that second round of voting will concern the overall final design and what will end up getting created.”
Moree said the reaction among her and other staff was very positive upon the news being made official.
“I'm really excited to see this project move forward because again, this is something a lot of people have talked to us about,” Moree said. “Since we started our public engagement around our Comprehensive Plan, there's been a lot of conversations about how people feel about how our town looks and the way we represent ourselves as a community and finding our identity, so this is exactly the type of project that will help us draw that out. I'm very happy to see this moving forward, we're really fortunate to be able to work with the Kansas Arts Commission and the Kansas Department of Commerce. We've never really done anything of this magnitude, so as a community, we're excited to have been awarded this grant money.”
In regard to actually applying for the grant, Moree said there ultimately had to be a bit of a leap of faith made.
“I think probably the biggest challenge for something like this was the question of where we'd put this project. We don't own a building that's got a nice, large, public-facing canvas, so as we continued to consider this kind of project, we were wondering where we could have everything set up, as well as what it would look like,” Moree said. “We wanted this to be easily accessible to the community, so eventually, we started thinking 'What if we just created our own wall?' What we'll be doing is creating a concrete wall in Light Park near Adventure Bay facing Kansas Avenue so it'll be highly visible. The potential location(s) was something that definitely held us back with a project like this, so we decided we would just create our own spot. And something else that will be really neat is people will be able to walk up to it and take in all the details and can take a selfie or something by it. Light Park is very much a focal point for the community, it's centrally located and used for several public events and gatherings, so it felt like the perfect spot. We've been using Polco as our survey tool to help share necessary information to the community and allow everyone to weigh in and share their thoughts, so we'll be using that again with this. We'll also be reaching out with some presentations about the grant and the process, and we'll be talking with people through town hall meetings, and we'll also be reaching out to the schools and various civic organizations. Our main goal is to get this information out into the community so everyone knows what the process is so they can do their part and weigh in.”
Moree also offered congratulations to the Seward County Historical Society for its grant award.
“The historical society's project is separate from the City's project, so I can't speak to what all they'll be doing, but I think it's great how we're all pursuing these grant funds,” Moree said. “It was about a year ago when we were on a conference call with the secretary of commerce, and he had a listening session specifically with Western Kansas and at one point, he asked 'Why aren't you applying for these grants?' and offered a lot of encouragement for us to go after this funding. Seeing two projects in our community get approved is really amazing, and I'm really happy that's how the awards turned out. When you look at the total amounts pulled for Seward County, we're right up there with what was awarded to Finney County and Ford County. We're putting ourselves in that race to be able to say we want these state dollars to come to our community. I'm really proud of the fact that we've gotten some really nice grant money for these types of projects in this community.”
The project should be a very exciting time, Moree said.
“With everything still so new, we're still waiting for the Kansas Arts Commission to give us a timeline. But once we're officially able to get everything started, I imagine the project would be completed within a year,” Moree said. “With the surveys, we'll get that started as soon as we get word from the Kansas Arts Commission, and we'll share that on our social media and some other places, and we'll also be sharing the information at meetings and through presentations, so any information about this project will be VERY difficult to miss. What I'm looking forward to seeing is the ideas we'll get from the community and what kind of imagery they feel best represents Liberal. We continue to look for our community identity, and I feel like this will be a great way to draw that out and represent that identity visually and really say 'THIS is who we are.' The mural will be really visible, which I think is great because when you look at other communities and wonder why they're so neat, it's because they have a lot of public art, so that's something I think could ultimately end up expanding into other areas of the community. We hope to kickstart some of that initiative. And, being in my particular role, I'm just really excited to pull other people into the conversation and allow our residents to feel involved in what we're doing in Liberal. Everything we do is for our residents, so I want to make sure we're engaging them and listening to everyone.”
Overall, Moree said, she is very happy with the project getting started.
“I'm really grateful for the Kansas Arts Commission putting forward this funding for us, this will greatly help what we want to do,” Moree said. “We're also excited to use Karem as our local artist, having someone local was also extremely important when we were going about this project, and she presented some great ideas. We're really looking forward to being able to create something that will be good for the entire community.”
