Frances Whitehead Lecture Summary

I recently attended a fascinating lecture at my school (see: "Where is my mind?"). Since I didn't go into much detail in that entry, below is a summary of the lecture that I wrote for one of my art history classes. I added plenty of links for your surfing pleasure, and found a couple video excerpts from the actual lecture on YouTube, which I've included at the bottom of this post.

Frances Whitehead

Climate Change: Culture Change

      On September 13, 2010, “designist” Frances Whitehead visited Northern Illinois University to speak about sustainability and the various cross-disciplinary projects in which she is involved. She gave a very informative and inspiring lecture on the importance of artists collaborating with people in different fields, specifically in the struggle to improve our environment and increase clean food and water sources. She began her artistic career as a sculptor, who often looked to the aforementioned problems for inspiration in her work. She soon realized, however, that she was only talking about the struggles themselves, and not the possible solutions to them. It was at this point that she changed direction and decided that she wanted her projects to take on a larger scale, while contributing a more pro-active (rather than reactive) response to the same issues.

      Whitehead moved into the realm of city planning, working with government officials in the City of Chicago. With her input, they developed a four pillar “Model of Sustainability” that includes cultural vitality, social equity, environmental responsibility, and economic health. She began identifying as a “designist,” a combination artist-designer, who believes that good design can improve the world around her. Working off this four pillared model, Whitehead and her cross-disciplinary colleagues have combined science, art, and government to come up with solutions to Chicago's (and other cities') pollution problems; they are currently working at planting beautiful, fruit-bearing, and fragrant plants on the sites of abandoned gas stations within the city. The plants will not only beautify the land and provide fresh food to residents, but will also clean the pollutants in the soil, renewing its richness (in a process called phytoremediation). Whitehead has spearheaded many other cross-disciplinary projects, as well, including The Greenhouse Chicago, the Embedded Artists Project, and K Lab.

      She ended her lecture by discussing ways that artists can become more involved in their communities, and giving tips on how to contact city officials and scientists with whom they may join forces. She explained that she often asks the question “what do artists know?” and the answer is that they know beauty, design, creativity, and culture, which are all very important items to be taken into consideration when solving sustainability issues in the world.

If you'd like to read more about Whitehead, check out this entry from the Art: 21 Blog.