Artist-Designed Bike Rack Toolkit

Metro Arts is a city department responsible for arts and cultural policy & programming in Nashville, TN. Since 2010, Metro Arts has commissioned artist-designed bike racks, resulting in dozens of creative, engaging bike racks placed across the city. Now their process for commissioning artists, working with fabricators and placing these bike racks has been turned into a shareable toolkit for you to use.

The Artist-Designed Bike Rack Toolkit functions as a step-by-step guide to creative bike racks, but also an introduction to public art for artists looking to break into the process and cities or agencies looking to commission work for the first time.

The benefits of this kind of guided, introductory process flow to the city and to the artists. “My experience working on the bike rack was extremely helpful in pushing my portfolio for consideration of future public art projects. Since then I’ve gone on to win several public art commissions,” says artist Duncan McDaniel. “The relationships I’ve built with the Metro Arts administration and fabricators has helped make this process go smoothly.”

Get the toolkit as a handy PDF, delivered right to your inbox!

Bike rack by artists Samantha Griffith and Jen Pellerin, photo by Metro Arts/Stacy Irwin
Bike rack by artists Samantha Griffith and Jen Pellerin, photo by Metro Arts/Stacy Irwin

If you’re having issues with the form or have other questions, click here to request the free toolkit, or email Carl at creativeexchange@springboardforthearts.org with questions.

This toolkit was created as part of the Creative Exchange Leading Organizations pilot.
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