Background on “CAIRS” and “AIRs”:

Artist in Residence programs are gaining traction worldwide - not merely the traditional residency structure where an artist travels to a new place to spend time on a project, but integrating artists into municipal governments to help creatively communicate and problem solve, or embedding them in a community to create and nurture original projects, events, shared spaces and experiences, and pieces inspired by the uniqueness of a place.

“AIR” traditionally stands for some version of Artist in Residence,” and there are as many different versions of what that means as there are AIR programs in the world (so… a lot).

After listening to local polls and conversations, we chose our artist program to be a “CAIR” - with the C standing for Community. A Community Artist in broad strokes is simply an artist committed to using their particular skillset to work with and serve a given community.

The ask to the artist can be anything from “help figure out a new way to get residents excited about our sewer systems” or something as broad as “can you make a piece of art that relates to our town in some way after really getting to know us?”

Everyone’s got slightly different language, and an abundance of acronyms, but essentially they’re all looking for a new or creative way to problem solve.

Here are a few other blossoming versions of CAIR descriptions (in this case the C sometimes stands for City rather than Community):

Los Angeles: The Los Angeles Artist in Residence program fully supports multi-week interactive projects that aim to stimulate: community dialogue, life-long learning opportunities for the public, and the availability of interesting free or low-cost creative activities that occur outside of traditional arts agencies and venues.

ArtPlace: Artists will be embedded within public agencies to transform how the city is organized and experienced by expanding the definition of creative placemaking beyond the geography of specific sites to the living systems of the city.

St. Paul: Integrated far upstream in the daily and long-term workings of the city, artists are creating a new artistic, social and civic practice through an innovative public-private partnership between Public Art Saint Paul and the City of Saint Paul. The central pursuit is to create art out of the life-sustaining systems of the city. Artists advise on major city initiatives and lead their own artistic and curatorial projects and have dedicated workspace within the Department of Public Works so they can freely collaborate across city agencies.

Austin: City of Austin Artist-in-Residence program embeds an artist into a City department for a set period of time to help resolve problems, provide innovative or new process improvements, and/or engage residents around community issues in creative ways.

Boston: AIR is a way for the City to support our artists as agents of reflection, collaboration, and activism while learning new approaches to familiar challenges in city government.

New York City: Public Artists in Residence (PAIR) is an experimental municipal residency program that embeds artists in city government to propose and implement creative solutions to pressing civic challenges.