Utility Boxes in Minneapolis

When I want to walk inside the Skyway instead of outside, the river to the Convention Center is about three miles roundtrip.  I did that loop the first weekend in April.  There was a lot going on that weekend including some free beer tasting, a sportsman's show, and some body builders parading around.  The City of Minneapolis had a bunch of tables with assorted displays of services that they provide.  I picked up a flyer for a city resource called The Placemaking Hub.  The flyer describes the Hub as "a new online resource from the City of Minneapolis to guide community driven enhancements in the public realm."  In a nutshell if you want to find out about making the City of Minneapolis a better place to live in you could probably find it there.  One of the programs offered is the Artist Designed Utility Box program.  I have seen various utility boxes around town and wondered how artists got permission to paint those.  Hennepin Avenue has quite a few.

Maybe a utility box in your neighborhood looks like this.  It occasionally gets tagged, then painted over, then tagged again.  The cycle keeps going around and around.

This utility box would be more fun.  So how do you get it painted?  You can't just get a group of your friends and start painting.  That would be great but the city requires a bit more of a process.  

  

There's forms, approvals, etc.  Find an artist, get the neighborhood or business to sponsor, submit applications, wait for 8 or 9 weeks for approval, pay some fees, etc.  It ain't easy, but I'm glad that some folks had the patience to go through that process.

You could end up with a work of art on the street.  Taggers seem to leave them alone after they are complete.

Artists and the neighborhood that sponsored the project are supposed to maintain them, do some touch ups when needed.  This one could use a little paint but it still looks better than the plain box it used to be.

Thank you to all the artists and sponsors who have made walking around downtown more interesting.

                                        http://www.mnartists.org/content/placemaking-hub