A

Accessibility
The degree to which a public artwork, space, program, or information resource can be accessed, understood, and experienced by people with different physical, sensory, cognitive, linguistic, and social needs.

Accountability
The responsibility of artists, organizations, institutions, funders, and partners to be transparent about decisions, commitments, resources, and impacts on communities.

Activation
The process of bringing energy, activity, programming, or social interaction to a public space, often through art, events, performances, or community activities.

Agency
A person or community’s ability to make decisions, express their interests, shape outcomes, and exercise meaningful control over matters that affect them.

Artist Brief
A document that communicates the goals, context, site, audience, constraints, expectations, and deliverables of a public art project to an artist or creative team.

Artist-Led
A project or process in which an artist initiates, organizes, or substantially directs the creative and community engagement process.

Artist Selection
The process through which an artist or creative team is chosen for a public art commission, often through a review panel, open call, invitation, or community-based process.

B

Belonging
The feeling of being recognized, represented, welcomed, and connected to a particular place, community, or cultural environment.

Built Environment
The human-made physical surroundings in which people live, work, move, and gather, including buildings, streets, infrastructure, parks, and public spaces.

C

Civic Art
Art that engages with civic life, public institutions, shared spaces, social issues, or the identity and future of a community.

Civic Engagement
The ways people participate in shaping the decisions, spaces, institutions, and cultural life of their communities.

Civic Infrastructure
The physical, cultural, social, and institutional systems that support public life and help communities function. Public art can be understood as one component of this infrastructure.

Collective Making
A creative process in which multiple people contribute ideas, labor, knowledge, or decision-making to produce a shared work.

Collective Memory
The shared stories, experiences, histories, and cultural knowledge through which a community understands and remembers its past.

Collaboration
A process in which artists, residents, organizations, institutions, designers, or other stakeholders work together toward a shared outcome.

Commission
A formal agreement in which an artist is engaged to create a specific artwork or project, generally for a particular site, audience, or purpose.

Commissioning
The process of planning, funding, selecting, contracting, developing, and producing a public artwork.

Community Brief
A description of a community’s needs, priorities, concerns, histories, opportunities, and goals that helps inform the development of a public art project.

Community Engagement
A process of building meaningful relationships with people affected by or connected to a project and creating opportunities for their knowledge, perspectives, and participation to influence the work.

Community Input
Information, opinions, ideas, concerns, or feedback contributed by community members during the development of a project.

Community Partner
A local organization, institution, group, or individual that contributes knowledge, relationships, resources, access, or leadership to a project.

Community Participation
The active involvement of community members in shaping, creating, experiencing, or evaluating a public art project.

Community Voice
The perspectives, experiences, stories, knowledge, and priorities expressed by people within a community.

Consent
Voluntary and informed agreement to participate in research, interviews, documentation, photography, storytelling, or other project activities.

Context
The social, cultural, historical, geographic, political, economic, and physical conditions surrounding a public artwork or project.

Co-Creation
A collaborative process in which artists and community members jointly develop ideas, content, decisions, or creative outcomes.

Cultural Appropriation
The adoption or use of elements of another culture—particularly by a more powerful group—in ways that may remove those elements from their original context or exploit, stereotype, or diminish the originating community.

Cultural Development
Efforts to strengthen a community’s cultural life, creative activity, institutions, artists, and cultural resources.

Cultural Identity
The shared or individual sense of identity shaped by culture, history, language, traditions, place, community, and lived experience.

Cultural Infrastructure
The organizations, spaces, practices, networks, resources, and systems that support cultural production and participation.

Cultural Landscape
A physical environment shaped by the interaction of people, culture, history, and place over time.

Cultural Memory
The stories, traditions, images, places, objects, and practices through which communities preserve and transmit knowledge about their histories.

Cultural Ownership
The question of who has authority, responsibility, or rights over cultural stories, traditions, images, knowledge, and creative expressions.

D

Data Visualization
The use of maps, diagrams, charts, graphics, or other visual methods to make data and patterns easier to understand.

Development
The physical, economic, social, or cultural transformation of a neighborhood or city, including new construction, investment, infrastructure, and redevelopment.

Documentation
The systematic recording of an artwork or project through photography, writing, interviews, measurements, archival materials, metadata, and other records.

E

Economic Development
Efforts to strengthen economic opportunity, investment, employment, business activity, and long-term community prosperity.

Engagement Strategy
A planned approach for identifying, reaching, communicating with, and involving communities and stakeholders in a project.

Ethnography
A research approach that seeks to understand people and communities through observation, participation, interviews, and attention to everyday experiences and cultural practices.

Equity
An approach that recognizes differences in history, access, power, and resources and seeks fair—not necessarily identical—opportunities and outcomes.

F

Fieldwork
Research conducted in the places and communities being studied through observation, documentation, interviews, mapping, photography, and other direct methods.

G

Gentrification
A process in which investment and rising property values can change a neighborhood’s demographics, economy, culture, and physical environment, sometimes contributing to displacement of existing residents and businesses.

Grassroots
Organizing, activity, or leadership that originates within a local community rather than primarily from established institutions or outside authorities.

H

Historic Context
The historical conditions, events, people, places, and cultural developments that help explain an artwork, site, neighborhood, or community.

Historic Preservation
The practice of protecting, documenting, maintaining, and interpreting buildings, sites, landscapes, objects, and cultural resources with historical significance.

I

Inclusion
The intentional creation of conditions in which people with different identities, experiences, abilities, and perspectives can participate and feel welcomed.

Information Architecture
The organization and structure of information so that people can find, navigate, understand, and use it effectively.

Information Design
The practice of organizing and visually communicating complex information so that it is clear, accessible, and useful to an audience.

Infrastructure
The physical, social, cultural, technological, or institutional systems that support how a community functions.

Interpretation
The process of explaining, contextualizing, or creating meaning around an artwork, place, history, or cultural resource for a public audience.

L

Legibility
The degree to which a place, system, map, sign, or piece of information can be easily understood and navigated.

Local Knowledge
Knowledge developed through lived experience and familiarity with a particular place, community, history, or cultural environment.

M

Mapping
The process of representing places, locations, relationships, patterns, or information geographically.

Metadata
Information that describes an artwork or record, such as its title, artist, date, location, medium, dimensions, ownership, history, or source.

Mobility
The ability of people to move through and access a place, including considerations of walking, transit, vehicles, accessibility, and navigation.

N

Narrative
A structured story or sequence through which information, experiences, histories, or ideas are communicated.

Neighborhood Identity
The distinctive sense of character, history, culture, people, physical environment, and shared meaning associated with a particular neighborhood.

O

Observation
A research method involving the intentional study and recording of how people, spaces, artworks, and environments are used or experienced.

Oral History
The collection and preservation of firsthand memories, experiences, stories, and perspectives through recorded interviews.

P

Participatory Art
Art that invites audiences or community members to actively participate in the creation, development, performance, or experience of the work.

Place-Based Art
Art that is specifically informed by the history, identity, culture, geography, people, or conditions of a particular place.

Place Identity
The distinctive character and meaning associated with a particular physical location.

Placekeeping
Practices that support the cultural identity, memory, relationships, and existing community life of a place, particularly in the context of neighborhood change and development.

Placemaking
The process of shaping public spaces to create meaningful, useful, welcoming, and engaging places for people.

Positionality
An acknowledgment that a researcher, artist, designer, or institution’s identity, background, experiences, and relationship to power influence how they understand and participate in a project.

Preservation
The protection and care of artworks, places, histories, cultural resources, and community knowledge for future generations.

Public Art
Art created, commissioned, installed, or presented for public access or experience, often in publicly accessible spaces.

Public Art Audit
A systematic process of identifying, documenting, organizing, and analyzing a city or community’s public artworks and related information.

Public Benefit
The value or positive contribution a project provides to a community, such as cultural enrichment, education, access, connection, identity, or improved public space.

Public Engagement
The ways members of the public encounter, participate in, respond to, or contribute to a project.

Public Information
Information intended to help people understand, navigate, access, or participate in public spaces, programs, services, or resources.

Public Meeting
A gathering that provides an opportunity for community members, stakeholders, institutions, or officials to share information, discuss issues, and provide input.

Public Realm
The shared spaces and environments where public life takes place, including streets, sidewalks, parks, plazas, transit spaces, civic buildings, and other publicly accessible areas.

Public Space
A physical place that is accessible to the public and supports activities such as movement, gathering, recreation, expression, and social interaction.

Public-Space Activation
The introduction of programming, art, events, or activities intended to increase use, interaction, visibility, or social life within a public space.

Q

Qualitative Data
Non-numerical information—such as interviews, observations, stories, photographs, and written responses—that helps explain experiences, meanings, and perspectives.

Quantitative Data
Numerical information that can be measured, counted, compared, or analyzed to identify patterns and relationships.

R

Reciprocity
A principle of mutual exchange in which community engagement provides meaningful value to participants rather than simply extracting information, labor, stories, or knowledge.

Representation
The ways people, communities, histories, identities, and experiences are depicted or made visible through art, design, media, and public narratives.

Research Question
A focused question that guides investigation and helps determine what information, evidence, interviews, observations, or data need to be gathered.

Resident-Led
A project or process initiated, organized, or substantially directed by people who live within the community where the work takes place.

Revitalization
Efforts to strengthen or renew a neighborhood, public space, institution, or community through physical, cultural, social, or economic investment.

S

Self-Representation
The ability of individuals or communities to tell their own stories and determine how their identities, histories, and experiences are presented.

Sense of Place
The emotional, cultural, social, and experiential relationships people develop with a particular location.

Site
The specific physical location in which an artwork, project, activity, or intervention takes place.

Site Analysis
The process of studying the physical, social, cultural, historical, environmental, and spatial characteristics of a site.

Site-Specific Art
Art created in direct response to the characteristics, history, conditions, or meaning of a particular site.

Social Connection
The relationships and interactions that connect people to one another and to their communities.

Social Impact
The effect a project, artwork, or intervention has on people, communities, institutions, or social conditions.

Social Practice
An artistic approach that uses social interaction, collaboration, conversation, participation, and community relationships as central elements of the work.

Spatial Data
Information connected to geographic locations, allowing researchers to analyze where things are and how they relate to one another across space.

Spatial Justice
The idea that people should have equitable access to space, resources, mobility, safety, infrastructure, and the ability to shape the places where they live.

Stakeholder
A person, group, organization, or institution with an interest in, relationship to, or potential impact on a project.

Stewardship
The ongoing care, maintenance, protection, interpretation, and responsibility for an artwork, site, resource, or community asset.

Storytelling
The use of narrative, images, interviews, design, or other forms of communication to convey experiences, histories, ideas, or perspectives.

Sustainability
The ability of a project, artwork, program, or community resource to continue functioning and providing value over time, including consideration of environmental, financial, social, and cultural factors.

T

Testimony
A firsthand account or statement describing a person’s experience, knowledge, memory, or perspective.

Tourism
Travel and visitation connected to a place, including cultural tourism focused on art, history, architecture, food, neighborhoods, and other local experiences.

V

Visual Archive
An organized collection of photographs, images, maps, drawings, records, and other visual materials documenting artworks, places, people, and histories.

Visual Identity
The coordinated visual language of a project or organization, including typography, color, imagery, graphic elements, layout, and other design standards.

Visual Language
The recurring visual elements and design principles used to communicate ideas, information, identity, or meaning.

W

Wayfinding
The systems, information, signs, maps, landmarks, and environmental cues that help people understand where they are, determine where they need to go, and navigate through a place.

Workshop
A structured participatory activity in which participants learn, discuss, experiment, make, or contribute to a project through hands-on engagement.