Evaluating the productive frictions of Artist-in-Residence programs in departments of transportation

Abstract

This paper considers the outcomes of four artist-in-residence (AiR) programs embedded in US Departments of Transportation (DOTs) in the early 2020s: two in state DOTs (Minnesota and Washington) and two in city DOTs (Los Angeles, CA, and Chattanooga, TN). The overarching goal of these programs was to encourage transportation practitioners to think more broadly about the relationship between transportation and equity through the introduction of creative practice. We evaluated these four programs as part of a larger study on arts and culture in transportation on behalf of the Minnesota DOT (TRB 2022). While formal evaluations might not have occurred for any of these residencies, it is nevertheless possible to consider them as more or less successful based on a) interviews with artists and agency representatives, and b) future actions the agencies are taking as an outcome of the residencies. We find the success of these programs correlates with the extent to which they incorporated epistemic justice in their steps towards transportation equity and mobility justice. In sum, the idea of epistemic justice, which has traditionally been applied in transportation studies to look at the state-community relationship, is also a useful tool when practiced in AiR programs when the aim is to change internal state practices.