Creativity Is - Community Public Art Project

My team with the Center for Creative Exploration at PCA&D and our Exhibitions Department teamed up to submit an application to program the Lancaster Amtrak Station cases with financial support from the City of Lancaster, Office of Public Art. Our application was accepted and we set out to host numerous opportunities with the support of community partners for the Lancaster community to showcase their visual response to the prompt, “Creativity is…” We also engaged PCA&D Illustration student, Faith Poehner, to design our exhibition branding. The collective work resulted in an exhibition that unexpectedly had to shift to the Lancaster Marriott and Lancaster County Convention Center located at 25 S. Queen Street, Lancaster, PA due to construction. The exhibition dates were August 9 – November 14, 2024. On November 17, 2024 we hosted a celebration for artists and community partners to gather, create art, and collect panels to take home. In the end we had over 300 pieces created by community members and 14 community partners.

Our goal was to engage Lancaster community members as well as visitors and travelers through this collaborative installation of art. We felt that this exhibition presented an opportunity to showcase the strength of creativity in our City and extended Lancaster community. It also proved to us that this could become a template for future engagement should we want to revive the exhibition and related programming at a future date.