City of Memphis | UrbanArt Commission
HOSPITALITY HUB (NEW HUB HOTEL): DINING ROOM COMMISSION | CALL TO ARTISTS
Release Date: Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Budget: $7,500 (includes three finalist honoraria of $500 each)
Deadline: Wednesday, September 14, 2022, 11:59pm
Eligibility: Any artist living and working within the Memphis metropolitan area. Artists are invited to submit collaborative work if desired, but may only submit one proposal per project opportunity. While there is no limit to the number of calls an artist may apply to at once, UAC strongly encourages artists to consider both the time and scale of each call.
Information Session: Wednesday, August 3 @ 5:30pm, RSVP now.
BACKGROUND
About Hospitality Hub:
The Hospitality Hub was founded in 2007 as Memphis’ single point of entry into the Continuum of Care for individuals experiencing homelessness. The Hub partners with nearly 200 organizations in the fight against our community’s most extreme form of poverty, and our innovative programs and effective operations have established us as a leader. We have the capacity and the vision to work alongside civic leaders to get things done on behalf of those we serve. Partnering with the City Council, Mayor Strickland, Mayor Lee, and the County Commission, alongside the NGOs at the Downtown Memphis Commission and the Memphis Medical District Collaborative, the Hospitality Hub is executing the adaptive re-use of the city-owned former vehicle inspection station at 590 Washington Ave into a day plaza, expanded Hub office, and emergency shelter for women. The opportunities of the plaza/shelter at 590 Washington are a great development for Memphis’ most vulnerable population. The Hospitality Hub serves all unhoused individuals in the City of Memphis and Shelby County. We see the majority of our guests at our main campus at 590 Washington. From here we do extensive case management and offer direct services to help people find a path out of homelessness. Our direct services include but are not limited to providing shelter, referring to shelter, supporting individuals to obtain necessary documents to be eligible for permanent housing, connecting and transporting people to detox, recovery, mental health services, both temporary work and permanent jobs. The Hospitality Hub, or as it’s known in this space, “The Hub,” partners with dozens of nonprofits, government agencies, hospitals, universities, and businesses to provide the most effective services and opportunities possible for our unhoused neighbors.
About Dragonfly Collective:
Dragonfly is a social impact development firm specializing in harnessing market forces to create and implement social change. With initiatives ranging from healthcare to homelessness, Dragonfly represents an economy where business and nonprofits align bottom-line interests and the public good. They work closely with the Hub every day.
When available data didn’t reflect the demand for shelter for women experiencing homelessness, Dragonfly created an assessment tool to capture the reality: while nearly 40% of individuals experiencing homelessness were women, they had access to only 6% of the available beds.
About UAC:
The UrbanArt Commission (UAC) works to create opportunities for artists and neighborhoods to connect and shape spaces through public art. Since 2002, UAC has managed the City of Memphis’s Percent-For-Art Program, which allocates funds annually to develop public art in connection to capital improvement projects. UAC also facilitates public art projects throughout the city working with various partners and clients to support artists and new experiences with art.
SITE SPECIFICS
UAC and The City of Memphis, in partnership with the Hospitality Hub, are seeking an artist to create a Trauma-Informed work of art that can be hung in the dining room.
The New Hub Hotel is a barrier-free emergency shelter for women designed to facilitate healing from trauma and introduce immediate stability to unsheltered lives. Paired with top-tier, 24/7 case management, emergency shelter provides a necessary baseline for rebuilding a life.
The wall at the far west end of the dining room is 13' 9-1/2" x 10' and will be painted a light minty green.
Trauma-Informed design recognizes that the physical environment has an impact on attitude, mood and behavior because there is a strong link between our physiological state, our emotional state and the physical environment. Intentionally designing and maintaining healing environments leads to empowerment and resists retraumatizing those who have already experienced so much trauma.
*We strongly recommend applicants to take a tour of the Hospitality Hub due to the site specific nature of this project. Please contact Nikii Richey: nikii@hospitalityhub.org after INFORMATION SESSIONS to schedule a tour.
SCOPE OF WORK
UAC and The City of Memphis, in partnership with the Hospitality Hub are seeking an artist to create a Trauma-Informed work of art that can be hung in the central staircase.
The goal of Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) is to avoid re-traumatizing someone. “Re-traumatizing refers to inadvertently recreating some conditions of a persons’ previous trauma, causing them to relive it in the moment.” Trauma-informed care aims to help people find meaning and purpose in their lives, fulfill valued roles and engage in a life in a community of their choosing, see themselves as more than their trauma(s), help people identify and pursue avenues to reducing distress and problems in their lives and exercise personal autonomy and self-determination in making choices. Trauma-informed care means shifting from the medical question of “What’s wrong with you?” to the trauma-informed question of “What’s happened to you?”
*for information visit:
https://smiadviser.org/knowledge_post/what-does-it-mean-to-be-trauma-informed
Trauma-Informed Design
Trauma-informed practices extend into all aspects of the Hospitality Hub’s services but for the purposes of this call, artists are asked to take the following parameters into account:
- Pieces should be soothing and calming with very little red, yellow or orange which are trigger colors
- Bringing the outdoors in is always good, so nature, landscapes, natural materials, etc.
- Abstract can be difficult since it's so open to interpretation but as long as it's soothing and soft, it's fine.
- Rounded edges and shapes vs. jagged and sharp.
- Metal is ok as long as it isn't sharp or shiny and doesn't look industrial. Wood or plastic is better.
The majority of Hospitality Hub clients will be coming straight off the streets, where they've suffered a multitude of traumas. The Hub’s goal is to create a healing cocoon for them in which to rest.
*for more information visit:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2019/12/09/the-importance-of-trauma-infor
PROJECT EXPECTATIONS
A selection committee organized by UAC will review submitted portfolios, and will invite three finalists to submit site-specific design proposals. All finalists will receive a stipend of $500 for their designs. The selected artist will be expected to work closely with the Selection Committee and UAC to execute the proposed artistic enhancements.
SELECTION COMMITTEE
Nikii Richey - The Hub, Trauma-Informed Designer
Pam Mcdonnell - Artist
Nubia Yasin - Artist
Dr. Jeanne Jamison - The University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Liza Hubbard - Hub Street Outreach
Ursula Madden - Communications, Mayor’s office
Ellen Roberbs/ Jarad Bingham (1 vote) - Dragonfly Collective
Carol West Berry - Committee Member
PROJECT BUDGET
Total project budget is $7,500, including artist honoraria - up to three finalists will receive a $500 honorarium for a site-specific proposal. Design budget $1,500.00; Fabrication budget $4,500.00 all-inclusive.
PROJECT TIMELINE
July 20, 2022 RFQ released
August 3, 2022 UAC Virtual Information Session
September 14, 2022 RFQ deadline
September 28, 2022 Notify finalists of RFP invitation
November 9, 2022 RFP deadline
Fall 2023 Completion celebration
APPLICATION GUIDELINES
Please submit the following materials online:
Completed application form
A typed letter explaining your interest in the project and your general approach/concept to its design and production. Please do not submit design proposals at this point.
Up to 20 images of past work including title of work, date, medium, budget and project partners, if any.
Resume or CV, not to exceed 2 pages.
List of three professional references, including current phone and email.
To apply to an open Request for Qualifications (RFQ) or Request for Proposals (RFP), go to uacmem.org/calls-to-artists. Follow the “HOSPITALITY HUB (NEW HUB HOTEL): DINING ROOM COMMISSION” link to view more details.
Clicking on the Submit button will redirect you to our Submittable page, which contains all of our current open opportunities. Click the Submit button next to the opportunity that you wish to apply for, or if you are already within an opportunity, scroll down to the Create your account / Have an account? Sign in form.
If you already have a Submittable account, click the Have an account? Sign in tab to sign in to your account.
If you don’t have an account, you must create one to apply. Create your free account by filling out the Create your account form. Fill in all information and click the Create Account and Continue button to continue with the submission process.
From there, you will be able to complete and submit your application. You can now use this account login when submitting to all future UAC opportunities. Once you have submitted your application, you will receive a confirmation email that confirms receipt of your full application.
For more information about this project, please contact:
Richard Echols | Program Manager
901.881.8205 | richard@uacmem.org
This RFQ can be found on www.uacmem.org/calls-to-artists
INFORMATION SESSIONS
UAC will host a virtual information session for interested artists on Wednesday July 6th, 2022 at 5:30pm. The virtual session will be recorded and a link made available to applicants who are unable to attend during that time. Interested artists who have not completed a public art project previously or not completed a project of this scale are strongly encouraged to reach out to the UAC team in advance of submitting their application. Artists may also schedule a meeting with UAC staff to review their application and portfolio. Appointments are available until 1 week prior to the close of the call to artists. See project contact information in the above section.
DISCLAIMERS
UAC is committed to equity and inclusion in our work. People of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, differently-abled and neurodiverse persons, indigenous peoples, youth, seniors, and women are strongly encouraged to apply.
Applicants will be notified as to the status of their application. Commissioning of artists by UAC and the pursuit of all UAC activities are implemented without preference to racial or ethnic origins, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, disability, or age.
UAC reserves the right to modify this solicitation and to request additional information from participating artists.
UAC reserves the right to accept or reject, at any time prior to the commissioning of a work, any or all proposals when the acceptance, rejection, waiver or advertisement would be in the best interest of the project.
The UAC team will be responsible for all correspondence and communication by and between applicants and members of selection panels. Discussion regarding these projects by and between any applicant and any member of a selection panel outside of regularly scheduled meetings during the selection process may be grounds for the disqualification of the applicant. Such determination shall be at the discretion of UAC.
