Agenda - Parks and Recreation Commission - 01/09/2025

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that call the city home, and creates an attraction for visitors that come to visit. The City functions as a regional center for sporting activities and has a state bicycle trail that runs through the community. The City sponsors a sculpture stroll that has become popular and rotates a series of sculptures that are renewed each year. One of the purposes of public art in the community is to tell the history of the community and to recognize prominent members of the city. Recently, a mural of prominent citizens was created on the outside wall of a downtown business. A sculpture of Chief Little Crow stands beside of the river near the main street bridge into downtown. In the town square, a bronze sculpture of the three founding namesake pioneer brothers anchors the civic plaza. He personally thinks that public art has strong value for the community and believes that the community is supportive overall. He believes that the strongest rationale for public art is that it makes the city a more complete community that has impacts on all walks-of-life. He views public art as another amenity that adds to the community. He observes that a number of people take pictures with the public art and families, including his own, like to go out walking and view the various sculptures. The public art helps create that sense of place within the community. The public seems to have a good awareness of public art. The city promotes events on its public arts web site, sponsors the sculpture stroll event, and conducts a citizen's poll for the Artist-of-the-Year. He believes that public art helps in creating a greater sense of creativity throughout the community. People take civic pride in the art displays, it provides the city with an economic benefit, and it offers is a way the city can offer something for everyone. The artist community benefits by these efforts and so do the art programs at the public schools. The business community benefits by the visitors and downtown includes art- related businesses such as a pottery shop and a quilt shop. He identified minority populations as a group that presently may be under-recognized in the majority of current art efforts. The costs 99