Jump Around

Jump Around is a disco game show, and it is also a public consultation. The City of Hamilton’s Public Art Department needed community input for its Public Art Master Plan, and the usual instruments — surveys, open houses, comment forms — mostly reach the people who already turn up to City processes.

So we put the questions inside a party. Developed with creative collaborator Colina Phillips, Jump Around brings people of every age and ability onto the same dance floor and into the same game, and the rounds of that game are the consultation. Starting from artistic practice buys moments of joy and surprise, and those moments reach people who would never fill in a form.

The results went back to the department in full. Eighty per cent of respondents said art in public places enhances their connection to their community, and only seven per cent said they barely notice it. Asked what kind of public art they wanted more of, the largest group — forty-one per cent — chose live performance and interactive art, ahead of permanent sculpture. Asked which community values matter most, kindness and compassion came first.

The write-in answers are the part worth keeping. A checkbox tells you which option won; the sentences people volunteered — decolonization, third spaces, support for individual Hamilton artists, more Indigenous art and representation — are the ones that change what a Master Plan should say.