This is a very high-level, early report to showcase the benefits of using a narrative-based methodology that combines quantitative and qualitative methods. 

All the experiences come from real contributions and were collected in Brussels from February to May, 2024. Most of the stories were collected during the Fête de l'Iris 2024 with the support of SLRB-BGHM, or during  live painting sessions in the little garden in Mont des Arts, in Brussels. The public is quite mixed, with a high component of tourists and students. However several people from different areas in Brussels also shared their stories. In the image below you can see some of the people who contributed, taking the survey on their phones, during a live paint event. 

Participants receive a painting of a tree in exchange for an experience. The artist is painting live on location, and some of these same paintings end up being part of the stories collected.

The collection of stories can be performed in many other different settings, including workshops and informal moments of aggregation (a shared lunch? A drink?) with different groups, including "representative samples", or samples targeted by location, or by any other dimension, including demographic ones.

Experiences in Brussels and abroad

To evaluate these experiences, we take a look at the general dashboard that collects all responses, shown below. (open image in new tab to expand). At the top we have a timeline of the collection and the total number of posts.

Three word clouds show the most recurring terms in the experiences and the title of the artworks. In the live interface, clicking on a term brings up all the stories that have that term in their text. This is followed by the distribution of the stories by country and by city (for the Belgian part).

Just below this first part, we start to have access to quite interesting information. For example, we see that the majority of the stories are related to emotions such as serenity, love, optimism, trust, and that the works of art very rarely have a negative or very negative social or individual value. (Analysis continues below the image)

Following the diagrams of emotions and value, we find the triads that show how most participants see art contributing to the beauty of a place, or its ability to bring people together. Very few see works of public art as a way towards sustainability. The distribution in the second triad is more homogeneous, but we could dive deep by selecting the stories that connect art with senses, or the heart, or the mind.

A last segment of the dashboard gives us insights on  some demographic data as well as the main contexts in which public art is enjoyed.

Diving into Brussels-based stories

A second dashboard shows us the selection of stories that are related with art in public places, in Brussels. You see obvious overlaps with the dashboard above, and a list of all the "works of art" mentioned by respondents in their stories. You can notice how we could extend the definition of what constitutes art in public places based on real feedback. 

In the next few screenshots we can see a small subgroup of stories obtained by selecting, in sequence, a cluster related to "serenity", then a small cluster with "high individual value", then again on "high societal value" and finally on "high emotional AND societal value".

These reports are just a quick overview on how deeper level sense-making sessions can be performed with several different objectives: to inform policy-making, to inspire or confront artists, to reflect and create together, to discover the layers of meaning that make a city and its parts, to communicate a place, etc.

The collection of stories is open and will remain open for several months, and we expect to publish other reports as well as performing online sense-making sessions with interested parties.

Meanwhile, we are contacting entities and organizations interested in discovering the meaning of public art in their own city. Please feel free to contact us for more information!