Art and water repository

The Source Water Protection Collaborative brings together diverse groups and perspectives to advance collective action for protecting drinking water.

Collaborative members are committed to a series of values and principles, including pursuing collaborative projects rooted in belonging, mutual exchange, and trust building and acknowledging that information alone does not create behavior change. 

One project that came out of these values and principles was to hire an artist-in-residence to engage members of a rural Minnesota community around protecting drinking water sources. Using artists and artists-in-residence to engage with civic processes is not new; this field started more than 45 years ago. While using artists and artists-in-residence to work at the intersection of citizen engagement and water is not as well established in Minnesota, there are still many local and national resources that can help get started in this work. Environmental Initiative’s artist-in-residence program, which started in 2023, is just one of these resources.

Below, there are other examples of this work, materials that may be helpful for developing a new program, and websites of artists who helped develop our work.