Integrating Arts and Culture Strategies into Transit Plans

First Stop: Arkansas—Springdale, Arkansas, is growing. Home to the world’s second largest meat processing corporation and a national freight and shipping company, the city has seen its population double over the past 20 years, according to the U.S. Census. The larger northwest Arkansas region—headquarters of Walmart—is also growing, putting the issues of vehicular traffic, access to jobs, and displacement at the top of some people’s minds.

One of those people is Erika Wilhite, a social practice artist and founder of Artist’s Laboratory Theater, a community-based, site-specific theater company in Northwest Arkansas. Wilhite and Antony Ramos, a digital storyteller, are the creative partners behind a series of art-inspired sessions, activities, and presentations that they hope will influence details of Connect Northwest Arkansas, a 10-year transit development plan that is currently in the proposal stage. The projects are part of their work as newly named Arts, Culture, and Transportation Fellows with Transportation for America, an initiative designed to give art professionals opportunities for hands-on learning about the transportation planning and design process in their respective regions. The 11 fellows, working in four cities, will also learn how to better integrate arts and culture practices into transportation projects.

In a region where some of the cities’ bus lines don’t run on weekends, and none that operate past 7 p.m., new thinking around transit is highly anticipated. “There are people [who] are transit-dependent in all of our cities, and the current system—with all of its different levels of effectiveness and accessibility, [is] still not enough,” says Wilhite.

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