The Chicago Public Art Group (CPAG) creates public work through a process of community engagement, ranging from large-scale public commissions to smaller pieces set in more secluded neighborhood locations. Through their creative process new styles, theories, and media have evolved to meet contemporary social and aesthetic challenges. CPAG’s projects ultimately unite communities and artists in creating high quality public art to realize their social, cultural, educational, and aesthetic goals.

CPAG’s history is rooted in the city’s mural movement of the 1960s, yet the organization maintains its relevance as the city around it evolves. The vibrancy of the organization’s ongoing collaborations and the high quality and visibility of its current projects attest to the fact that CPAG continues to succeed and uphold its original mission nearly four decades after its founding.

“Our group is about collaborative practice and not a single individual.”

In 2005, CPAG produced a handbook, Chicago Public Art Group’s Community Public Art Guide, which evolved into a website. In keeping with the spirit of its community street art tradition, CPAG distributed this handbook free of charge. It has proven to be a unique resource, especially valued by artists who are trying to develop community-based projects without the support of a strong local tradition.

CPAG identifies its creative method as bricolage, and describes its function as “use everything, get everything”. For the organization, this has to do with ideas of conservation and not wasting anything. Furthermore, at the heart of CPAG’s creative practice is the process by which the group of core artists interacts with communities, making each community and its experiences an integral aspect of the art.

The collaborative dialogue that results in the final public art is a way of creating collective meaning, rather than imposing it. Through this process, CPAG and its partners produce mosaics, murals, sculptures, seating installations, banners, and space designs for a wider audience to enjoy.