In recent years, public art has evolved to take a central role in urban regeneration in public places and, more recently, has been integrated into city branding. Published research and selected reports revealed that public art frequently opens up sensitive issues like social acceptance, ownership and cultural relevance, and showed that a participation-based approach can be used to address these issues. The literature review confirmed the main issues and the need for a theoretical platform to support future practice. The researcher has been a professional practitioner in the field for many years and was aware of the gap between contemporary practice and academic underpinning, resulting in divergent practices with unpredictable outcomes. Key elements found in the secondary research and overlaid with the fieldwork experience of the researcher were combined to create an analytical tool to analyse 46 practical cases of public art and design. This revealed five invitation elements [triggers to induce participation] which were found to be connected to four participation elements [patterns of participation]. A first conceptual model was formulated to investigate the interactions and transformation processes between these invitation and participation elements. The model was further developed and its validity was tested through two distinctive action-based research projects in which the researcher played a leading role. The projects confirmed the validity of the transformation process in the model and emergent pragmatic value. Expert interviews confirmed the validity of the model and understanding of how it may become sustainable, resulting in a toolkit for implementation to engender debate in the academic and practitioner community. The final theoretical model offers new thinking for leading public art and design practitioners and related stakeholders, to achieve consistent add-value.

Det här kandidatarbetet handlar om konst & design och hur verktygen vid skapandet av dessa påverkar både arbetsprocess och resultat. För att undersöka detta analyseras konstverk från tre olika historiska konst- & designrörelser samt den värld som upphovspersonerna bakom dessa levde i när de skapade dessa. Denna forskning applicerades sedan i skapandet av en motion graphic som tolkar dessa konstverk med moderna verktyg. I resultat- & diskussionsdelen diskuteras den påverkan som verktygen hade på både arbetsprocess och resultat. / This bachelor’s thesis is about art & design and the way the tools used creating these impacts both the work process and the finished piece. To research this, works of art and design from three historic art & design movements and the world the creators of these lived in are analyzed. This research was then applied to the making of a motion graphic which interprets these works using modern tools. In the conclusion & discussion part of the thesis the studied impact is then discussed.

Art and design programs at community colleges challenge students to think of numerous and diverse creative concepts when faced with an assignment that requires creative problem-solving. Concurrently the students are learning to acquire new disciplinary skills and manage the hurdles of various life responsibilities. Thus, it becomes the inspiring role of the art faculty to challenge their students to think creatively and critically about their work. I argue that training focused on creative thinking, self-regulation, and critical thinking in the classroom or through training workshops can improve these latent abilities. This dissertation presents the results of an educational intervention study examining whether undergraduate students in a community college setting who routinely practice and exercise creative thinking skills, self-regulation strategies, and critical thinking can improve their creative problem-solving. Prior research suggests that these skills and strategies can be learned and are critical to a student’s success in college. The sample for this study consisted of undergraduate students at a community college in Southeastern Pennsylvania who were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. Training modules were delivered over ten weeks of the fall semester via the college’s learning management system. Participants could work through the training modules at their own pace. A pre-test/post-test design using divergent and convergent thinking, metacognition awareness, and critical thinking measured participants’ change in the understanding of those constructs. An additional post-test only, final design project, was used as a measure of the constructs. Demographic data were gathered through a questionnaire. The results indicate that there were no positive significant differences in the constructs from pre-test to post-test. The results of the final project post-test measure indicate that the treatment group had marginally higher scores on the design construct, the creative thinking sub-component of the design construct, and the critical thinking construct. The results also suggest that the additional training had little or no effect on the treatment group. / Educational Psychology