The Our Town Spotlights highlight the work and voices of Our Town grantees and project partners leading incredible artful initiatives in their communities, offering a glimpse into their creative process, approach, and experience.
Seeding Ripples Through Listening, Human Connection and Public Art
The Cultural Trail, featuring Tiina Morin
(Marquette, Michigan), FY2022 Our Town Project
What does public art say about our time, place, and identity? Tiina Morin, Arts and Culture Manager for the City of Marquette, posed this question during Cultural Conversations, a series of community forums intended to invite dialogue and reflections about the Cultural Trail, an FY22 Our Town grant project.
The City of Marquette’s Cultural Trail connects eight sites along seven miles of the Lake Superior shoreline. Through public art installations and interpretative signage in English and Anishinaabe, the Trail seeks to honor the built and natural landscapes of Marquette, as well as the city’s history and cultural heritage, including those of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and other Anishinaabe people from the region.
Last year, the City successfully leveraged state funding from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and the Department of Natural Resources. This funding will go toward renovating the former Marquette Chamber of Commerce building into a dynamic public space and trailhead and connecting the Cultural Trail to regional, State, and National trail systems. As a part of the Our Town grant project, the City commissioned a sculptural piece by Anishinaabe stone carver Jason Quigno entitled “The Seven Grandfather Teachings,”
In this Spotlight, Tiina Morin, Arts and Culture Manager for the City of Marquette, shares her relationship to the Cultural Trail and how this project has seeded a ripple effect through the community, deepening the practice of creative placemaking to reimagine public spaces and public art through meaningful conversations about how people understand their connections to a place and one another.
Check out the full interview below.
Please tell us about yourself and your connection to the Cultural Trail project.
My passion for this work comes from my experience as a first-generation Estonian American. I saw firsthand the power of arts in galvanizing an entire nation toward freedom. When I look back, it now makes sense that I chose to pursue a career in the performing arts and museum education. I was fortunate to hone my skills at the Swedish American Museum Center in Chicago where working alongside neighborhood businesses, community groups, and City officials was the norm. The City of Chicago has in many ways led neighborhood placemaking by working directly with community groups but also its artists and culture bearers. I never would have imagined years later I’d have the privilege to work for the City that first welcomed my mother and grandparents to the United States seventy-five years ago.
I've worked for the City of Marquette almost twelve years and so much has changed in that short time. In 2014 we embarked on a master planning process that transitioned our Office from an Arts and Culture Center focused on community programming to a resource hub focused on capacity building for the creative sector and placemaking. I think the major catalyst has been the establishment of the City’s public art policy and public art fund. But also our concerted effort to deepen our partnerships and develop new ones across sectors. There’s been a shift in how we think about arts and culture as we move beyond the traditional framework of special events, museums, and gallery walls. We have taken a broader view on arts and culture’s role in government...it not only creates a vibrant and attractive community but increases the health of our residents, the natural environment, and our economy. This perspective might be standard for larger cities, but in an isolated community with a population of 22,000, I think it's daring.
What does creative placemaking mean to you? How do you practice creative placemaking?
I don't have a special definition for placemaking. I do appreciate the way Urban Ecosystems, the landscape architecture firm we hired to design the interpretive sites, describes it as “place revealing”...I like this idea of revealing but maybe even more accurate is learning to read the landscape. Curating spaces within the city to reveal layers of history and important relationships between individuals, the community, and the landscape.
This project will engage both place and people, but also illuminates where we need to do better and reaffirms what we are doing well. So, I no longer think about each project individually. For example, a mural, a sculpture, or parklet, festival, etc.—it’s about how these projects connect to the people and spaces we live, but also to our history, present, and future. What kinds of conversations happen here? How can we use the landscape, art, design, and activities to renew our understanding of a space, to tell a story, or spark our imaginations? I’m also learning that even if the spaces aren’t pretty, they’re important. One of the project partners Dr. Martin Reinhardt, professor of Native Studies at Northern Michigan University, referred to one of the interpretive sites as a “traumascape." So do we erase or remove the unattractive aspects of the space with new sod and pretty signage or do we find ways to bring attention to it, preserve parts so that we can talk about it and heal?
Can you share your experience working with cross-sector partners and people from different backgrounds?
Our city is small, so our office has always worked with partners, local museums, arts and culture organizations, and others. That was one of our strengths coming into the Our Town application–that we already had these strong relationships. Yet, for this project, we needed to go deeper and reach further with our external and internal partnerships. We’re working more inter-departmentally within the City at a level we simply haven’t previously. Also, partnerships with Northern Michigan University, Economic Development Offices like the Smart Zone/Innovate Marquette, and environmental organizations like the Superior Watershed Partnership have been critical. Now, it seems hard to ever imagine not working together at this level...I’m learning that a healthy and trusted partnership opens doors to new ones. For example, Superior Watershed's strong relationship with the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community* has been essential to our initial introduction with the Tribal Nation. Many of the Indigenous people who live in our community belong to several different Tribes across the Upper Peninsula or even downstate. As these relationships deepen, so does our knowledge and the work. Until this moment there hasn’t been substantial public recognition of the Anishinabek villages or heritage outside of museum walls or University. This Trail is changing that.
In 2022, the City of Marquette hosted a series called Cultural Conversations, where various guests shared their knowledge of different places along the Cultural Trail, sparking dialogue related to public memory, history, and present experiences along the Cultural Trail. How did this program come about?
Our Office coordinates Art Week, a week-long free art festival. We decided during COVID that Art Week could be a powerful platform to engage the community on significant issues and to shed light on city initiatives.
Art Week 2022 focused on the development of the Cultural Trail. Cultural Conversations were led by Trail partners at the proposed interpretive sites. I’m so glad that we did that…It helped us understand the personal connections people have with each particular site and made us see the spaces differently. One thing we learned is that not everyone uses and thinks about public spaces the same. Not everyone feels welcome or invited everywhere. And that was surprising. I now think of the Trail as an invitation, and we’re looking forward to expanding upon that conversational structure to continue to engage our community, and even visitors, using these sites to welcome people in, spark conversations, and inspire curiosity.
You’re in the process of deepening existing partnerships and establishing new ones. What’s one takeaway you want to share about building strong relationships?
To be able to really listen and to know that you don’t have all the answers. That seems obvious, but it’s really hard to do because you think, “This is the way I’m thinking about doing it.” And it seems to be the best way. But communication is key, and we’re constantly learning to take off our City hats and really listen—to be honest about what we don’t know and to understand that everyone’s ideas should be considered and heard.
On Finding Conversation and Listening
Finding a seed that everyone can gather around has become really important…When all the major grant partners first gathered together, we talked about the overarching message of this Trail. What’s our common story? Our seed is the Lake. The water, it’s our life source, and it’s why we live here. Now, with climate change, it’s even more important to talk about our connection to water and each other…
The Seven Grandfather Teachings has also centered the Trail’s message of connection. Ancient teachings that, as artist Jason Quigno says, are for everyone. When consulted, KBIC Tribal members asked that we place his sculpture at the most visible spot on the trail, next to a decommissioned ore dock that juts out from the downtown harbor. Jason was fascinated, the juxtaposition of the monolithic ore dock and intimate circle of seven stone sculptures offers a new perspective and sparks a very real conversation. Each site along the trail prompts this deeper look at our surroundings and ourselves, “What is the conversation we’re not having? Maybe that’s the conversation we need to have.”
The Trail in Marquette offers a chance to share an abundance of stories, each site connecting to the past, present and future residents of the shoreline. Large narratives are woven with individual characters to humanize our past and celebrate the everyday contributions that, choice by choice, build our community and shape what’s to come. We are consciously creating spaces where our community feels invited to come together. Through art, landscape design, and conversation, we are encouraged to listen. Empathetic placemaking seems to make a lot of sense. The ripple effect of an invitation to connect: that will be the ongoing mission of the Marquette Cultural Trail for what I hope will be generations to come.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
*The Great Lakes Basin is the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands and waters of many Indigenous nations, including the Anishinaabeg, meaning “original person.” They are one of the largest Indigenous groups in North America with nearly 150 different bands living throughout their homeland in present-day United States and Canada. Currently, Anishinaabeg are known by various names: Chippewa, Ojibway, Ojibwe, or Ojibwa, as well as Ottawa or Odawa and Potawatomi or Bodewadomi. All of these peoples are bound within the Anishinaabeg, the larger group who migrated from the Atlantic shores of North America and began settling throughout the Great Lakes region. The Anishinaabek were instructed to migrate west to “the land where food grows on water,” also known as manoomin or wild rice, as part of the Seven Fires prophecies. The migration is believed to have begun at around 900 A.D. and continued across generations, approximately 500 years. The journey included seven major stopping points along the southern shores of the St. Lawrence River, and proceeded among all of the Great Lakes. On the journey, the Anishinaabeg would come to call themselves the nation of the Three Fires upon the establishment of peace with the Iroquois Confederacy. The Three Fires nations were comprised of the Ish-do-day’-wa-tomi (fire keepers), the O-daw-wahg’ (trade keepers), and the Ojibway (faith keepers). Each group name described their primary responsibility to the physical and spiritual survival of the Anishinaabeg. These groups are the present-day Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Ojibwa people who made permanent settlements throughout the region during their migration journey, one of which included Lake Superior’s Keweenaw Bay. (From the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community Natural Resources Department)
Building Community through the Art of Carving
Kootéeyaa Deiyí, featuring TJ Sgwaayaans Young
(Juneau, Alaska), FY 2022 Our Town Project
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