Embedded Artist Project

The Embedded Artists Project (EAP) is an experimental platform to increase local government's ability to creatively address major systemic issues by embedding practicing artists in City workgroups. Initiated by artist Frances Whitehead, the program was piloted in Chicago between 2008-2012 as a joint effort by the City of Chicago, Whitehead’s ARTetal Studio, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Chicago EAP Program was the first formalized agreement built upon Whitehead's informal placement at Cuyahoga Planning Office in Cleveland, Ohio. This informal placement produced the knowledge claim document known as What Do Artists Know? which was the basis for all subsequent placements. What do Artists Know? (WDAK) has since been translated into Spanish, Korean, and Norweigan.

Additional explorations of Embedded Artist concepts and meanings were explored at Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland, producing a downloadable proceedings, including Whitehead's Embedded Artist - Opting In + Embedded Artist: Double Agent, addressing the experimental structure of platform, the difference between "embeddedness" versus an Artist in Residence (AIR) program, tips for success, and lessons-learned. Whitehead has also written about Embedded Artist Project: Epistemic Disobedience + Place, extrapolating the ideas of Walter Mignolo seeing EAP as a "delinking" with the hegemony of Western disciplinary thinking.

The concept has been adopted widely as a model, especially explored by Creative Carbon Scotland which has addressed Embedded Artist at Conferences, an EAP Toolkit and Library of Practice.

In Chicago, Whitehead worked with the Department on Land Use Planning on the 2040 Food Plan and subsequently was embedded in the Department of Environment Urban Brownfields Division where she worked with CDOE Brownfields staff to conceptualize and implement the Slow Cleanup phytoremediation program.

The success of these placements led directly to the commission as Lead Artist for The 606. During the design process, The Trust for Public Land and Chicago Park District staff transformed The 606 Lead Artist position into a role collectively understood as "Embebbed Artist" which in this context, gave rise to "Embedded Artworks".

Subsequently Whitehead was the Embedded Artist for the City of Gary where she worked with the Departments of Planning and Redevelopment and the Department of Green Urbanism and Environmental Affairs to bring cultural perspectives to the vitalization efforts in Gary.