Frances Whitehead is a civic practice artist working to contribute to sustainable cultural futures. Understanding the imperative for artists to operate in a larger society, she develops strategies to deploy the knowledge of artists as change agents, asking,” What do Artists Know?” Outcomes include public art, urban design, remediation, education programs, adaptive reuse design, new typologies.
A series of linked civic initiatives include The Embedded Artist Project with the City of Chicago Innovation Program, and SLOW Cleanup, an experimental phytoremediation program for abandoned gas stations. She has also worked to develop an urban agriculture strategic plan with the Municipality of Lima, Peru. Whitehead writes and presents on the tacit knowledge of artists and the epistemology of art practice.
Whitehead focuses on systemic-based sustainability frameworks as they pertain to the industrial and cultural dimensions of land use, landscape, and plant-based practices of all kinds. She has worked extensively in highly disturbed industrial sites with slag materials, water quality, and plant-based interventions and implementations. She works between the fields of Art and Science and on urban sustainability issues. Other relevant expertise includes innovative environmental education/outreach, ethno-botany, garden design and public art.
