Matt Cowley Tauranga City Councillor

I'm excited Tauranga City Council unanimously adopted the Public Art Policy this week. The policy establishes a better process for making decisions on public art.

If you search the internet for images of Tauranga, you will see amazing photos of our wonderful harbour and beaches, but very few images show who we are as a community.

Many submitters told us adopting a policy before setting a city-wide vision for public art was cart before the horse, which I agree with. But the policy gives us something to work with until we have finalised the Smart Arts Strategy and looked at public art funding in future budgets.

Public art is a bit like planning Christmas day with the extended family – if it's done well it can bring people together. But if it goes badly it can do a lot of damage.

I believe the community has helped us to get the balance right – we should encourage temporary public art to pop up organically, but public art that might be with us for a while should be assessed through an independent panel.

We have set up an advisory panel to help council make informed decisions when we receive an idea for public art.

The voluntary panel will meet a couple of times a year to assess public art proposals and advise the council. Soon we will ask interested people to apply to participate on the advisory panel.

We also received submissions asking for artwork on private buildings to be covered by the public art policy. But this affects private property rights and would need to go through a formal change to the city plan rules.

Thanks to everyone who turned up to the community workshop sessions that helped shape the policy from the beginning.

A special thanks to Tauranga's creative community, which ran a public series of fantastic speakers to get conversations going in the community.

No council can, or should, deliver public art on its own – we need the wider community to support the projects. I look forward to Tauranga showing its heart and soul in full public view in years to come.

Feel free to email me your thoughts (matt.cowley@tauranga.govt.nz), call/text me on 027 6989 548, and follow me at www.facebook.com/a.younger.voice.