Call for Proposals

Big Pictures edited collection on creative interventions in the built environment
https://www.instagram.com/wilsondesignkpu/p/DA9jXNSyQIR/

Deadline for submission of abstracts: November 30, 2024

We are excited to announce that we are currently seeking submissions for an edited collection of essays and imagery focusing on creative interventions in the built environment. Drawing from the themes showcased in the Big Pictures conferences (2023 and 2024), the publication will feature work exploring the role of murals, billboards, public art, and interactive projects in creating meaningful experiences in urban spaces.

Potential themes could include, but are not limited to:

• Activating temporary and transitional public spaces
• Placemaking through play
• Festivals, exhibitions, and inspiring interactivity
• Decolonizing urban space, images, and indigenization
• Urban interventions and community building
• Creating a sense of place, local voices, and collaborative projects
• Billboards, advertising, and imagery that sells
• Screens, projections, and transitory visuals
• Heritage, personal narrative, collective memory
• Media and augmented reality projects in the built environment
• Architecture and unexpected imagery
• Messages in neon, signage, and text installations
• Living walls and immersive landscape
• Making data visible

We invite submissions in the following categories:

• Research Essays – 2,000–4,000-word features exploring concepts and/or projects. Including 1-5 images.
• Musings – Shorter snapshots of opinion-driven or creative text, max. 500 words, 1 image.
• Photo Essays — Visual stories covering the development of a project or idea. Submissions include 4-8 images accompanied by a project statement of max. 300 words. Contributors must confirm that they hold the necessary rights or permissions for the use and publication of any images and agree to grant the editors the right to publish these materials in both print and digital formats.

DEADLINES

Abstract submissions: November 30, 2024
Final texts and images: February 1, 2025

In addition, selected work may also appear in the Wilson School of Design journal as part of a Big Pictures feature.

You can find submission guidelines as part of the Google Submission Form: https://shorturl.at/NAxIi

ABOUT BIG PICTURES:

“Exploring the impact of imagery and creative interventions on the human experience of urban space.”

Big Pictures is a research lab founded by Carley Hodgkinson and Erin Ashenhurst, faculty at the Wilson School of Design at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, British Columbia. We are focused on investigating art and design in the built environment. On billboards, posters, signs, and digital screens, in murals and street art, imagery is a meaningful part of our visual experience of cities. The nature of that imagery — the content depicted, the text displayed to sell, inform, or inspire — all works to construct how we understand the values and expectations of our surroundings. Who gets to create that imagery? What narratives and voices are amplified?

More information: https://wordpress.kpu.ca/bigpictures/