The Maintenance Post
2019 - present
The Maintenance Post
PARTNERSWashington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT)
Smart Growth America (SGA)
Designed by Office of Virtue
State of Washington
PARTNERSWashington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT)
Smart Growth America (SGA)
Designed by Office of Virtue
A hyperlocal newsprint publication connecting the public to the often invisible labor of maintenance work.
The thing about maintenance is that if everything is working well, nobody notices. The Maintenance Post humanizes the people-powered practice of stewarding our shared transportation network. Each issue of the publication features a different regional area’s maintenance staff and the sectional maintenance facilities within. Through a series of generative, intentionally meta research, editors curate data, stories, observations, maps, legislation, and statistics into a dynamic pocket-sized portrait of the work it takes to keep us moving around. Distribution of the publication is centered in public community facilities such as libraries, post offices, city halls, and rest areas.
An issue of the Mainteance Post can bridge the relationship between maintenance work and localized communities, be shared across state lines to other transportation departments, and serve as a critical personal link to the traveling public. If we can creatively educate the traveling public to better understand the service of transportation maintenance workers, perhaps we can inspire a political shift towards funding infrastructure within legislature.
The Maintenance Post is a civic and creative project by Mary Welcome and Kelly Gregory, the inaugural Artists-in-Residence for the Washington State Department of Transportation, the nation’s first ever state wide government Artist-in-Residence program.
The Maintenance Post is at it’s core an interdisciplinary arts-inclusive collaborative research project. It is an innovative and the first of its kind collaboration of artists and statewide transportation departments. The project is on-going and has the ability to have impact at a range of scales, from local communities to state legislators. The project is based on deep, in the field research from urban to rural places.
The thing about maintenance is that if everything is working well, nobody notices. The Maintenance Post humanizes the people-powered practice of stewarding our shared transportation network. Each issue of the publication features a different regional area’s maintenance staff and the sectional maintenance facilities within. Through a series of generative, intentionally meta research, editors curate data, stories, observations, maps, legislation, and statistics into a dynamic pocket-sized portrait of the work it takes to keep us moving around. Distribution of the publication is centered in public community facilities such as libraries, post offices, city halls, and rest areas.
An issue of the Mainteance Post can bridge the relationship between maintenance work and localized communities, be shared across state lines to other transportation departments, and serve as a critical personal link to the traveling public. If we can creatively educate the traveling public to better understand the service of transportation maintenance workers, perhaps we can inspire a political shift towards funding infrastructure within legislature.
The Maintenance Post is a civic and creative project by Mary Welcome and Kelly Gregory, the inaugural Artists-in-Residence for the Washington State Department of Transportation, the nation’s first ever state wide government Artist-in-Residence program.
The Maintenance Post is at it’s core an interdisciplinary arts-inclusive collaborative research project. It is an innovative and the first of its kind collaboration of artists and statewide transportation departments. The project is on-going and has the ability to have impact at a range of scales, from local communities to state legislators. The project is based on deep, in the field research from urban to rural places.