Art workers who often lead democratic movements are largely excluded from electoral politics. As a result, art has become exclusive to the wealthy and government lacks political imagination.
Public Arts Commission web platform
first launched in 2017 and redesigned in 2023
details
about the client
Public Arts Commission is a grass-roots, 501(c)(4) non-profit organization that is dedicated to reimagining the American Dream and helping make it happen for a stronger, more democratic society by giving the art community a platform in politics.
my role
Founder, Full-Stack Web Developer and UX Designer at Public Arts Commission
team
Public Arts Commission Board of Directors
services I provided
| Designed brand identity and media |
| Leading the design, development and deployment for the organization's web platform that includes a campaign application management system, a voter networking and organizing portal, an endorsement management system and a searchable database of all the organization's endorsements |
tools I used
| Figma |
| SvelteKit |
| TypeScript |
| Auth.js |
| MySQL2 |
| TomTom |
| Twilio SendGrid |
| Stripe |
| Splide |
results
A searchable database of all the campaigns, legislation, referendums, actions and amendments endorsed by Public Arts Commission.
Users can search all endorsements made by Public Arts Commission by geolocation, address, city, county, state, zipcode, name and/or year. Users can also filter endorsements by federal, state, county or city.
Create endorsements to automatically appear on website using streamlined campaign data.
Public Arts Commission administrators can create endorsements using a custom portal. Eventually, legislation and referendum create endorsement forms will scrape sponsors and cosponsors of bills from the internet to auto-populate endorsements, saving a lot of time.
Apply for an endorsement by Public Arts Commission using custom campaign applications management system.
Campaigns can apply and manage applications for endorsement by Public Arts Commission on the campaign portal. The data generated by campaigns helps streamline endorsements.
Make a recurring or one-time donation to Public Arts Commission using a public form.
Users donations to Public Arts Commission with the help of Stripe to manage payment methods and subscriptions.
challenges
Revenue generation is a challenge facing the Public Arts Commission web platform. The subscription-based web platform for campaigns will likely help generate revenue.
discoveries
The new web platform significantly reduced the time for Public Arts Commission to make an endorsement.
The lists of co-sponsors and sponsors of legislation and amendments provide data that would provide good insights on how legislative members stand on potential future votes on issues. Public Arts Commission could use the data to create a ranking of how legislative members align with the Public Arts Commission agenda.
The status of legislation can become complicated to track as lawmakers use a variety of different tools to pass legislation. Sometimes, pieces of bills are passed seperately or added to other bills. Creating a good tracking system for the status of legislation is valuable and will require further development of a better tracking mechanism on the Public Arts Commission web platform.
next steps
Work on building the voter portal continues. Once the voter portal is built, work will begin on building the campaign subscription platform.