PHOTO : MOMENT FACTORY
private , para-municipal , or para-governmental ; you can have a municipal property , but they ’ ll delegate the development of the property to a developer .
And what there ’ s more and more of now is the privately-operated public spaces . Those would be internal spaces that are used often to transit through , especially in Canada where it ’ s cold outside ; you know , lobbies , retail areas that are used by the public , but that are privately owned . And then you also have sort of outdoor spaces . More municipalities are regulating that if , for instance , a large company wants to put in a kind of campus with two or three buildings , the public space between those buildings has to be treated for the public good .
Often when we talk about publicly-funded projects , there ’ s very rarely just one funder . We ’ re often in discussion with the instigators well in advance ; not just Moment Factory , but other creative companies as well . Because , again , the integration of this digital multimedia or dynamic lighting is very much new , and it needs a certain amount of infrastructure , and it takes a certain amount of investment , but it ’ s reusable and it ’ s repurposable over time .
The initial investment is still a bit onerous , or can be for municipalities , so we ’ ll get poked often to be in think-tanks or braintrusts around this stuff before , say , an RFP ( request for proposal ) is issued . And sometimes a lot of cities do “ ideas competitions ,” where a number of companies will put forward ideas , then from that , it might be two , three , maybe four years later , there ’ s a real RFP process that comes out of it . But by the time they get all the pieces in place to move forward with a project and they get an idea of how much it ’ s going to cost and what the implementation ’ s going to be ; that takes a lot longer , I would tend to say , when there ’ s publicly-owned private spaces or spaces that are sort of crossovers . Sometimes the process is more , “ We already have an idea , we know what we want , here ’ s an RFP ,” and you answer the RFP , and two months later , you have a contract . So , it really varies .
Sometimes it ’ s much more specific , post- COVID , for instance . Obviously , a lot of cities are trying to rejuvenate their downtown areas all across North America and Europe , and in some cases we ’ ll get people calling us directly and saying “ Hey , what can we do ? Can you give us some proposals , we ’ re ready to move forward , we ’ ve got about this much money .” And then in other cases , certain municipalities will call five or six different creative companies and get them together and say , “ Let ’ s figure out how to do this so everybody can be involved .”
We also keep our eye out as well , to see what the ongoing big architectural projects and big developments are . So , if a big lot goes up for sale or gets sold , we go , “ Okay , somebody ’ s probably going to be redeveloping this ; what opportunities are there for us here ?” So , we try to see these projects coming maybe four or five years in advance ; who are the architects working on it , how can we get involved with the teams ? So we find work that way as well .
PLP : Can you explain a little bit more about how these RFPs work ?
Catterall : So , you can have requests for proposals , which are public that go out , and they ’ re just open and anybody can answer , which normally happens in publicly-funded projects . Or , in a privately-funded request for proposal , they can say , “ We ’ re going to invite these five companies , because we like them
CHERYL CATTERALL , CREATIVE DIRECTOR
and we ’ ve done our research ,” and then depending on which one of them puts together the better proposal , that will give them the project .
PLP : So , it seems like Moment Factory also serves as a consultant in some capacity ! In browsing some of the company ’ s previous projects , I was quite intrigued by the 2013 Megaphone installation in Montreal , for example . How does something like that come together ?
Catterall : Absolutely ! Megaphone , that was done with Quartier des Spectacles ; there was some public funding there , but it ’ s actually a non-profit . And we get a lot of these in the public space . They put out calls for proposals , generally once a year , for different events and different spaces that they that they have , and they already have a kind of multimedia infrastructure . So , there ’ s already data , there ’ s already lighting , there ’ s already a fountain , and they ’ ll put out calls for proposals . So that ’ s how we got into that one .
PLP : Taking into consideration the various collaborators Moment Factory works with across various sectors , what are some of the differences in working with your diverse types of clientele ? How do they affect the process creatively and technically ?
PHOTO : MOMENT FACTORY
MEGAPHONE , A COLLABORATION WITH QUARTIER DES SPECTACLE
Catterall : Well , I would tend to say it ’ s really about value mapping . If somebody is investing money , how do you define what value is for that person ? So if it ’ s a private developer , obviously , they ’ re trying to recuperate their investment ; so what does that mean to them ? And sometimes it ’ s only about money , but sometimes it ’ s about prestige or about reputation or about just making a nicer space for the people that pass through it .
Publicly-funded projects , they ’ re looking to address citizens ’ needs , like what the citizens need in the public space , and then
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