Most artworks are finished before you see them. Community artworks, on the other hand, begin when you arrive. They are only complete once you've left your mark, and you will almost certainly have shared that experience with a stranger.

Three community artworks sit alongside this year's show, inviting you to draw, colour and drip your way into the story. Together they make a quiet statement - that an art show is more than a place to look at art. It's a place to make it, talk about it, be inspired by it and connect with the people standing next to you while you do.

So, what makes community artworks so compelling?

Making art together is probably older than the idea of the individual artist. Handprints on cave walls, cathedral building, quilting bees, and the collaborative carving, weaving and tapa traditions across the Pacific all involved many hands making something that belonged to everyone. Every contribution someone made becoming part of a larger story, narrated in real time.

Recently, Art in the Park's Principal Partner MAS (Medical Assurance Society) took over Westfield Newmarket with Art in the Park artist Linda McFetridge for The Landscape Remains Constant, The People Bring It To Life. Strangers came together and created collectively, and the energy as people began to make their marks was electric. Human psychology played out live in front of the artwork, and the result was unmistakable - a visual work of shared authorship where the finished piece became a portrait of the people who showed up, what mattered to them, and what was topical at the moment of creation.

McFetridge broke down barriers with her concept, and in doing so brought people together. It began with her own landscape paintings, professionally enlarged to a great scale - The Space in Between, a still blue lake at dusk, and Morning Coffee - A Constant Companion, a red-doored shed standing in a clearing of trees. Visitors then drew straight onto them with paint pens, adding people, pets, flowers, messages and memories. In the artist's words, "the landscape remains constant, while the people gradually bring it to life."

There are few times in your life when you can draw on someone's artwork, let alone a fine art painting. The genius of the concept was not only in its rebellion against art-world norms, but in its invitation for participants to step into the picture and place themselves there; thereby removing the traditional distance between the viewer and the artwork.

At the show, there are more opportunities to create collectively - a mural, a giant sculpture, or both. If McFetridge's work was an invitation to rebel and immerse, the Bayleys Community Colouring Wall with artist Stacey Fraser-Allen is an invitation to simply begin.

Fraser-Allen is supplying a giant line-drawn mural in her signature style, and the community brings all the colour. There is no barrier to creating here, you don't need to be able to draw to choose a shade and fill in a shape, and a child and a grandparent can work on the same section side by side. You can think as abstractly or as literally as you like, and what comes from that is the chance to stand shoulder to shoulder with a stranger, a loved one or a fellow art lover and simply make something together.

Free creativity of this kind has real benefits for participants. Research links creative activity with lower stress and improved wellbeing; it gives the brain space to actively rest, helps regulate the nervous system and encourages problem solving.

An organisation that embodies that spirit is Art Escape NZ, who are running the Creative Corner at this year's show. Art Escape specialise in "messy" creativity - making art by playing with paint, without the pressure of following rules or painting a specific picture. At the Creative Corner, visitors of all ages can play with paint, take home their own fluid art key ring, and contribute to the third work in this story.

Created in collaboration with Resene, Kathryn Wilson and Art Escape NZ, a larger-than-life shoe will invite visitors to drip paint over its surface and make their mark. Over the three days of the show, the community will build a giant sculpture that will go on display at Eden Park as a legacy piece.

The drip has a significant place in art history. In the late 1940s Jackson Pollock turned dripped paint into a record of the artist's body in motion, coined “Action Painting”. At the show, that gesture is handed over to everyone. Each drip lands on the last, and by the end the shoe will be a layered record of every visitor who passed through. The shoe becomes an image of the journey, with each person's mark part of a shared path.

Drawing, colouring and dripping are three very different ways to contribute to art, but there are also many more. The real work happens around the art; the stranger who asks why you chose that blue, the parent and child who realise it's the first thing they've made together, the person who admits they haven't picked up a brush since school and now can't stop. These conversations, ideas and meetings of minds are what a community artwork really produces, and they leave a lasting impression on everyone who takes part.

This is what an art show is at its best. It's a home for physical art to be viewed enjoyed and purchased, and it's also a home for the collective creativity of everyone who walks through. Creativity doesn't only live in what we make - it lives in our minds, our bodies, the conversations we have and the ideas we share. These three artworks are living proof that an art show is more than just a place to view and buy art; it's a space where collective experience creates connection and growth. Being able to purchase an artwork and take it home with you is a bonus that allows you to keep a piece of that enduring experience.

Art in the Park opens next week on Thursday 12 November, come and be a part of the creativity.

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