Traditionally, when the going gets tough – creativity gets dumped! Whenever expenditure gets tight, quality of design and materials, along with landscaping and public art, have frequently been conveniently lost as costly extras. But it’s actually a time to plan, step back and re-think how we embed cultural involvement in place and apply ‘total place’ thinking within all forms of development.
Such thinking needs to embrace public space, the environment and sustainability issues whilst still ensuring that places and spaces are welcoming and encourage users to interact and engage with each other and their environment; and to prepare for the future. Hard times encourage us, through necessity, to eschew pressure to seek new and shiny goods and experiences, and to step off the never ending retail treadmill and re-connect with home made, local and non-retail pleasures. People start to look for more meaning; we cease being just customers and remember we are also citizens.
Contemporary craft and innovative community engagement projects are well placed to celebrate this innovative thinking, and should also be part of the place makers’ skillset.
Arts Council England Chief Executive Alan Davey has recently spoken out about the need for government to maintain levels of investment in the arts. Davey has challenged those who argue that subsidising the arts does not offer value for money, and suggests that every £1 of public money invested in the arts levers in a further £2 from elsewhere, creates jobs and contributes significantly to the fastest growing sector of our national economy.
‘Culture is important for any government which places quality of life for its citizens at the heart of its agenda,’ he says. ‘What we do affects the kind of country we are. The role of artists is to give expression and meaning to the world around us, and the role of funders is to support them in what they do best - to challenge, to thrill, to excite and to inspire us; to produce the marvellous and the beautiful.’
In line with such thinking, a new emphasis on the importance of sustaining cultural activity and working creatively to keep communities together has re-emerged in the US through Obama’s presidency. Our Government is also attempting to flag up the importance of retaining quality (although regrettably a correlation with budgets is not, as yet, noticeable).
Learning from past mistakes
Corporate memories are short at the best of times so it is always important to refer to best practice, other projects and case studies and learn from past ‘mistakes’. We must study different practices and frameworks in order to be able to make the case for retaining mixed creative teams which involve artists.
The website www.publicartonline.org.uk is a unique resource, with a huge range of case studies, strategies and policies, practical advice and information on current practice and practitioners. It is important to have the right skillset prevalent in any delivery team, and there are many experienced public art consultants who can bring ideas, artists and funding strategies to bear on projects, often working jointly with lead artists.
In Swindon just such a project is taking shape. The local authority is leading on several projects that have come to the fore in order to fill the gap left by big development slowing down. The creativity intrinsic to, and in some cases leading, these projects has come about partly because artist Natalie Woolf and public art consultant Diana Hatton have been welcomed by the team leading regeneration in the area.
Plans for the re-design and re-furbishment of the central network of streets will include innovative and technically challenging pavement design by Natalie Woolf. The original design was for pavers that were responsive to weather but the emphasis now majors on lighting elements: The stone cutting in the pavers will store water and represent the difficulty of water drainage in an urban setting. The lighting element has been linked to the weather station so that patterns of changing colour speed and frequency and movement across the site are representative of the nature that has been lost. Implementation of this is currently underway. This scheme demonstrates how a commitment to quality public realm can also bring usage in the form of environmental awareness and also beauty in terms of colour and texture.
Folkstone has been bucking the trend by placing its faith in a major arts-led programme managed by the Arts and Regeneration Charity ‘Creative Foundation’. Like many seaside towns around the country, Folkestone has been in decline since the middle of the 20th century. The Foundation wanted an innovative answer to this by ensuring that the urban regeneration did not only focus on economic development but also on creating a place where people wanted to live and work – and for them, cultural regeneration was a driver for change. The much admired Folkestone Triennial forms a major component of this strategy and other elements of the regeneration programme include a master plan for the redevelopment of the harbour and seafront, a new £38m city academy specialising in the arts, a new university campus with a strong focus on arts courses, a new performing arts centre and a Creative Quarter with more than 100 artists already established in a growing number of refurbished studio, living and retail spaces.
And in Londonderry the authority has placed arts and culture at the centre of its regeneration plans by supporting the Foyle Public Art Project. The selected proposal by Vong Phoaphanit and Claire Obussier entitled ‘Mute Meadow’ touches on the issues of identity, history and the riverscape on which the city stands. It connects Derry to the range of European cities which have rich heritages a have also developed public art projects as a way of negotiating the future. This project is part of a process of regeneration and re- thinking the city’s identity through arts initiatives and is viewed as a major contribution to the total process. The Arts Minister acknowledges that the work will place arts and culture and the centre of Londonderry’s regeneration and will encourage tourism and investment.
The range and diversity of public art practice in the UK over the past 10-15 years has built up a body of understanding that the arts are not only an essential part of everyday life but also provide stimuli and contexts for all our activities. It is also now clear that they can be central to economic recovery as well. But this can’t happen in a vacuum. As with everything, good planning, research and bringing on board the right expertise helps ensure a successful outcome. Remember it is even more important in times of recession to not just meet expectations but to exceed them. It is only by ensuring that creativity imbues the regeneration process can this be achieved.
Maggie Bolt is the Director of Public Art South West
