Norden Farm Centre for Arts
Summary
In 1997 five visual artists were commissioned by Norden Farm Centre for the Arts, Maidenhead, to work as part of a multi-disciplinary Design Team. In commissioning artworks, the client’s primary aim was to provide the Centre with a visual identity as a place of creativity, and to make visual the transformative nature of the arts. Public art agency Artpoint advised on the involvement of artists at the outset of the project and continued to work with the client throughout the extended project schedule until the completion of the commissions in September 2000.
With Julia Manheim as principal consulting artist, Hans Peter Kuhn, Liza Gough Daniels, Anna Heinrich and Leon Palmer developed proposals for new works to be integrated within the interior or exterior of the community arts centre, newly redesigned by Architecture for the Arts. Three preparatory workshops involving the Design Team and other key players were both team building and design development exercises. The project was complex and threw up a considerable number of lessons for successfully integrating the work of artists into construction projects and highlighted issues around aligning the commissions contracts with the main building contract.
