PASW Regional Newsletter: Spring 2008
Regional Network Meeting Report
‘How was it for you? The legacy for artists of PROJECT- engaging artists in the built environment’
Bristol, 11th December 2007
Introduction
Maggie Bolt welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked Spike Island for collaborating on the event with PASW.Maggie said that over the past eight years the meetings organised by PASW had predominantly been aimed at a mixed audience within the public art sector.The intention of this meeting had been to primarily address artists and the issues facing them.Now that there had been a reasonable period of time since the PROJECT scheme ended it felt timely to take a look at the impact the scheme had on artists’ practice. Maggie talked briefly about the scheme; its structure and its aspiration to bring artists in at the beginning of projects as creative thinkers, not as object makers. The independent evaluation of the scheme did point to the fact that it had shifted mind sets; especially those of developers involved; but also indicated that artists didn’t feel as positive about their experience as the other design professions.
Therefore, this meeting, Maggie concluded, was an opportunity to revisit the scheme from the artists’ perspective. Maggie then introduced Lucy Byatt who welcomed all to Spike Island saying that prior to working at Spike Island, she had worked with artists as part of design teams and that she had found the experience extremely rewarding. She went on to say that she welcomed the opportunity to debate this area of discussion today and wished everyone a good meeting.
Andrew Cross, Chair of the event, ran through housekeeping and the slight change in running order because of Tim Knowles not being able to join the meeting. He said that his job was to ensure good debate and he encouraged people to participate fully in the discussions that would follow the presentations. He then went on to introduce the first speaker, Patricia MacKinnon-Day.
Patricia MacKinnon-Day
Patricia started by talking about a couple of projects that she had worked on previously in order to put her practice into context. She described a project she had worked on at Cammell Laird in Liverpool where she was artist in residence; a project which she initiated with no preconceptions about what sort of work might result. She talked about the process she went through on the project, how she built confidences and relationships with the work force and established a steering committee to support her. The audience was shown images of the seven installation pieces she created which, she said, came from the sub text of the shipyard. Patricia then talked briefly about a scheme she had worked on in a disused textile warehouse in Nottingham before going on to describe her role in ‘Shared Vision’ Arbury Park, Cambridgeshire, which won a PROJECT award.
Trial Ground
Digital mock up for Arbury Park
Photo: Patricia MacKinnon-Day
Her job, she said, was to come up with an arts strategy for the site of Arbury Park. In order to inform the work Patricia researched the areas around the site, looking at the social, historical and political aspects of the community. She spent some time looking at the, unmentioned, travellers’ site that existed close to the area in question and exploring the area’s industries such as Unwins Seeds and Chivers Jams and Jellies. Patricia explained to the meeting some of the work that she had proposed for the site, including an idea that was rooted in the travellers and their language; this subsequently failed to gain approval. The other work proposed included a play area with the equipment based on jellies and their moulds, a large light piece for the centre of Arbury Park that was based on the seed trial beds, text works that included old recipes used by Chivers that would be placed onto large slabs in the play area and a glass library installed in one of the buildings that housed the archeological finds of the site.
Patricia finished off her presentation by saying that once the strategy had been completed she had been offered the opportunity to work with the artists who were then commissioned to produce the work but that she had decided not to pursue this. Commissions East, she felt, (who had been involved throughout) were more appropriately placed to undertake this role.
Discussion
Andrew thanked Patricia for her presentation and invited questions from the audience. A question was asked about the process by which she was appointed to work on Arbury Park and the expectations of her role. Both Patricia and then Maggie explained how Gallagher Estates had been one of a number of agencies and individuals who had been encouraged to look at PROJECT and that how they, as a company, were quite unusual in their approach and understanding of the role artists might play in developments. Further discussion took place about the level of control Patricia had over shaping her role within the scheme and how the evaluation had showed the importance of an artist having peer group support throughout the life of the project.
People were also keen to hear about the perceptions of workers at Cammell Laird to Patricia’s work in the shipyard. Patricia responded by saying that she felt the perceptions had shifted through her time there and that she believed that she had dispelled a few myths about artists and their work.
Patricia concluded by saying that she did feel that her work in Arbury Park had changed mind sets and had resulted in those involved thinking differently about the role of artists in such schemes.
David Cotterrell
Andrew then introduced the artist David Cotterrell who had worked with Sovereign Housing in Bristol.David said that, funded by PROJECT, he had been selected to work on this housing project in Barton Hill, Bristol.Prior to that he had been working in Ashford as part of a master planning process which he found a real learning process, as it enabled him to gain an understandingof the myriad of complexities relating to planning decisions. When he left after eighteen months he felt that he had been able to make art and culture an important element of the master plan for the area.Immediately after leaving the Ashford scheme he had gone to China which opened his mind to many aspects of planning especially the scale and how long term visions for a place appeared to follow a set series of almost international criteria, which took no account of nor permitted frank debate about benefit or value.
Indicative proposal for Barton Hill
Photo montage copyright David Cotterrell
Architects: Levitt Bernstein
David talked about his work at Barton Hill and how he had resisted giving the clients plans for as long as possible because of the value, as he saw it, of not being asked to deliver a product and the need for future plans to allow spaces to be responsive. David was brought on board to the Barton Hill project through Sovereign Housing who had a strong belief that the artist should be part of the design team. The proposed designs for the housing blocks responded to people wanting physical and visual security hence the design created areas around two large buildings which were fenced off. David was keen to create a commentary about how these two massive buildings related to the world around them. He was interested in the orientation of the buildings and therefore people’s perception of the spaces and of ownership.
Barton Hill
David described his experience of working on master classes at the Architectural Association and about how architects would talk about vision without any reference to the places and people who related to the site. He had become frustrated by the predominance of buildings over thinking about function within the master planning process. He therefore decided that he wouldn’t talk about structures but about art. As a result the themes he identified were Navigation (activity not CCTV), Heritage (people not buildings) and Perspective (traversing boundaries). He proposed a series of commissions that had the ability to fail built into them so that they could take risks. The series also included narrative commissions, temporary commissions and embedded work.
He went on to give us an insight into the initial project proposals:
a youth group project where participants would look at routes across the site and then embed text along chosen routes.
a shelter for teenagers to hang out in.
audio memories – ways of embedding memories within the landscape.
a flag community project.
surface tensions – exploring the ways in which people would chose to navigate the site and take ownership of materials.
- roof camouflage.
the big plug – an events space that could be flexible.
Discussion
Andrew thanked David for his presentation and called for questions.
The following discussion focused on:
The master plan versus the arts strategy.
The role of artists as catalysts.
- What an artist takes away from a commission if they haven’t directly authored a piece of work. David felt very strongly that his work was about reserving a place for artworks that might happen, not about him creating a theme park.
The role as curator or/and artist within projects.
- How the language of master planning has to be context specific.
- Shangi and how society manages not to break down under huge expectations for expansion.
- The humanity of Barton Hill – about how empowerment and consultation have to be genuine and sincere.
- The role of artists as makers of objects or as commentators.
- How planners are now seen as being uncreative, and how artists role must be to tear creativity out of planners.
David concluded by saying that what was critical about PROJECT was that it had created a legitimate space to question. The meeting then broke for lunch.
Tim Knowles
After the break the Chair commenced the afternoon by presenting Tim Knowles’ power point presentation. Tim was unable to be present because of a last minute filming opportunity with the BBC. Andrew talked about Tim’s practice being studio based and about marking journeys, time and space. Having worked as Lead Artist on the Cannons Marsh / Harbourside Development in Bristol, Tim had then been appointed to work with Plymouth City Council on their PROJECT funded scheme as part of the Waterfront Development. Working on the scheme had allowed Tim to get to know Plymouth, build relationships and ultimately being asked to contribute to the Supplementary Planning Document in order to ensure that funding was secured for public art within City schemes. Clearly Tim’s role had been as much arts consultant as artist. The powerpoint contained images of the existing public art in Plymouth with a critical commentary and specific areas of focus that Tim wished to highlight as potential sites. Tim, Andrew reported, saw his role as one of ensuring that Plymouth was not ‘landed’ with a number of new monumental permanent public art works. There followed a number of slides that indicated possible projects such as a ‘Dive in movie’ and the proposed artists residency on Drakes Island.
Matt Calderwood's temporary video piece, Bristol
Andrew concluded Tim’s presentation by saying that, with the strategy completed, Tim was keen to get back into the studio!
Plenary session
Having thanked Tim, in his absence, for his presentation, Andrew introduced the plenary session which involved some lively debate and discussion on a number of aspects relevant to the day’s meeting, including:
How surprisingly few artists there were in the audience given the focus of the meeting.
That if we stopped categorising practitioners and allowed creative thinking a free rein we might create interesting environments.
- How public art offers an artist a new experience away from the studio, within a new context.
That PROJECT did encourage artists to be more objective.
- That often artists become the human face of a project, representing a group of people operating behind closed doors.
- That consultation should be about challenging and should create a critical voice.
- How often artists are required to consult in very different ways.
- A debate about the title ‘artist’ versus ‘public artist’. By using the term public artist rather than artist there is a danger that we isolate practice away from the wider context of art.
- The danger of work contained in strategies being lost when individuals responsible for driving them forward leave and the argument for therefore setting up multi disciplinary teams that don’t rely on individuals but more on collective strategies.
- How PROJECT allowed the process to become the art, offering artists the opportunity to work with many disciplines and in a larger strategic process.
- The need for artists to retain some independence as an artist as well as being part of a multi disciplinary team.
- How the development and construction process needs to be opened up and the public allowed to view it.
- Social issues and climate change and how artists might respond to these issues in relation to the built environment.
- The need to learn more from our past experiences and to address the fact that there are too few people involved in creating our built environments.
- The important role that commissioners take between an artist and client and how they must be responsible and prepared to take risks.
Andrew thanked everyone for taking part in the plenary session and went onto sum up the day’s discussions. He said that it was interesting that artists made up a minority of the audience. He said that PROJECT had been principally about changing attitudes and in this it had been successful. It was easy, he said, to indicate the value added to a developer but much more difficult to quantify the added value to an artist. We still need to ask the question, what is needed to improve the built environment and to recognise that artists cannot solve all the problems. Andrew concluded by thanking the speakers and the audience and then passed over to Maggie to close the meeting.
Maggie thanked the speakers for their contributions, Lucy and Spike Island for hosting the event and Andrew for chairing the day and suggested that people watch out for details of the PROJECT publication that will be available in the Spring 2008.