Public Art Research : Tim Hall
Tim Hall is a lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Gloucestershire, based in Cheltenham. He has been researching the relationship between public art and regeneration since the early 1990s.
Initially this developed out of PhD research conducted in the School of Geography at the University of Birmingham into the ways that former industrial cities were using projects of urban regeneration to transform or enhance their images. The main site of this research was the International Convention Centre Birmingham which opened in 1991 and included an extensive programme of public art. This included works by David Pattern, Tom Lomax and Raymond Mason all of which referenced Birmingham 's industrial past. The research explored the ways in which the public art programme promoted the aspirations of the city to both internal and external audiences. This interest subsequently developed and led to a number of publications exploring the ways that public art implanted images of industry into what were, otherwise, post-industrial landscapes. This research employed deconstructive and interpretive methods derived from cultural geography.
Subsequent research explored the claims made by public art and community art more generally within the realm of urban regeneration.
Current research is concerned with evaluating the social impacts of public art. This work has included reviews of arts evaluation policy and practice. Forthcoming work will include a nationwide survey of evaluation practice in community arts projects and the study of the social impacts of public art in two Scottish towns, Prestonpans and Craigmillar in East Lothian.
Publications include:
Hall, T. (forthcoming) Urban Geography, London : Routledge (Third Edition)
Miles, M., Hall, T. and Borden, I. (2003) The City Cultures Reader, London : Routledge (second edition)
Hall, T. (2001) Urban Geography, London : Routledge (Second Edition)
Hall, T. and Hubbard, P. (1998) The Entrepreneurial City: Geographies of Politics, Regime and Representation, London : John Wiley and Sons
Robertson, I. and Hall, T. (forthcoming) 'Memory, Identity and the Memorialisation of Conflict in the Scottish Highlands' in Whelan, Y. and Moore, N. (eds) Heritage, Memory and the Politics of Space, New Perspectives on the Cultural Landscape, London: Ashgate Press
Hall, T. (2004) 'Public art, civic identity and the new Birmingham ' in Kennedy. W. G. (ed) Remaking Birmingham: The Visual Culture of Urban Regeneration London : Spon
Hall, T. (2004) 'Art and urban regeneration' in Pinder, D. et al. (eds) Practicising Cultural Geography, London : Arnold
Hall, T. and Robertson, I. (2001) 'Public art and urban regeneration: advocacy, claims and critical debates' Landscape Research, Vol. 26, No. 1: 5 - 26
