This article will cover the role of Public Art South West, what it is and what it does, then go on to talk about.
But before I continue I would like to plant this thought in your minds - it’s a quote by H.P. Roche on Marcel Duchamp
‘His finest work is his use of time’
Because for me it sums up the way I advocate working with artists, and that is the need to use their time – their ‘thinking space’ wisely.

But first some information about us. Public Art South West is a service of South West Arts which is one of the ten Regional Arts Boards in England. We receive all our revenue funding from them and look to external sources for additional project funding. Public Art South West was launched in 1996, six months after I came into the post of Director, formerly it had been the public art unit of South West Arts.

Public Art South West, ‘sits’ within the Trading Arm of South West Arts and is answerable to its Board. We are based in Exeter and have funding to be open four days a week. The staffing is minimal; a Director and part/time administrator. We cover the whole of the South West; Cornwall, Somerset, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire and what used to be know as Avon. In 2003 our boundary will be extended to include Wiltshire. So we cover a large and soon to be larger area!

Public Art South West aims to develop a wide range of opportunities for artists and craftspeople, to contribute in diverse and innovative ways to our built and natural environment and we take a leading role in formulating strategies for the development of public art practice in the Region.

We work primarily with the public sector via local authority planning departments and closely align public art with the disciplines of urban design, architecture and landscape architecture. We have strong links with the private sector via House builders, Developers etc.

We also work with health care trusts, environmental groups, tourist boards, housing associations, the educational sector and so on; the aim being with all these partners being to establish supportive and workable frameworks, in which artists can be commissioned.

We advise that every project should have the ‘user’ at the beginning of the process. By that we mean whatever the context of the project, the recipients (members of the public, employees, visitors and so on) should be involved in some way involved in the whole process. We are striving to integrate artists’ practice (and I’m using that term generically to cover crafts, photography, film, digital imaging etc) into the whole business of refurbishing existing spaces, and creating new ones in urban and rural contexts.

We are not project managers, we do not charge for our service and we are not in the job of ‘curating’. We exist to try and raise critical debate and practice regarding the type of work going on and methods of implementation. We also actively encourage the exchange of information.

We believe that the basic principles which need to be adopted by the commissioner in order to ‘construct’ a successful commission –are:

- Quality and scope of opportunity

- Collaborative working and consultation

- Impact and evaluation

We also stress the following to potential commissioners:

- There is no one accepted ‘type’ of public art or ‘public artist’

- Don’t fall into the trap of categorising the artist by the medium in which they currently work.

- Restrictive/prescriptive briefs or hesitant clients produce dull work.

- Unrealistic expectations only bring frustration and disappointment

- Mutual respect, professionalism and a shared vision must be integral to the project.


Our work can be divided into four main areas:

- Firstly, an Information resource on good practice. Our website www.publicartonline.org.uk is intended to be a resource for everyone who is involved in commissioning artists and has detailed case studies of projects around the world, advice and information and a debate section. We receive 40,000 visits per annum, 70% of which are international.

- Secondly, we organise training opportunities and seminars. We run a series of events aimed at artists/clients/ design professions etc and operate a regional public art network (open to everyone and anyone interested in public art), the purpose of which is to raise awareness and the level of debate and which meets twice a year..

- Thirdly, we offer advice and financial support for projects (from a limited budget needless to say!) which we believe to have a particular significance regionally and or nationally. These include consultants to work on public art strategies, public art officer posts within local authorities etc.

- Fourthly, our own initiatives, which include our own publications and joint ventures and the production of a bi-annual newsletter which goes out to over a thousand people and growing. We have close links with the design professions and I am currently Vice Chair of the Public Art Forum, the national organisations for public art .

We are a small organisation (With BIG IDEAS!!) , and need to work in partnership with others in order to develop and enhance our work. So working strategically on initiatives which will affect change; acting as ‘Agents for Change’, is a key area for us. A current example of this is the work we have instigated on an ‘Architecture and the Built Environment Strategy for the South West’. Our partners are both regional and national and comprise Government Office South West, The South West of England Regional Development Agency, English Heritage, the University of the West of England, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, the Royal Institute of British Architects, The Regional Assembly, The House Builders Federation, Sustainability South West, the Civic Trust, and the list continues to grow. The aim behind this is to fully integrate artists practice with those who influence and shape our environment.

But what do we mean by public art and why is it necessary for the public sector to support it in the first place?

The first thing to say is that public art is not an art form it’s a principle. A principle of improving the changing environment through the arts. By this I mean it’s a way of working, a way of contemporary art engaging with a very public and complex context.
Public art is a way of defining the social, political and geographical context of a place.
The artist should be brought in as a creative thinker. Contemporary practice addresses many issues: those of individuality, separation, exclusion, interaction, the environment, spatial and optical play, placement, line and colour (to name but a few). And these ideas, concepts and issues are all transferable skills, in the sense that they can be explored further and on a grander scale within the public realm

Public or social space is continually being eroded, and the implication of this, and how it is used and abused, presents a live and heated area for discussion. No public space is value free and the issue for many artists has been how to introduce the possibility of a personal reflective experience into a large scale site with major aspirations be they regional, national or international.
Many artists are engaging with issues around urbanisation and understand the links between place, usage and control. The elements which artists contribute to a space, those of quality, reflection, uniqueness and a humanising influence, are all answers to ‘why’. Another ‘why’ is the benefit brought by artists intervening in a space; contributing a surprise element, a questioning element, or shaking or jolting us out of our complacency, resulting in us looking at the world through new eyes.

Art is the way we convey our human frailties. How we express our feelings and reactions to the hard job of living. We need a way of realising thoughts and ideas, group and individual responses to the world we see around us. The public realm has to be a place where we find more than just physical solace (a seat or shelter) or retail therapy! It has to provide more, to provide nourishment for the senses, and this ‘nourishment’ can be subtle or imperceptible or a big bold statement, which challenges us, and our perception of the environment.

Public Art is truly a moving target. Artists will always find new and challenging ways of operation and will resist definition and categorisation. But to give a hook for it to hang on my definition of public art is:

A term given to the practice of involving artists in the conception, development and transformation of public space. It is specifically commissioned for a known site and its audience is the general public.

Public art involves collaboration, often between artists, architects, landscape architects, engineers, planners and other professionals and the public, as well as between the commissioners. When we talk of the public realm, this can also include space created by the World Wide Web, satellite and the airwaves. It can happen anywhere. It can last for a minute, a day, a year or a lifetime. It can be static, moving, be part of the infrastructure or a projection of light or sound, it’s anything and everything contemporary artists choose or need to create. But within all this of this it has one overriding element, it should be sensitive to its site and context. Public art has been through many manifestations, most people’s perception of it is either statues or the ‘bins, bollards and benches’ syndrome. But public art has moved off the plinth so to speak and firmly into the role of ‘place making’.

Temporary work can provide a test bed for a programme of work, that occupants may decide to take and run with, as part of the animation of their surroundings. It can help inform and influence long term planning and decision making and act as a very useful consultative tool. This way of working is the antithesis of ‘dumping’ or ‘parachuting’ work in and expecting it to hold it’s own.

Another perfectly legitimate use of the aesthetic judgement and vision of Artists, is to bring them in as ‘editors’. Utilising their skills to reduce unnecessary elements and developments in order to preserve the character of an area and to assist with its legibility. But skill without content produces a transitory pleasantness but nothing sustainable. Or to put it another way, if you like what an artist does, then you must like the way they think. As Marcel Duchamp said:

‘Art is a question of personality’

So why is it that we so rarely leave space for artists to ‘think’? Genuinely open briefs, genuine collaboration, genuine participation in design teams; it’s talked about frequently but infrequently happens. One answer could be that many of us still only think of artists in terms of what materials they use.

If this is the case then it would explain why for some it would seem logical to get right to the end of a building process, and then look for someone to make what you had always envisaged would be there :an interesting pair of gates for instance –well, the project had always intended to have gates in that specific spot, and how else would you mark the entrance or keep people in or out? Or paintings to brighten up the empty foyer. After all it had been obvious from the first site plans and drawings that they foyer would be a rather stark place - so what better way to ‘cheer’ it up than putting in a painting?

Now, whilst there is nothing wrong with functional well-crafted gates or paintings which adorn otherwise bare walls, it is certainly not the only way of working or necessarily the best. It can be much more interesting to hear the artist’s view/interpretation of a proposal or design. What their solutions would be in terms of creating an entrance, ambience or visually arresting or thought provoking place. Artists are amazing creative thinkers. That is what they do, that is their skill.

But invariably unrealistic aims, briefs and budgets, weak selection processes, lack of project management and the absence of a clear focus all militate against good work. Commissioner’s or commissioning groups responsible for public space can often treat the act of commissioning, as if it were for their own home or garden and these are all reasons as to why things go wrong. You can’t escape the fact that an unimaginative or mediocre client/project will invariably produce unimaginative or mediocre work.

The artist working in the public realm faces challenges that should not be underestimated. Many briefs are incredibly prescriptive; they specify the medium, subject matter and size of the proposed commission. So what’s left for the artist? If what’s wanted is so ‘done and dusted’, then why bring an artist in at all? Why not simply go and have it made? For many clients and commissioners, the interesting and exciting bit of commissioning is sitting around coming up with ideas and themes and being creative, and that’s to be welcomed it encourages discussion about a range of possibilities and options. But it is not constructive, if that ‘brainstorming’ is turned into an actual brief. Far better to bring an artist on board to take the discussion further, and who can then finalise that emerging brief with the commissioner or team.

If artists are able to make a contribution at the beginning of a process, if they have control over sites and application, then we all benefit from the resulting work which is thoughtful and insightful and is able to both comment on and contribute to our society.

But how do artists get involved? How do collaborations start, what is the scope? Well, the answer is rather mundane in one respect, by formulating strategies and policies, which create an appropriate environment in which this can happen. But in reality this can be a highly creative process in itself, and one which should not only include the administrators and elected members, but also artists. Policies should emphasis the research and development stage, and should also have a touch of the ‘Blue Skies’ about them as well. If people can imagine things, then they can happen. If a local authority is serious about changing the environment on a run down housing estate and tackling social exclusion though public art, then it can happen by motivating and supporting the community to team up with artists. Or if the authority wants its school refurbishment programme to include more than just the token mural at the end of the process, then it can happen by bringing an artist in to work with the design team. If a planning department wants to change the way in which they approach developments and want people to engage with new towns and villages, it can happen through a series of temporary interventions, which provoke discussion and debate. The list goes on. But none of this can happen overnight, it needs time, ‘thinking time’, resources, commitment by a consistent group of people and financial support. And it is precisely this way of working which PASW is trying to encourage. The scope is endless, the applications are endless, but only if the frameworks are in place to accommodate the flexibility needed, when working with artists.

So to finish, Public Art South West’s ethos is that one always has to continually question what one is doing and why. The risks of complacency are manifested all around us, in ill-conceived spaces and developments. We all need opportunities to step back from the detail, and look at the wider picture. A strong and creative commissioner and a strong and creative artist will produce work which can be a real contribution to and comment on our cultural legacy and that should be the aim, no matter what scale or budget available.


©MB/PASW.Exeter.Feb2002


For further information on Public Art South West visit www.publicartonline.org.uk or contact us at pasw@swa.co.uk