creative community planning
More than ever local community groups are being encouraged to take control of the future of their own public spaces, presenting ongoing opportunities to emphasise what is important to them about their place. The idea of local distinctiveness is an important one in this respect, the idea that each location has unique attributes, geographical, historical, social and cultural that deserve to be celebrated and created anew for future generations.
Art in public can be a key element of this process, in terms of engaging people in the process of planning and design for their neighbourhood, producing elements of its physical fabric, in architecture, public space, and infrastructure and in making space for rural culture, eg temporary projects and local festivals.
The following is a selection of information, resources and inspiration for developing projects by and for communities that respond to a specific context. For a discussion of the potential impact of the Localism Bill (essentially a devolvement of some elements of the planning process to community groups) on public art please see the conference page - Wide Open Space: Public art, Localism and rural regeneration
Neighbourhood
planning and design
Pride of Place Toolkit (2006)
The Pride of Place toolkit has been produced to help communities make the most of their local environment - information on turning ideas into action including a section on public art and rural crafts:
Other topics range from Trees & Woodlands to
Transport
and Wildlife see:
http://www.dorsetaonb.org.uk/get-involved/we-can-help/79-pride-of-place-toolkit.html
Art and the
Community:
What does an Artist bring? (2011)
“public art.. is a tool for community development and social inclusion. A well-managed public art project has the potential to bring communities together, allowing them to make decisions and contribute to the development of the artwork...”
Using national examples Maggie Bolt talks the benefits of developers and communities working together to make their more creative places. From the Wide Open Space workshop programme.
Consultation
Through Creativity
“The purpose of this toolkit is to provide non-arts professionals with a guide to how arts activity – in its many forms – can be used to reach different groups of people, and how the arts can act as a means of gathering people’s views and opinions on an amazing range of issues”. Published by Staffordshire County Council – available for purchase for £10.
Arts
in Rural Consultation Guide, Community
Council of Shropshire (2006)
The Arts in Rural Consultation (ARC) Project was developed to explore the effectiveness of using the arts as a way to secure more inclusive consultation in the Parish planning process. ARC was developed in discussion with workers at both the Countryside Agency and the Arts Council West Midlands.
The website for Common Ground, internationally recognised for playing a unique role in the arts and environmental fields, distinguished by the linking of nature with culture, focusing upon the positive investment people can make in their own localities, championing popular democratic involvement, and by inspiring celebration as a starting point for action to improve the quality of our everyday places. We offer ideas, information and inspiration through publications and projects such as the campaign for Local Distinctiveness.
Work has included the seminal project, New Milestones, a rural sculpture project in Dorset during the late 1980s
Space for rural
culture: artist led temporary projects
Exploratory Laboratory is a project by the Big Picture group of arts organisations in Dorset which is investigating the earth science and coastal processes revealed along the Jurassic Coast through the imaginative insight of visual artists. A series of artists' research residencies will lead to the creation of new temporary artworks developed in response to places and communities. These will be shown in buildings, galleries and the open air along the Dorset and East Devon coast path in 2012.
"Deveron Arts is based in Huntly a 4000 people strong market town in the north east of Scotland. For Deveron Arts the town is the venue: studio, gallery, and stage for a wide range of visual and performing arts. We invite artists from all over the world to live and work in our town to meet with local people and exchange ideas on issues of both local and global concern. For this we use found spaces all over the town and its surrounding area. The artists work from Deveron Arts' evolving town collection, which is placed in spaces around the town: at a local garage, an estate agent, a pig-farming co-op, the local library and museum, a hotel, the business centre."
AHA runs artist-led projects and residencies in lots of places across the UK, with a special remit for their base of Dartmoor, Devon. Their work is characterised by commissioning artists to make new work in rural settings, working closely with our local communities, with people and place, social networks and collaborative processes.
Allenheads Contemporary Arts provides opportunities for the development of new ideas and work. Established in 1994 by Alan Smith and Helen Ratcliffe it develops, commissions and presents innovative rural projects, disseminating the results to a wide audience, through web and broadcast projects, publications, symposia and exhibitions.
Grizdale Arts runs a thought-provoking programme of events, projects and residencies that develops the contemporary arts in new directions, away from the romantic and modern assumptions of culture, making artists more useful in this complex and multiple-cultural environment. Based in the English Lake District National Park, Grizedale Arts has neither studios nor exhibition space, but rather provides artists with the opportunity to realise projects using the social, cultural and economic networks of the area and beyond.
FRED - the annual “art invasion of Cumbria” was an initiative by local artists and the FOLD Gallery; artists from around the globe created new work in some of England's most spectacular landscapes in what has become Europe's largest annual festival of site-specific art from 2004 to 2008.
re:place is a project of Derbyshire Arts Development Group, a curated programme of site-specific contemporary visual arts commissions and installations across Derbyshire from 2008 - 2011. The project includes site-specific commissions, a non-commissioned programme of existing work and support for artist-led projects throughout the county