Jeni has been commissioned by Longhouse to provide a case study for the Longhouse website around her Developing Public Art investigation

Developing Public Art [?] is more a question than a statement that emerged from my work in architecture and community development projects.

Before I start this case study conversation, I would like you to know that I’m not going to talk about artists or architects or any other specific vocation or profession. Instead I’d like to talk about a group of uniquely talented, trained professionals who are interested in applying their skills to improving places and, in turn, the lives of people who live there. For this conversation I would like to call this group of people ‘development practitioners’.

As development practitioners, we are aware that there are a diverse range of tools and techniques that we can use when working creatively with communities of people. We may also be aware that there is much debate about the role of public art within this community development and ‘regeneration’ process.

It has been written that ‘transforming unloved and worn out spaces into places with identity has become one of the core functions of public art’.* It was this idea amongst many that lead me to question exactly what is the role of public art in community development? Is art a process of engaging with people in order to uncover their aspirations about their area? Or is it a creative product based on a person’s individual interpretation and intervention in space? Both are very powerful techniques for inspiring people and motivating change, but is there a way in which the process of making public art can be harnessed further and  ‘scaled up’ in order to influence future urban development practice and policy?

Throughout my work with the UK charity Architecture Sans Frontières, I have employed a wide range of techniques to engage with people in order to make my professional practice and subsequent interventions more relevant to people’s needs and aspirations. Many of these techniques come from the Participatory Learning Appraisal (PLA) toolkit. Used widely in the international development sector, PLA ‘describes a growing family of approaches and methods to enable local people to share, enhance and analyse their knowledge of life and conditions, to plan and to act.’  (Robert Chambers, 1992)

Read the Robert Chambers article pdf

For this Longhouse case study, I would like to share with you my recent involvement in the ‘Sense of Place’ (SoP)** programme in Birmingham. Commissioned by Urban Living***, SoP employed PLA techniques to engaged local people from the Soho and Dudley Road areas in a variety of creative art based activities in order to uncover their ambitions and aspirations for their neighbourhood. By working within existing neighbourhood networks and with Urban Living, this information was developed into a significant body of work which informed the ongoing regeneration for the Western Growth Corridor.

SoP was established on the principles of a ‘bottom-up’ approach to regeneration. It is my hope that by sharing the SoP experience with you, we can start to unravel our professional role, as development practitioners, in a community regeneration process. For my part, I see a roles being one of facilitator, that is to listen, encourage, probe, verify, expect the unexpected and not dominate the process so that the voices of community people can inform my creative work and the future practice and policies which affect their lives.

You can now download the Art and Community Engagement: Understanding Sense of Place booklet.  I invite you to take a look and join me in a conversation about this dynamic process of creating place and space – be it physical, social or political – for people.  For successful community development and relevant regeneration to occur, development practitioners need to start talking more with people in communities and with each other so that a new way of thinking and working is created – one that encourages debate, embraces difference and accepts collaboration as standard working practice – in order to bring about lasting and appropriate change.

Notes: * Quotation taken from: Douglas Public Works: if you can’t find it, give us a ring (Article Press, in association with ixia PA Ltd, 2006), ** The Sense of Place consortium includes community arts organisation Multistory, Architecture Sans Frontières-UK, Nabeel Hamdi, 00: Architecture and Digital Native Academy (DNA), *** Birmingham and Sandwell Housing Renewal Pathfinder

We are surrounded by countless messages every day of our lives. Increasingly the mainstream marketing machines are taking on aspirational language. Ever more invasive ways are found to insert these phrases into our consciousness, from public TV screens, billboards and product promotions to unwanted texts, spam e-mails and cold calls using pre-recorded messages.

A surprisingly low-tech phenomenon we are seeing more of is a modern twist on the Victorian sandwich board man; the ‘placard person’. Exploiting the right to roam in public spaces carrying something with writing on it, they both infiltrate and contribute to the corporate dominated arena with a low-tech, but effective, form of communication.

Their demeanour is usually that of a minimum wage-slave, acting as a ‘human base for a sign’. They are not interested in engaging on a personal basis. Their messages are bringing people’s attention to something, often with an arrow pointing them in the desired direction or colour coded to tie into a high street brand. They can usually be found slumped against a handy bollard using their human assets to prop up a simple, invitational phrase.

We set out to join in, to bring some alternative influences to the mix and to find out what’s involved in claiming some high street real estate. The proposal was for half a dozen operatives to spend several hours languishing at strategic junctions in a retail centre. Their aim was to blend into the landscape and become unnoticed ‘sign supporters’. The messages would subliminally become part of the ambience of the city, esoteric additions to the data soup swilling around our heads.

Found texts were used that subtly questioned meaning, provoked fun or offered poetic moments. The statements all pre-existed in some form and came from public information announcements, corporate hoardings and religious notices. Some were quotes from artists or snippets taken from books, others featured excerpts from an election campaign or a remembered line from an advert. We gave them a new physical context and dressed them in the aesthetic of the retail environment. The words were deliberately dislocated from their origins and then offered up at face value for the casual observer to inadvertently take away and digest at leisure.

It proved to be interesting trying to find out what regulations and permissions might be required and, after a correspondence with elusive officials, it transpired that anyone is free to hoist their own placard. We found out that some parts of today’s cities which appear to be public space are in fact privately owned and that in their jurisdiction ‘the cultural life of the street’ is very much at the discretion of the proprietor. We could find no special regulations that control placard bearers, although local authorities may have their own by-laws which will vary from place to place. Common sense proved to be the best guide as to what is legally acceptable and it seemed to boil down to avoiding tripping people up or blatantly offending them.

Responses ranged from the oblivious, to funny looks, to occasional positive comments. While the idea was to blend into the urban landscape, it was inevitable that some members of the public wanted to engage. Most were curious as to what it was all about and were happy with a simple explanation. The only hitch was with an official who demanded to know who had given us permission to display the placards. As an unregulated activity it is not possible to obtain permission – although it took a while to establish that we both knew this to be the case – an episode that would have been familiar to our good friend, Joseph K. The other moment of uncertainty was when a conventional placard holder, representing a high street brand, turned up to find we had already occupied his regular pitch.

These initial placards have now been joined by other designs and it is intended that they make appearances on high streets in towns and cities up and down the country. There are unlimited messages that can be conveyed in the corporate vernacular in any busy shopping centre where the contemporary placard bearer can be found.

If you are lucky you may catch one in its natural habitat; if not you will have to make do with the documentation photographs. These spawned another set of questions about how the act of photography affected people’s perception of the intervention (by contaminating the experience) and whether the primary significance was in the physical intervention, or in the record of it.

Research included observing professional placard bearers to pick up some reference points on their modus operandi: find a high profile location close to the venue you are promoting; choose an intersection where there is maximum footfall from several directions; claim a niche where you can lean against something and fade into the background; drift into a Zen-like state or distract yourself with your ‘phone and let the world pass you by.

One of the themes we’ve been developing concerns individual expression in ‘corporatized’ public space. A matter that came into focus was whether the operatives who held our placards sympathised with the messages they conveyed. We sided with authenticity on this point – and volunteers are always required to hold whatever placard they are issued with. However, should you wish to communicate a message of your own choice, in this back to basics manner, you can find a step-by-step guide at www.redhawklogistica.com

Thanks to David Rowan (photography), Mandeep Malhi (Design) and to our placard bearers.

My original intention was to deepen my understanding of people, place and identity beyond the halted public art plan at Springfield Brewery. Using this as a platform, my aim was to further my understanding of the concept of ‘taskscape’ – or an array of related tasks (just as landscape is an array of related features) at the site; past and present. This, I felt, would help me understand how places can move from a past period of industrial and residential activity to what the area is becoming now and how, as an artist, I could place myself within that.

This had a lot to do with the sense of ‘pride’ once associated with the Brewery as a beacon in the area, both physically and psychologically.

I also aimed to explore how I could place myself in that space of change, or how I could create a space similar to what Rosalind Deutche suggests “….. space, in the sense of ‘something that has been made room for’ can of course be a city, building or park, but it can also be, say, a category, a theory, an identity, a discipline, a work of art or a conference”. Initially I hoped I could feed into the possible future of the Brewery and immediate area and build relationships with local newspapers to begin to build that space.

This project has evolved as I have felt my way through it. I underestimated many things; struggling with a mechanism with which to engage with the local community and receiving little response with the newspaper contact I had. However, I maintained research into the area, its industrial history and how people used to activate those spaces, and this began to encompass a wider area, encompassing the canal corridor. I was also interested in what was being lost physically as well as psychologically or how the language of Wolverhampton is changing.

This study also made me aware of the other major developments in the area, such as the Interchange development encompassing the train and bus station and new student accommodation buildings. This was something that I felt I needed to be involved in so the research took a new direction.

I began to contact the Development Control department at the council, amongst other parties, to understand how these developments were progressing and discover the opportunities for artists to be involved. It was simply about starting conversations and copying others into them, such as: Wolverhampton Development Company, the previous writer for the percent for art policy, council landscape architects and project managers.

I created a blog due to the lack of contact at the newspaper to begin to bring my thoughts, investigations and meetings (with such people as a council archaeologist and neighbourhood co-ordinator) together as a reference point. Suddenly this became a possible way of whispering a demonstration of my thinking to those parties involved in these developments. I also began to see that the ideas and suggestions I was putting forward to others was the kind of space (albeit a very small embryonic one) that Rosalind Deutche was talking about, as this was both creating a ‘space’ and intervening or ‘disturbing’ things, as Nabeel Hamdi would describe it.

My emails and suggestions have been met with agreement but of course there is always difficulty in finding a way forward. Making things happen or play out differently so that artists are involved at an early stage in development in Wolverhampton is problematic as some developments and designs are in latter stages. I am, though, enthused by the sentiments of planners for the future.

I realised I was triangulating three sources: planning (development) procedures; research into past identity / taskscape; and research into present identity / taskscape.

Contact and relationships with the community have been slow; it has taken a while to design appropriate resources and deploy them and find an acceptable approach to begin to build a relationship. I’ve recently had conversations with young people in the area and am receiving news that others are interested in contributing.

This journey is fulfilling the original intentions but in a way I never expected it to.

I’ve realised that, throughout the action research, what I’ve actually been doing is understanding ‘development’ and what this means and could mean. I want to bring those intentional changes or what we call development into the same arena as those unintentional ones – or the everyday intelligence that is abundant in the area. I think it is here where perhaps artist involvement can move backwards to move forward, connecting and unifying things to aid in joining up approaches and contributions.

I believe in these uncertain times that perhaps Wolverhampton has the opportunity to do this, where it can begin to consciously strengthen those existing links of neighbourhoods, culture, art and regeneration in to a tighter array of related tasks that constitute the term ‘development’. Perhaps then we can escape those pitfalls and disappointments where all these working parts simply don’t add up to much. Where ‘new’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘change’. Where objects in the landscape become doomed until they enter the acceptance of apathy or a fondness of familiarity. If public art is outside of things as it currently is in Wolverhampton, it too, fails.

My conclusion is to create a more formalised space, beginning with a web space in which to put these thoughts, attitudes and practices together. In effect, developing onwards from the blog into something more sophisticated and interactive. One of the main challenges is to overcome differences in language – between planners, architects, artists and community residents and so on. However, I don’t believe it is about speaking in another’s language; just simply understanding, finding common ground and utilising these tensions. This interactive web site can be accessed by all parties, where new build schemes interweave with community activities, archaeology and other events. What is important here is that this space is boundless; other cultural activities can operate within this and be connected to it. Events such as ‘Guerrilla Lighting’ can fit into this sphere to successfully question the urban environment whilst being outside of the dominant process of development and contributing to it in the future. This type of activity is something that all parties can be involved in and educated by, merging those language barriers and disturbing things.

In this space there can be an acceptance of complexity and connection that can benefit the city’s knowledge of itself and provoke further investment through an input and understanding of place, change and identity. Perhaps Longhouse can come into this by putting artists in this arena to act as a catalyst in building a foundation of shared knowledge and activity that disturbs the current dominant mode of thinking of the term ‘development’.

In effect, this is simply reinterpreting the ethos of the Springfield Brewery which developed its own space where a complex fabric of work, everyday life, social activities and the value of the individual helped maintain that particular sense of ‘pride’ and identity in Wolverhampton.

Evaluation

This project has had a great deal of impact on my practice. It has allowed me the time to put a lot into context regarding the realities of development and art and is an initial start in how to tackle these issues. I feel this has helped me begin to elevate my thinking as an artist and how I would perhaps like to be involved in future development issues. I am beginning to understand fully why artists are needed at all levels of development and how there is a considerable amount of acts of generosity involved to make changes from all sides. Being able to make mistakes, to be able to take the time to study things within the wider grain of theoretical texts and to simply fire questions at individuals at all levels has helped me realise how, in future, to aim at smaller changes that may be catalysts in the larger scheme of things.

One of the most important lessons I feel that I have learned is not to aim for engagement mechanisms that display ingenuity in one hit – that this may miss the point and be insular. It is important to build relationships and this may not happen overnight. Hopefully this project will have another phase – that it can be seen as continued involvement that will move on to something else.

I feel that it has been an opportunity to place myself in this situation without a pre-organised project being in place – and therefore I may have opened up more avenues with regard to my practice. I probably wouldn’t have kept pushing for answers and the information necessary or been able to have the time to be able to see how to make connections, where gaps are. What I liked about undertaking this is the fact that there was no pressure to understand something immediately, a case of ‘I don’t understand where to go next – but I will understand’. I had time to analyse and study responses and decide how to be more pragmatic in my replies. I intend to address further the tendency to think too much before ‘doing’ and to embrace serendipity as something that adds to process. I am sure that my methodologies and the spaces in which I will work have changed considerably for the better because of this.

I hope I will find the means for this to hold some momentum in Wolverhampton as I feel now it’s only beginning to come together. Again small changes or suggestions made to others have been readily accepted, so I feel I have made a start, though I originally expected to achieve more by this time. I have to accept that it is difficult to change or ‘join up’ thinking and that it takes patience.

I valued meetings with Longhouse to openly reflect on the project. This helped me to see what was important and how my thinking could change direction accordingly.