INTERЯOGATION: WALSALL explores the impact that one artist can make in one place, in one day.

INTERЯOGATION: WALSALL is a series of four day-long missions which took place at The New Art Gallery Walsall throughout September 2009. Longhouse and lead artist ,Anna Francis, devised the programme to look at how artists can act quickly and responsively in the public realm to investigate how the public use the gallery and the space outside it. The project aimed to investigate different techniques used by artists to interrogate the public space surrounding the New Art Gallery looking at the impact of short, sharp interventions within the public realm.

Over four weeks over 20 artists from across the UK worked as secret agents in an Interrogation room based at the gallery (aka as Artist studio) in order to undertake their secret missions. The four missions looked at four different ways in which artists can engage with the public realm and the public, animating the space outside the gallery. One mission took place on one day over a period of four weeks. The four missions were:

• Interrogation: Action Research – Investigating the area and observing the public realm through ‘doing’
• Interrogation: Consultation – Different techniques to engage and consult with the community about their city and the artists’ role (and communities’ role) with changes that are taking place
• Interrogation: Collaboration – How artists can work together and with different professionals to create activities and change
• Interrogation: Intervention – What does public art look like? Different types of interventions in the public realm explored and put into practice

Interrogation: Walsall came to an end on Friday 2 October with the final event of the series, Interrogation: Symposium. This event brought together the artists from the previous missions as well as other guests to take part in an event which looked at the work and findings from each of the missions. The symposium also featured a number of guest speakers to talk about their practice under one of the four missions. The guest speakers at the event were:

Gary Anderson from The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home who talked about Action Research with regards to his activist practice as a family.

The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home is run out of a council property bedroom in Everton, Liverpool and is a space for dissenting the Capitalism of Culture.

Jeni Burnell from Architecture Sans Frontieres-UK (ASF-UK) provided case studies of effective and innovative consultation methods used by ASF.

Architecture Sans Frontières-UK (ASF-UK) is a UK registered charity, concerned with education and training in the development sector.

Sophie Hope talked about her collaborative practice within the public realm.

Sophie Hope’s work inspects uncertain relationships between art and society. Sophie also writes, teaches and facilitates workshops, dealing with issues of public art, the politics of socially engaged art and curating as critical practice.

Rich White will be talking about his Intervention works in buildings and places in cities.

Rich White’s work involves physically altering (or appearing to alter) existing architecture in public and exhibition spaces. These architectural interventions are developed specifically for their location through research and site visits; responding to the architecture, history and current happenings in the area.

The symposium ended with a panel discussion exploring questions such as: What is the artist’s role in the post-industrial world? How can artists and public realm practitioners intervene in the regeneration of post-industrial cities and towns? And what are the issues for practitioners and the public?

To find out more information about Interrogation: Walsall and the artists’ missions please visit the project blog.