What is public art?

Public art aims to integrate the skill, vision and creative abilities of artists into spaces and buildings, and create a unique, stimulating and high-quality environment. Working with artists offers an opportunity to go beyond the purely functional and create places that reflect the life, identity and aspirations of a particular place or community. Commissioning art can explore heritage or celebrate the future, highlight specific themes or be conceptual. It can be permanent or temporary, internal or external, integral or free standing, monumental or domestic, large or small scale, design or ornament.

Permanent commissions can be part of the external fabric of a place - the paving, hard and soft landscaping, fencing, brickwork, glasswork, gates, grilles, windows, lighting, seating, children’s play equipment, carved letter forms, signage and plaques. Or it can be incorporated into the interior of a building - tapestries, carpets, weaving, textiles, hangings, banners, mobiles, ceramics, tiling, lighting and flooring. It can deploy a variety of techniques and media - sculpture, photography, print-making, painting, film, performance, sound and music. It can be socially-engaged and culminate in a public event or intervention - a festival, celebration, exhibition, re-enactment or performance. Public art can be decorative, humorous, beautiful, subtle or contentious. Whatever form it takes, to be successful public art should be site-specific and relate to its context.