. . . trails & the coast

 

benefits

Through their creative response to a specific site, artists have the ability to make people stop, reinterpret and reassess their relationship with the environment and their place within it.

More tangibly artists can help record natural and cultural heritage of a specific place at a specific point in time. They can record disappearing voices, occupations and pastimes before they vanish and help to celebrate a shared heritage and identity.

Artists, keen to develop their own range of skills, help to revive traditional skills like coppicing and withy weaving. Few projects undertaken with communities along the route of a trail conclude without some skills, old or new, having been passed on.

The sense of ownership a community can feel having participated in the process of creating something unique and distinctive goes some way to ensuring they are valued and maintained.

 

case study: Tide and Time

Running for 630 miles from Minehead in Somerset to Poole Harbour in Dorset, the South West Coast Path is the longest National Trail in the country. As such it provided a natural focus for the Tide and Time project that aimed to explore the region’s complex and constantly changing relationship with the sea.

A total of 16 artists worked with 1,000 people, including groups of school children, prisoners, youth club members, young offenders, care home residents and people with learning disabilities, in eight coastal communities in four counties over a period of two years.

As a taster of the numerous projects run:

In Dorset, Island Voices celebrated the distinctive islands of Portland and Purbeck through newly commissioned songs.

Life’s a Beach in Minehead, Somerset, explored young peoples’ experiences of living in this seaside town through dance.

School children explored their relationship with the sea and the tide in a short film, Children of the Tide in Shaldon in Devon. 

And in Cornwall links were created with Newlyn’s Fish Festival through a newly commissioned dance piece, Dancing with Deckchairs.

One of the most significant outcomes of the project was the partnership forged with the South West Coast Path Team and the South West Coast Path Association. This gave rise to two new projects.

The first was a series of Performances on the Path, one in each county, featuring storytelling, poetry, theatre and song. The second, Zoom at Noon, was made by two walkers, who walked the entire 630 miles, stopping each day at noon to take a photograph of wherever they happened to be. The resulting images give a fascinating view of the path’s diverse landscapes and communities.

This relationship arose out of a recognition of the mutual benefits that could be gained through an arts and non-arts agency working together. Most importantly the potential to combine resources to help raise profile and promote shared aims via websites, databases and other marketing activity.

 

 

public art

According to Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, “the term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that has been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the public domain, usually outside and accessible to all.” A much broader definition, that includes performance and the spoken word as well as the visual arts, than the popular idea of public art as “monuments and sculpture”.

Whatever the definition there has been a significant shift in the way agencies like Public Art South West (PASW) promote the concept of art within the public realm. That shift has been fuelled by the regeneration agenda where, typically, redundant industrial urban areas were transformed into mixed developments complemented by cultural facilities (restaurants and bars) and good quality public spaces (parks and squares).

Regeneration is no longer confined to urban areas, however, and as rural regeneration has come to the forefront so too have ideas about public art in the landscape. Increasingly public artists are working with agencies like English Heritage and are engaged not to create sculpture trails or one-off interventions but as part of a team to look at the whole context and design quality of publicly accessible sites.

benefits

Good quality public space attracts people not only because it looks and feels good but also because it works well. As part of a regeneration project this can help attract new businesses and investment into an area.

 

case study: Living Legends - the Tintagel Regeneration Scheme

The Tintagel Regeneration Scheme in the Cornwall AONB was developed in response to the declining character and economy of the village. It identified areas for redevelopment and the need for creative input from the start of the scheme.

Lead artist Michael Fairfax’s brief was to develop a coherent design for a new village square, nature area and circular trail. His final design connects with features found in the castle and its immediate locality. Slate paving echoes the distinctive local slate hedges and inlaid details use the ancient game of Nine Man Morris, discovered carved on one of the castle walls.

Michael actively sought out skills of local craftspeople and artists to realise his design, including a furniture and boat builder, and worked with local groups and
the local school.

A ceremony to officially open the new square became a celebration of the local community, and the final evaluation for the project credits the artists for the invaluable contribution they made to the design team and the whole process.