Councils, Kids and Critiques of Art

Following on from what was discussed in a previous blog, it seems that, for a great many councils, to have any kind of merit in terms of cultural value, public art has to include member of the public either in it’s execution or its manufacture. I’ve found, from trawling the BBC website on public art, that the ‘buzz’ word for art departments and council representatives everywhere is ‘young people’. As with the Artangel projects, it seems that a ‘children are the future’ mentality is prevailing in some areas of public art. http://www.bbc.co.uk/stoke/content/articles/2008/09/02/statues_feature.shtml

This has raised questions for a number of people, including whether young people find a sculpture in a city centre representative of their culture or their achievements and if not, whether then they  become the scapegoat for a council spending spree when in actual fact, they have no stake (emotionally or creatively) in a piece of art of this kind. Is it relevant to them? Does it have to be?

There is a discussion on the merit of public art at:-http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/content/articles/2008/04/21/east_public_art_comments_s13_w8_feature.shtml Many of the arugments raised are about how public art is an eyesore and a waste of funding, but mostly the artistic and ‘high’ art value of public art is discussed. This brings us back to the age old question of beauty being in the eye of the beholder and the subjective attraction of art. As public art online ( http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/ )states:-

“Public art is not an art form, it’s simply a way of improving the changing environment through the arts.”

Owen

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