Art at the centre

Investing in communities
Live Projects

Isle of Wight

Art at the Centre on the Isle of Wight has focused on embedding creativity within plans for the Pan Urban Extension – a proposed development of 850 new homes to sit alongside 1,195 existing houses and flats in a former council estate on the outskirts of Newport.

Creative practice has been identified as a means of facilitating the level of integration between ‘old’ and ‘new’ Pan that will be required to form a vibrant, sustainable and united community. Art at the Centre has also been seen as an opportunity to capture Pan’s identity - to understand what it means to the people who live there - and to challenge external perceptions of the area.

Maidstone

Maidstone’s successful bid to the Art at the Centre scheme sought to address the impact of the new Fremlin Walk Shopping Centre on the rest of the town. Essentially, this concerned the need to develop a vibrant creative environment in which smaller, niche businesses could prosper, offering an alternative experience for residents and visitors and demonstrating the value of creative practice to the town’s future. This process has taken the form of a feasibility study for an ‘artists’ quarter’ in a demarcated area of streets and lanes running from Earl Street and the High Street.

Swale

Art at the Centre in Swale aimed to introduce creative processes into long-term plans for the regeneration of Queenborough and Rushenden – a small urban area on the Isle of Sheppey – and once an important seafaring district. Reflecting the breadth of the plans, the proposal aimed to impact upon ‘all aspects of regeneration and planning, including consultations and public art and design projects’.

Evaluation

Building upon the positive assessment of Art at the Centre Phase 1, the second phase of the scheme aimed to implement a more robust evaluative framework that would create a fuller record of its findings and inform future best practice in art and regeneration. Therefore, Arts Council England, South East commissioned General Public Agency – specialists in spatial, social and cultural analysis in the public realm – to coordinate the assimilation of qualitative and quantitative evidence of activity undertaken in each of the local authorities.

The qualitative work has been undertaken through a series of yearly interviews with sample groups from each area, whilst the quantitative analysis measured financial outlay and participation rates. In order to ensure that creativity was at the heart of this process, a practicing artist - Markus Vater - was also commissioned to record developments artistically.