Journal
It is in the planning
Tell me a bit about your background
I come from a small valley town, and although I had a good education and was encouraged at every level, it was still considered unusual for people to go to university. I think it wasn’t until about half way through my degree course in ceramics at Cardiff (now UWIC), that I realised that although I was good at it what I really wanted to do was history of art. As soon as I finished my ceramics degree I signed up to study the history and theory of art with the Open University.
Where did that take you?
In the final year of the degree, I decided that I wanted to write and work with collections in public museums and art galleries. I nagged the life out of Roger Cucksey, keeper of art at Newport Museum & Art Gallery, until he finally gave in and gave me an opportunity to volunteer for him looking after the permanent collection. I worked there as often as possible two to three days a week, to gain experience at the same time as finishing off the degree. I came out with a 2.1 from the Open University and by that time was working with Roger looking after the permanent collections and for the exhibitions officer on temporary collections and exhibitions programme. My work there involved the care, management and display of watercolours, oils and applied art collections as well as exhibition changeover, accession records and general collections management. In addition to the fine art collection, Newport has an extensive ceramics collection, so I was really in my element. Working with the temporary exhibitions meant that I got involved with contemporary art and began working with artists on a day-today basis who weren’t dead ¬– it is not unusual in collections management for a lot of it to be about the work of dead artists!
When did you get involved with the Cardiff Bay Arts Trust?
In late 1996, I got a call from Cardiff Bay Arts Trust to do a week’s consultancy work researching international artists and managing the selection process for a big project for what was then still the independent Trust, the company set up to deliver the public art strategy on behalf of Cardiff Bay Development Corporation. I ended up staying six months and within a year was employed as commissions officer and heavily in the commissions programme working closely with the private development sector, and the Welsh Office as it was then in pre-devolution Wales. In august 1998 I became director and took over responsibility for running the trust and its five staff and developing an exit strategy from the Corporation, freeing the charity from its Bay only remit and securing a client base to enable the Trust to continue and develop. The organisation is now responsible for work UK wide.
Was there good support for public art?
The development corporation put art into what they were doing from day one. Though much maligned the Corporation commissioned the Strategy for Public Art in Cardiff Bay from PACA (Public Art Commissioning Agency) and it became a model approach for its time. All this was years before I joined the arts trust and my time there was really at the end of the corporation which ended its days in March 2000. The CBDC chairman at the time Sir Geoffrey Inkin saw the value of public art and the strategy, is like gold dust to get your hands on now. Although practice has changed considerably since them, for some time the strategy remained a piece of work used by many to put together public art programmes.
How large is the area we’re talking about with Cardiff Bay?
Cardiff Bay extends from Cardiff East and the A48 to the M4 at Cardiff west and the regeneration area was 2,700acres of redundant dockland. It encompasses the whole of old Butetown and the edge of the city centre, Grangetown and Penarth Haven. Most people think only of the Mermaid Quay waterfront development. Very much a product of its time the Bay now reveals some lost opportunities and hindsight is of course the great teacher and it is important that lessons are learned from what happened here. That said there is good and bad everywhere and your can sees the same pattern throughout the UK. The public art that’s visible is a fraction of what is actually there – there’s much that is integrated into the buiding fabric and public realm, floorscapes and lighting and a lot of strategy work and process based projects obviously don’t have a physical presence. Most of the street furniture, grilles, fencing and that kind of thing were commissioned from artists very early on. There were about 140 completed works when I left, along with a further 18 strategies and about six projects that would never have a physical, sculptural outcome, such as process and media based projects such as Soil & Seawater with Melanie Jackson, Deep Navigation with Stefan Gec and Bay International with David Spero and Josef Koudelka.
How did you ensure the continuation of the trust when the development corporation was wound up?
When the corporation was closing, the idea was that the trust would either get on with it itself or close, too. By this time we were doing all sorts of things that were beyond the remit the development corporation set down – we were working in England and internationally – and I didn’t see why this organisation with so much potential should disappear. Aside from which we had a track record with the private sector worth holding on to. I began to work with the team on a strategy not to save the trust in its existing form, but to exit the corporation and continue independently. We achieved that – securing a tripartite funding arrangement with the Arts Council of Wales, the Welsh Development Agency and Cardiff City Council which together provided revenue resources attached through SLA’s to work directly carried out for each body, to the tune of £80k per annum. With running costs of almost £200k, we earned the rest through fees, and when I left, the portfolio was about £2.2million - quite large for a small charitable organisation. They now probably have triple that and work all over the UK.
Was there any pressure to commission Welsh artists?
No. When you hold a position where you might be seen as a provider of opportunities then I suppose people do see you in a certain way, but we commissioned whoever was the best artist for the job. Some were Welsh, some weren’t, it had to be the right artist for the right commission at the right time. Interestingly, a considerable proportion of artists who work in the public realm happen to be based in Wales. We commissioned David Nash to do a temporary piece that would mark the site of what would become the Wales Millennium Centre. David has lived and worked in Blaenau for years, he was born in Derby, but he’s considered to be a Welsh artist and holds his commitment to Wales as dear as I well deserved international reputation. Richard Harris who lives in mid-Wales with is partner Sally Matthews are major international who happen to be based in Wales. We need to be able to export and import the best and I think that’s what we always tried to do. So there was never any pressure to fill a quota. What was good was that we were able to attract people who really wanted to work in Wales, there are some well regarded European and American artists who were very excited about working here and plenty of clients outside Wales who wanted the best of the Welsh crop.
What was your involvement in setting up the Design Commission for Wales?
I was asked by the Institute of Welsh Affairs, which was putting together a working party to look at the potential for a design commission for Wales in the wake of devolution and the then new CABE. The working party was chaired by Geraint Talfan Davies of the Institute of Welsh Affairs, and included me, Patrick Hannay of Touchstone, Jonathan Adams architect of the Wales Millennium Centre, Professor John Punter (now the chair of the design review) and Bob Croydon of King Sturge and Co. We all sat down and helped formulate the case and what Wales might gain from its own commission. We knew what was happening with CABE in England was very important and were watching the situation very closely. Wales is an interesting country topographically and in the way its economic centres are concentrated in the south-east and the north. It’s like parts of England, but it’s not the same as England, nor is it the same as Scotland, so this was an opportunity to do something for and about Wales. That was really part of what became a wide consultation process which led to DCFW. I was tremendously lucky and feel very privileged to have been appointed as founding chief executive with the help of a great founding chair in Richard Parnaby.
I’m interested in why the name of the DCFW makes no mention specifically of architecture?
We wanted to make the commission inclusively built environment and not to set up architecture against planning, urban design or landscape architecture. I think there was also some sensitivity in the Assembly at the time about baggage words like ‘architecture’ and ‘art’ that come with a number of assumptions. We were careful to address the elitist thing, and to talk about about architecture and design as a cultural issue, but also to make it an everyday quality of life issue. We emphasise the everyday alongside the icons and we wanted it to work for the public, not just the professions. This is still an important issue and our new chair Alan Francis of Gaunt Francis is equally passionate about public awareness and engagement so we heading for another energetic phase.
When you’re the youngest and smallest commission you get to learn form the others and both CABE and A&D Scotland (then the Scottish Royal Fine Arts Commission) were enormously helpful, as were the RTPI, LI and various other professional bodies. It became clear to us that you can bang on about architecture, but if you haven’t started with a set of principals that feed a high quality public realm then you’re just talking about a objects in isolation. Context and end use and other factors are of huge importance. The criteria to which architecture can respond are the important elements. Urban design is important, as is working through planning. CABE took a different approach in the beginning, leading with clients and trying to turn it around from the client side. That is really important, but we think that the potential in planning to deliver much more than isolated buildings, no matter how good they are, is crucial and that is where we started.
I understand that you spend time with your husband’s family in the Netherlands – has that influenced your thinking about design and planning?
Spending time in the Netherlands has informed my knowledge about public space hugely. There’s a different approach to what artists can do in the built environment and the connections between art, architecture and the urban environmental professions are much stronger. You still have to go a long way to beat the Dutch and Germans at this kind of thing in many ways. I’ve been looking at lots of recent sustainable housing projects in the Netherlands – at Eindhoven and Egmond aan Zee, on the coast near Amsterdam and elsewhere, where houses that we would consider to be in the affordable bracket are being built with photovoltaics, sedum roofs, grey water systems and passive ventilation are standard. We are still not doing it here sadly. It’s so much better than the UK’s pathetic teenage approach to sustainability where we pretend we can’t do it and regulate in such a way as to work against and actually prevent more sustainable solutions.
Is the investment in Cardiff being matched in other parts of Wales?
The South East of Wales – Swansea, Cardiff and Newport – has traditionally been the heart of our export trade and our economic driver along with Wrexham in the north. It’s difficult for any capital city not to draw resources and attract development in the way that Cardiff is. But there is a danger in the way that Cardiff is developing and how it is dealing with housing need and expanding the city and how it is developing in a way that we think could benefit from more design expertise – we’re very open about the fact that there’s a lot in Cardiff that we’re concerned about. But I think it could do more to link with the valleys and the other cities. There are areas in those valleys that most people would consider to be untouched for 30 years and not benefiting form the economic investment that’s perceived to be reaching Cardiff. The Wales Spatial Plan will help and the new strategies dealing with areas as capital regions and making stronger links with the valleys.
Where do you find the greatest enthusiasm for regeneration?
Apart from the industry that has grown around the regeneration challenge in the UK I think TV programmes such as Restoration, Grand Designs and others have done a huge amount to popularise the issue and have empowered people to think about how they can change their immediate environment. But there’s still a huge way to go because the overriding public attitude in this area is still the NIMBY situation. I think that any participatory planning processes that we have, remain inadequate for the task. Enquiry by design and other programmes are useful initiatives, but much more needs to be done. Much of the design agenda is simply about change, overcoming the often understandable resistance and managing that change positively.
Often the greatest enthusiasm for regeneration is with the end users and one of the problems is that we don’t do enough with the end user – there is a greater appetite for design now than there has been among the planning professions for some time. In terms of understanding I think it’s stronger among the public than people would suggest - you should never underestimate the public. Lots of very ordinary members of the public are very well informed. That’s why it’s important that civic societies and informal groups are tapped into. All too often these people are not supported to play the crucial role of which they are capable.
And what do you make of high-profile design champions like Wayne Hemingway?
We could probably do with a few more Wayne Hemingway’s. If you have a credible champion who so far, I think has done very little harm then I think it’s a good thing. Many would argue that Wayne has done a lot more for housing design than a lot of housing designers – where there are any! He was great at the LI conference and his role as chair of Building for Life has been fruitful and he’s generally a force for good. If you’re talking about the cult of a semi-celebratory personalities being brought in, I don’t think I would whole-heartedly support that, but as it happens CABE’s decision to appoint Wayne to Building for Life was a brave one and what he’s contributed to the debate about where and how we live has been very important. It’s too easy to knock people like him who bother to get off there backsides and do something positive.
Is there a risk that creative design will be smothered by legislation?
Inclusivity and safety need not be a barrier to good design – if the environment is not accessible or safe then it’s not a well designed one. However the level of risk aversion in the public sector is far beyond anything I’ve ever encountered in the private sector and over regulation stifles good design and prevents economically viable, socially interactive places and spaces being delivered in too many cases.
Where do we take the push for a better public realm from here?
I’ve been thinking recently that we are all chasing our tails to justify the importance of good design or the economic return on investment in design – and we can do it – there is overwhelming evidence. And we see the impact of poor design on quality of life everywhere, everyday. But I’m coming around to thinking that its time we started asking our politicians – our elected representatives and the decision makers - why we don’t have any first class public space on a par with any other European cities, why we don’t have first-class housing and why the claims made for, for instance, white box retail led regeneration are spectacularly undeliverable and at best short-term fixes. There is very little robust assessment of the long-term impact. I’d like to see people calling on their politicians to be less risk averse and answer more questions about the decisions they make, particularly in claims about regeneration and the real long term gains. There that’ll get me in to trouble…again! Discuss this article
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