Encounters and interactions: audience engagement with the NewcastleGateshead public art collection
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The document discusses audience engagement with the public art collection in NewcastleGateshead, presenting research aims to examine the collection, investigate audience interaction, and explore public art as an interpretive framework. It highlights the importance of public art in enhancing community identity and civic pride, while noting that little is known about the specific audiences for such artworks. The research aims to gather evidence of audience engagement through various methods, emphasizing the multifaceted nature of engagement with public art.
Encounters and interactions: audience engagement with the NewcastleGateshead public art collection
- 1. Encounters and interactions: audience engagement with the NewcastleGateshead public art collection. Rebecca Farley ICCHS Postgraduate Research Conference 11 June 2012
- 2. Give and Take 2004 River God 1995 Swirle Pavilion 1998 Everchanging Grainger Town Map 2005 2003 Gateshead Garden Festival 1990 Blacksmiths Needle Tyne Line of Text Flow Escapology 1996 2005 2008 Rolling Moon 1990 Angel of the North Nocturne Four Questions 1999 2006 2009 Pillar Man 2004 Spheres Wor Jackie Rudder Tributary Community in Motion 1990 1991 1996 2005 2007 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
- 3. My research question How do audiences encounter and engage with public artworks in NewcastleGateshead and to what extent might this activity be framed as an interaction with a contemporary public art ‘collection’?
- 4. Three research aims: 1. To examine and describe the City’s contemporary public art ‘collection’. 2. To investigate the character of audience engagement with these artworks. 3. To explore the potential of a ‘public art collection’ as an interpretive framework.
- 7. “Public art can make a major contribution to giving a place character and identity, bringing people into and through places, generating civic pride in a neighbourhood and improving its image.” British Urban Regeneration Association
- 8. “Public Art can play an important role in providing an attractive, high quality environment and in helping to build a new community. Public Art can provide a focal point, enhanced sense of place and delight for local residents.” Creativity in the Coalfields, English Partnerships, 2005
- 9. The public art audience? “Big sculptures in public spaces are put there, among other reasons, on the assumption that the people who pass through those spaces will see the sculpture and in some way be affected by it….Yet the consistent desire to define public art never – but never – goes to specific audiences and asks them anything about that art..” Massey, D., Rose, G. (2003) Personal Views: Public Art Research Project, The Open University.
- 10. The ‘aesthetic’ encounter? "If we are to understand the interaction between individual and artwork that produces the aesthetic experience, we need to know more about the artwork and the mechanisms through which it engages people, and we need to know more about the individual people that encounter that particular work of art at a particular time in their lives and at a particular time in history.” Belfiore, E., & Bennett, O. (2007). Determinants of Impact : Towards a Better Understanding of Encounters with the Arts. Cultural Trends, 16(3), 225-275.
- 11. To investigate the character of audience engagement with public artworks What do I mean by ‘engagement’? How might this engagement be evidenced? What data collection methods might I use?
- 14. “I really like the one outside Northumbria University. As a sculpture it’s got real presence. I don’t know anything about it, but I like it.” Gateshead College student
- 15. “When I read the title it somehow clicked. I’d never really appreciated it before, just seen it as rather big and lumpy. But it made more sense when I knew what it’s called.” Friend of the Shipley Art Gallery
- 16. Gateshead Cultural Volunteers “It’s the Speaking Gate” “Is it in Saltwell Park?” “No, it’s along the Riverside.”
- 18. “Were they daring art students, organised pranksters or just dedicated fans of the Batman franchise?” Source: www.thepoke.co.uk "As I'm an atheist I can not say 'Shearer is God' but he might be an angel," believes Mark Thurston, who is clearly agnostic about the definition of atheism. Source: http://football.guardian.co.uk
- 19. Evidence of audience engagement Physical traces Behaviour What people say User generated content
- 20. Data collection methods Observation Visual survey Interviews Longitudinal survey Auto-ethnography
- 21. Summary • More to public art than ‘The Angel of the North’ • Big claims made by public art advocates • But little known about public art audiences • Range of ways in which people engage with public art • Shown how these might be evidenced • Indicated breadth of research methods I might use.
- 22. Thank you. Any questions? Rebecca Farley ICCHS r.farley@newcastle.ac.uk http://rebeccafarley.wordpress.com Images: © Rebecca Farley, and courtesy of Commissions North / Arts Council England, Gateshead Council, Newcastle City Council. © The Photographers