Whether you're a developer, city planner or architect, public art consultants offer a wide range of services — from securing planning permissions to boosting tourism through public art — ensuring your project leaves a lasting impact.
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Summary
By 2050, nearly 70% of the world's population will live in a city. Currently, over half already do (source). With this in mind, Artelier's public art consultants are conscious — now more than ever — of the pressing need for urban developers to include art in their strategy to create genuinely impactful urban spaces.
If you're looking for more information or you'd like to get in touch to see how we can enhance your development project, contact our public art consultants here. Our team of curators would love to get involved.
What Does a Public Art Consultant Do?
Urban planners are often pursuing multiple objectives for multiple clients – this includes affected members of the public. A public art consultant can address some of these objectives and, quite simply, take some of the work away.
So, a public art consultant act as an intermediary between artists, planners, architects, and city authorities, enhancing the impact of the development project through thoughtful art while navigating all associated logistical complexities. All in all, a public art consultancy plays a critical role in integrating public art into the urban fabric, ensuring that it aligns with the broader goals of urban regeneration, placemaking, and community engagement.
What Schemes Are Suitable for Public Art?
Major development projects
This includes city-wide projects or commercial, residential, mixed-use developments
Transport infrastructure / Civil engineering
Such as pedestrianisation, cycle paths, bridges, dams, new roads, roundabouts, rail or tram stations, bus stops and depots
Environmental schemes
Examples range from landscaping and woodland areas to park and public open space schemes.
Community facilities
Community spaces are key sites to harness the effects of public art, including schools or school crossings, community centres, retirement homes, health services, churches, synagogues, mosques and care homes.
Wayfinding
Public art can assist with signage or interpretation, making a key difference to financial tourism for instance.
How Can Public Art Contribute to Urban Development?
Planners who speak to our public art consultants at Artelier frequently express a desire for public art to “enhance the quality of life”. This aim, while honourable, often lacks specificity. The role of art in public spaces is multifaceted, and can actually target key planning initiatives. For example, a brightly lit, interactive artwork in an underpass can reduce crime, or a wayfinding public artwork can guide foot traffic and avoid potential accidents in heavily pedestrianised areas.
Top 5 Benefits of Public Art
Sustainability
There are countless ways in which public art can contribute to the sustainable future we are all striving for. From eco-art installations made with locally sourced, fallen wood that celebrate the natural world, to reducing carbon emissions in highly industrialised areas through the creation of green spaces and tree shaping to form living sculptures, the possibilities are both creative and ever-expanding.
2. Community
Naturally, community-focused design is a key target for developers' urban design and new-builds; art can help to integrate that. Entry points for community engagement in public art commissions include feedback at the proposal stage, active inclusion in the art-making process, artworks fostering social cohesion in busy areas, encouraging audience participation, creating contextually relevant pieces, and holding talks or workshops post-commission.
3. Alleviating Planning Permission
Many of our clients come to our international art consultancy seeking assistance with their overall development strategy, seeking to leverage our expertise and knowledge of planning legislation (such as Section 106 in the UK) to help them secure planning permission for their projects.
A key example includes Artelier Public Art Consultancy's artwork for the architectural firm DMFK in Maida Vale, London, where we integrated a highly designed artwork that functioned also as railings for the residential site. The design was uniquely tailored to London's context by physically representing a soundscape, splitting the sounds created by local streets, a nearby school and a community centre into a three-dimensional steel form, all given the musical context of the area.
4. Place-Making & Identity Creation
Public art's starring role is adding a creative flair to a development project. Perhaps you're working on a mixed-use development using dense, greyed materials like concrete - a public art consultant can find the right art that is sensitive to the architecture and landscape of the development while positioning art as contributing to the site's relevancy in the area and street scene. Through this, art can be a positive force in regenerating the area, making it a site of memory, intrigue and conversation.
5. Cultural & Financial Value
Public artworks by investment-grade artists are a suitable choice for developers with significant funds allocated to their development. For instance, commissioning work from renowned artists can elevate a site’s cultural capital, enhancing its prestige, securing long-term financial gains through attracting tourism or residents to the site. These high-profile installations often become landmarks in their own right, from: increasing foot traffic and engagement, boosting property values, enhancing the marketability and desirability of the area.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude's, The Gates, 2005, 7500 16-foot-high vinyl gates
New York, Central Park. The public artwork drew 4 million visitors who, in turn, brought $254 million to the tourism industry (NewPolitics, 2005).
The Process of Public Art Consultancy
Key Responsibilities
Understanding the client's vision
A public art consultant should take great care to fully understand the client's vision by carefully listening to their needs. This involves balancing the interests of various stakeholders, adhering to planning regulations, incorporating sustainability efforts and considering the cultural and social dynamics of the local community. Additionally, the consultant should deeply understand project budgets.
Identify key locations for art
Public art consultants should consider creatively and deeply about every detail and opportunity at the site. This includes identify key spaces that would benefit from public art and proposing innovative concepts. Locations are meticulously analysed to ensure that the public artwork receives the necessary interaction, considering context and community engagement.
"The right location can transform the way people move through a space. We're all about encouraging interaction and fostering a sense of belonging. This means about choosing locations that turn public art into an experience, not just something to look at."
— Marie Boutignon, Senior Curator for Artelier
Sourcing artists
Public art consultants typically have a pool of high-quality, original artists to recommend for an urban development project. For instance, at Artelier we possess a database of over 50,000 artists to find the perfect artist for the project. Alternatively, we may publish an open-call, adopting a more grass-roots approach to find emerging or underrepresented artists that can bring a breath of fresh air to the site.
Develop a public art strategy
Public art consultants review project specifications including assessing the local needs (including social and environmental contexts), planning requirements and client visions to develop public art strategies that meet those needs. Public art strategies can outline key goals such as: attracting investment, introducing innovation into the planning, reducing crime and more.
Overseeing the commissioning process
An experienced public art consultant should be experienced to navigate the balance between 'good' art, and that which is interesting to passerby's. For instance, a abstract sculpture rendered in dark metal placed in a park tends to go unnoticed by the general public even though an art historian or curator would more likely appreciate it. Overall, the process of commissioning the art should be streamlined, including ensuring artists meet the conceptual and technical requirements while keeping the client up to date with deliverables.
Ensuring safety & durability
A public art consultant is integral to ensuring the public art meets all safety standards and project requirements, this includes understanding the limits of a material and how it may change over time, in aesthetic or impact.
"By collaborating closely with engineers and fabricators, we not only address immediate safety concerns but also anticipate how environmental factors like weathering or corrosion could affect the artwork's integrity years down the line."
— Alice Voss, Project Director for Artelier
Overseeing installation & presentation
A high-quality public art consultancy should have specialist project managers. Artelier's project managers, Alice and Talia, have decades of experience between them, working on-site to ensure that public art installations meet all necessary standards. In-house, they maintain a database of high-quality, secure framers, storers, movers, builders, fixers, electricians and shipping companies whom we have developed years of trust, ensuring that the artwork is installed in situ to the highest degree — anywhere in the world.
Artelier Public Art Consultancy
Impactful contemporary public art requires innovative thinking. With over 15 years of experience in public art consulting—ranging from landscapes, corporate environments, mixed-use developments, public parks, sculpture gardens, residential projects, temporary installations, to major development sites—Artelier is engineered to deliver outstanding public art.
We are an art consultancy run by artists, for artists, with specialisms in public curation and art consulting. Our curators offer creative, lateral solutions to design challenges, broadening the project's impact while bringing uniquely creative skills and value to the urban design process. Above all, we strive to make each project stand out, enhancing the urban design while carefully considering the needs of stakeholders, residents, and the wider public to create art that is memorable, impactful, and meaningful.
Get in touch today for a free introductory call to discuss how we can bring your project to life.
© Artelier Art Consultancy
Curator, Art Research & Editorial
Calypso holds a First-Class Honours BA in History of Art from the University of Bristol. She has written extensively for Artelier and international galleries on public art and has experience in artist liaison, public art strategy, and project management.