In this episode I’m talking with Martyn Evans, Creative Director at Landsec with responsibility for developing and delivering the company’s public art and cultural engagement programmes.

From the annual commissions on fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square to the Angel of the North or a Banksy appearing in Cheltenham, public art projects are the most visible and accessible manifestations of contemporary art practice in our society. They are also uniquely divisive, sometimes becoming well loved icons of communities and places, they can also be reviled stoking anger, protest or disenfranchisement. The evolving use and role of public art is equally fluid, shifting between temporary and permanent, memorial, celebration, social critique, decoration and activism. Public art also plays an important role in articulating how we define public space in an increasingly privatised world and the debates we have about our history and culture.

I spoke to Martyn at Landsec’s head quarters in Central London, talking about the trajectory of his career and approach to developing cultural programmes - his priorities at Landsec and how he’s working to change the ways developers understand working with art.

In this episode I’m talking with Martyn Evans, Creative Director at Landsec with responsibility for developing and delivering the company’s public art and cultural engagement programmes.

From the annual commissions on fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square to the Angel of the North or a Banksy appearing in Cheltenham, public art projects are the most visible and accessible manifestations of contemporary art practice in our society. They are also uniquely divisive, sometimes becoming well loved icons of communities and places, they can also be reviled stoking anger, protest or disenfranchisement. The evolving use and role of public art is equally fluid, shifting between temporary and permanent, memorial, celebration, social critique, decoration and activism. Public art also plays an important role in articulating how we define public space in an increasingly privatised world and the debates we have about our history and culture.

I spoke to Martyn at Landsec’s head quarters in Central London, talking about the trajectory of his career and approach to developing cultural programmes - his priorities at Landsec and how he’s working to change the ways developers understand working with art.

LEARN MORE

https://landsec.com/futures

https://benroberts.art

In this episode I'm speaking with Elinor Morgan, a writer and curator and Artistic Director at MiMA - the Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art.

For more than 10 years MIMA, part of Teesside University, has been at the forefront of producing ideas and programmes transforming the ways that museums operate and interact with their communities and publics, radically changing approaches to working with collections and mission of the museum. In 2014 under the directorship of Alistair Husdon, the institution apodted the principals of Arte Util – useful art – a conception of art and institutional operations devised by artist Tanya Brugera and curators at the Queens Museum, New York, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and Grizedale Arts in Coniston which seeks to develop new methods and social formations to address societal issues traditionally considered the domain of the state that are part of an interconnected historical trajectory shaping the contemporary world from social justice and inequality to education and mental health.

Under the leadership of Elinor Morgan and Laura Sillars the programme at MIMA has evolved a ground breaking approach to community collaboration and placing the story of the region and its people at the heart of their work; creating generative opportunities for change through art, learning, social engagement and professional development.

Prior to MIMA, Morgan curated international public art projects, residencies, exhibitions, public and learning programmes, working at OUTPOST, Wysing Art Centre, Eastside Projects as well as independent projects. Elinor joined MIMA in 2015 drawn to the organisation’s reputation for placing the communities that surround it at the centre of it’s programmes, thinking and mission.

LEARN MORE

https://mima.art/

https://valiz.nl/en/publications/constituent-museum

https://benroberts.art/