Longbridge Public Art Project 2012-2017 / by Claire Farrell

Longbridge Public Art Project (LPAP)

Birmingham, 2012-2017

How do you make sense of a place that has been transformed beyond almost all recognition in physical, economic, social and emotional terms?

And what if it is still transforming before your eyes? How might a place move forward towards its future while holding sight of its past?

These are the questions that the Longbridge Public Art Project (LPAP) explored over a five year period (2012 - 2017). LPAP was a contemporary art project created to humanise the physical regeneration of Longbridge as it transitioned from the former 468-acre site of Longbridge Car Factory, Birmingham into a new town.

Longbridge car factory had a significantly turbulent past that included picket lines and company politics that made national news, which ended abruptly 2005 with the closure of the factory. Thousands of jobs were lost overnight which in turn had a detrimental impact on the local economy. The community of Longbridge grew over decades in response to the factory providing employment for generations of local people. It was important as the area was being deconstructed and a new Longbridge began to emerge that nearly a century of heritage, social history and identity were not lost in the abyss of the urban renewal process.

The project’s programme of activity operated interactively to utilise public (or ‘semi-public private') space. Situations were set up for various types of exchange in which shared memories, future aspirations and storytelling was stressed. The project overall, and many of the artists individual projects provided a natural reflection of what public art is-and what it can be, and importantly how it could function within a regeneration and contemporary art context.

Inspired by the early Oda Propese project in Galata, Istanbul (2000) the project framework modelled activity to shape relationships between people and spaces through a social sculpture process. LPAP was community-based; it was socially engaged, interactive and very much aimed at another, less anonymous public than that of art institutions. Activities were participated in far from established spaces for art and instead took place in other social contexts such as social clubs, churches, schools and made use of the changing environment under construction by utilizing car parks, open spaces and empty retail units. In this way the intention like Oda Propese, we sought to reverse the exclusiveness of participation by ensuring that residents could easily access contemporary art rather than the usual ‘art public’. In the concentration of being based in the community with activitities centralized around community spaces the relationship between the project, artists and community became ‘mutual’ in that communities began to exercise their warm hospitality for a number of years.

In response to the complexity of the place, artist roles became wide-ranging from educators, mediators and creative thinkers to urban designers. LPAP was a fluid process of situated practice-from the spectacular (two light and art festivals), an urban planning, architecture and art international symposium to quiet temporary interventions, artist instigated projects, heritage research, guest artist commissions, a summer school for art students, performances, virtual reality app development, lighting and planting schemes, permanent public artworks, a community garden, community led activity such a history walks and alternative street signage to dialogic and often open ended participatory processes.

Over a five- year period 64 UK and internationally based artists were invited to make work in Longbridge, for Longbridge.

Fifth Photograph of Stuart Whipps Mini Restoration Project commissioned by WERK taken at the British Art Show 8, Leeds Art Gallery, 2015-17. Photo © Jonte Wilde Photography 2015

Grant Funded by Arts Council West Midlands, Birmingham City University, Bournville College and Birmingham City Council.