Douglas, Anne

Anne Douglas

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on the w terfront Public Art Urban Design Civic Participation Urban Regeneration

Visual Arts on the Edge: Marginality and Regeneration

Revistes CientÃ­fiques de la Universitat de Barcelona

English

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

   Waterfornts of Art III . Public Art & Urban Design: Interdisciplinary and Social Perspectives 
 
 
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Visual Arts on the Edge: Marginality and Regeneration 
Dr Anne Douglas 
Principal Researcher and Senior Research Fellow 
On the Edge Research project 
Gray’s School of Art 
Aberdeen 
Scotland AB10 7QD 
Tel: 01224 263647 
Mobile:0781 3139420 
Email: a.douglas@rgu.ac.uk 
 
 
North East Scotland is on the edge between the urban central belt of Scotland and the North Sea. 
This outcrop of land edged by water – the North Sea, has a rich vernacular cultural heritage that 
predates the more dominant culture of Scotland’s densely populated ‘Central Belt’, which includes 
the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow with their industrial and post – industrial characters. Within 
rural areas of Northern Scotland industries such as fishing and agriculture manifest change in a 
different way from urban centres. Processes of change are slower, less visible, cutting deeper 
into longer term memory and identities structured around a ‘sense of place’.  The opportunities for 
regeneration are fewer than in a city as a consequence of the less diverse economic and social 
infrastructure. It would be inappropriate to think of the arts as a tool of regeneration in these 
contexts in the same way as has occurred in urban post - industrial contexts. Artistic expression 
in remote rural areas is challenged by a different experience of the past and present, and 
therefore a different sense of the future.  
 
What can be learned from these differences of experience? Can the values and tensions that 
underpin the life of a farmer in rural Aberdeenshire, for example, usefully inform values in 
contemporary art production?  Can these values inform other non rural remote contexts for 
working in the arts? Can approaches to arts development in rural situations tell us something 
specific about ‘interdisciplinary’ and ‘social’ perspectives of regeneration? This paper will address 
these questions through a current research project in Northern Scotland, On the Edge 
(www.ontheedgeresearch.org) as a practical example of research into the visual arts and its role 
within cultures of change. 
 
The On the Edge research project tests the belief that visual arts of quality can be 
developed in remote rural areas by critically challenging assumptions implicit within 
systems of production and related systems of value of dominant urban practices.  
 
The research came out of unsuccessfully trying to transpose into rural situations, ways of 
producing art and related value systems that were predominantly urban – the three week 
exhibition of authored pieces, the private view, the catalogue. We made assumptions about the 
way that art happens with the result that we were indulging a form of arts provision that often 
gained critical attention in urban professional circles but which reached and involved  few people 
at a local level. This in turn raised issues about value – Who makes and who funds art? For 
whom is it made, why and how? Who decides what is art of quality?  
 
 
Methodology 
 
We are just over half way through the three - year research period. The main mechanism for 
delivery is a programme of five live experimental projects sited in five different locations in 
Northern Scotland with five different project partners that form the basis of the On the Edge 
network. The network has a very specific geographical focus but draws creative thinking, 
expertise and insights from individuals and organizations across disciplines and across 
hierarchies of critical influence that are national, regional and international. 
   Waterfornts of Art III . Public Art & Urban Design: Interdisciplinary and Social Perspectives 
 
 
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The research has responded to rural ways of living by positioning the artist within communities of 
specific places with specific issues as a starting point for art production. This is different from a 
classic and increasingly questioned approach to a public art commission, in which authorship is 
prioritized over observation and responsiveness. The role of the artist working in remote rural 
situations can be defined (though not exclusively) as someone who helps us to interpret our 
relationships with where we live. Artists can engage us in a shared process of making meaning 
and creating value. This positioning is different from, but does not exclude the production of 
authored works, where these are an appropriate response to the sets of issues within each 
situation or ‘site’.  
 
In rural contexts people are known to each other as individuals, before what they do in terms of 
work or a profession. Tasks and skills tend to be exchanged within the community as a shared 
process of arriving at a desired result, rather than bought. In both urban and rural contexts the 
production of art mirrors the nature and quality of human relationships in each situation. Art in the 
city is more commonly produced through specialized, professionalised roles within a hierarchy  
that has a strong economic basis to its rituals of engagement–  the artist as ‘genius’, the curator 
and the critic as ‘personalities’, and finally the ‘audience’ as an apparently homogenous body that 
is anonymous to the artist. Within the On the Edge research, in observing these differences, we 
have restructured  the process of developing the artwork  in remote rural situations. We have 
brought the artist, arts administrator and members of a community or ‘audience’ together to 
develop  a shared experience through which artworks emerge. The basis of this shared 
experience is learning. The nature of networking and dialogue in contemporary modes of 
communication means that the creative process is informed by complex transactions between the 
‘local’ and beyond, enabling specific situations to be effected by a rich diversity of influences. 
 
The evaluation is co-ordinated between research in arts practice (Gray’s School of Art) and that 
cultural policy (Comedia) and brings social ⁄ economic and artistic perspectives together within 
the same discursive learning space.  The individual projects include 
 
• The Field  
Scottish Sculpture Workshop 
Artist: Gavin Renwick 
This project is concerned with rethinking marginal rural land use and ownership 
by people living in the 19th century planned village of Lumsden in rural 
Aberdeenshire, traditionally a farming community in which the last farmer to live 
in the village and earn a living solely from farming is retiring in June. 
  
 
• Virtual Brochers 
Museum of Scottish Lighthouses 
Artist: Paul Carter 
This project investigates a sense of belonging and identity expressed by young 
people through their use of information technology in the fishing town of 
Fraserburgh, where fishing is in decline. 
 
• Town Artist 
Deveron Arts 
Artist: Lynn Millar 
This project aims to enable the town of Huntly to see itself with ‘fresh eyes’ by 
means of an ambitious program of arts projects facilitated by a town artist, Lynn 
Millar in Huntly, Aberdeenhire, where agriculture is undergoing transformation. 
 
   Waterfornts of Art III . Public Art & Urban Design: Interdisciplinary and Social Perspectives 
 
 
  3 
• Langerin’ 
Shetland College and Shetland knitters and lace makers 
Artist: Susan Benn  pallabs 
This project revalues the traditional skills of knitting and lacemaking in the 
Shetland Isles and their place in contemporary culture. This revaluing is 
happening in the context of changes in the oil industry and a reduction to the 
Shetland Isles of European subsidy through the development of a creative 
laboratory under the guidance of pallabs, London. 
 
• Celestial Ceiling project 
Duff House 
Artists: Ingo Maurer and John McGeogh 
This project involves two commissions that mark the loss of 16th century heritage, 
a painted ceiling, by two 21st century responses, one in a private space (artist 
Ingo Maurer) and the second in a public space as a projected ceiling ( artist John 
McGeogh). North East Scotland is particularly rich in heritage.  
 
 
There are questions outstanding in particular in relation to what can be learned from the research 
beyond its specific context and experience. These questions include the following 
• What might be new ways of thinking about creativity that value relationship and ‘a 
sense of place’ as a starting point from which to move on?  
• What mental images will enable us to transcend the rural⁄ urban dialectic towards 
developing ways of thinking about how we are in the world and imaging how we might be 
on a regional basis?   
And finally 
• How can methods, ideas and images from networking, facilitated by communication 
technologies, redraw cultures of influence across local⁄ global sites of activity?  
 
   
 
 


Visual Arts on the Edge: Marginality and Regeneration

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Directory of Open Access Journals

Revistes CientÃfiques de la Universitat de Barcelona

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

Visual Arts on the Edge: Marginality and Regeneration

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Directory of Open Access Journals

Revistes CientÃ­fiques de la Universitat de Barcelona

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

Revistes CientÃfiques de la Universitat de Barcelona