Much of our role as public art consultants involves collaboration.

This month’s Kent Construction Live Virtual Conference reminded us of the power of connecting with a wider industry network beyond our usual day-to-day partnerships with construction companies, developers, local authorities, housing associations, architects and artists. One of Kent’s first big online events for the construction sector, it was a day to get together via Zoom and hear how others are navigating the current challenges and finding opportunities to build more sustainable developments and communities as we emerge from the Covid crisis.

It was great to listen to local industry professionals like Guy Holloway and Mark Quinn talk about their work and particularly to hear Guy remark: “By creating projects where communities come together we will develop a much richer society. The value artists, makers and creatives bring to place is astounding. The creative industries should be seen as the leader in regenerating towns because they have so much to contribute.”

The work we are doing for the £400 million Rochester Riverside development with Countryside Properties (UK) Ltd and The Hyde Group is a perfect example of this, with commissioned artists and architects working together to produce fully integrated and embedded public art.

It has been particularly rewarding to engineer a successful pairing between artist Chris Tipping and BPTW architects practice. As Public Art Consultants we are often hidden in this process, negotiating and facilitating a place at the table for artists. Public Art is often overlooked and it’s fair to say we’re tenacious in ensuring that artists commissioned by FrancisKnight work closely with the design team to fully integrate and embed the public art through a meaningful creative collaboration. Fostering a way of working between artists and architects at early stages of a development scheme can lead to thought provoking art and moments of joy.

As part of the London Festival of Architecture last year we shared some insights from our inter-disciplinary work facilitating this particular collaboration with an interview between Chris and Peter  Sofoluke,  Associate Architect  at BPTW. Click here if you’d like to read more.

We look forward to sharing more about this project as we reach completion of the latest phase. We will be sharing more of our own top tips for how we make collaborations like these work effectively in future posts.