Rethinking Practice, Power and Participation
In April 2021, Urban Wilderness CIC convened Public Art Now, an online symposium bringing together artists, academics, activists and cultural organisations to critically reflect on the role of public art in a period of social, environmental and political change.
Taking place during an extended period of pandemic disruption, the symposium created space to examine how public art operates when public space, civic life and cultural practice are under sustained pressure. It asked fundamental questions about public art: who it is for, who holds power in its production, and how it functions within places shaped by disinvestment, inequality and transition.
Public Art Now was informed by The New Rules for Public Art, developed by Situations. These principles challenge conventional models of public art as permanent, object-based and institutionally led, instead advocating for practices that are relational, experimental and grounded in lived experience.
Key provocations from the New Rules threaded through the symposium, including:
Don’t make it for a community, create a community
It doesn’t have to look like public art
Make space for the unplanned
Share ownership freely, but authorship wisely
These ideas closely align with Urban Wilderness’s place-based practice, which prioritises participation, co-creation and long-term relationship building over spectacle or short-term intervention.
Across panels and discussions, contributors explored public art as a process rather than a product — capable of supporting dialogue, collective agency and care. Particular attention was given to contested and overlooked public realms, including brownfield land, town centres and informal civic spaces, and to how artistic practice can move beyond decoration or branding to become a tool for listening, organising and imagining alternative futures.
For Urban Wilderness, convening Public Art Now formed part of an ongoing inquiry into how artistic practice can be embedded within wider civic and social contexts. The symposium strengthened relationships between artists, researchers and community practitioners, and helped shape subsequent work around urban commons, participatory governance and community-led regeneration in Stoke-on-Trent.
The symposium highlighted that contemporary public art is not only about visibility, but about responsibility — asking artists and organisations to consider how power is shared, whose voices are amplified, and how public space can be shaped collectively.
Public Art Now marked a moment of reflection and re-commitment: to slower practice, deeper engagement, and public art that is accountable to the people and places it exists within.
