The Coming Community: New Towns, Art and Place
18 videos • 55 views • by MK Gallery Recording of event from 24th May 2019 A symposium at the newly expanded MK Gallery which will discuss the potential for art in new and expanding communities. It will explore the legacies of art and culture in the first generation of New Towns and consider what might be learned from such examples. The symposium will interrogate contemporary understandings of placemaking from a civic perspective, and how they can be applied responsibly in 21st century new towns. In recent years, a surge in global migration and housing crises have accompanied a renewed use of garden city and new town masterplanning as an appropriate framework to manage urban growth. At the same time, the notion of creative placemaking has emerged as a ‘new’ strategy for building communities and creating a sense of place through artistic practices and cultural infrastructure. Understanding the impact that artists and arts organisations made on new town communities in the post-war period is therefore particularly relevant at this time, as well as a consideration of the potentials and problems of contemporary placemaking. The symposium will bring together leaders in the field of creative placemaking to talk about how they place people and communities at the centre of their work as well as critics of the instrumentalisation of art. Through artists’ presentations, films and workshops, we will examine the past and present of new town creative ecologies. Together, participants and audience members will explore the capacity for arts and arts institutions to contribute to the new generation of planned towns and cities.