On Location - Big Art

Mike Smith reports ‘On Location’ for Broadcast

Big Art's executive producer Mike Smith reports for Broadcast magazine's On Location feature:

A lot has happened in the five years since we first pitched Big Art, our four part series which gives members of the public the chance to call the shots on the creation of a world class public artwork in their neck of the woods. Back in 2004 times were good enough to do things for other people as well as yourself and the buzzwords were "innovation", "participation" and "social enterprise". No one had heard of the "credit crunch" and "making trouble" was still part of Channel 4's slogan. It was a licence to think big with the expectation that TV could inspire things on and off the screen and make a serious as well as entertaining contribution to the cultural life of the country. There was even a ten million quid Channel 4 fund specially set aside for making projects which could make a difference. How the world has changed.   

In its embryonic state Big Art was a simple enough idea: if the public commissioned art we'd reveal not only the mind of the artist but the passions of the diverse people who wanted art where they live. A succession of previous commissions also by Jan Younghusband proved the case. Operatunity, Ballet Changed My Life and The Play's the Thing had given Channel 4 a whole genre bringing mainstream audiences to art-forms long perceived as elitist. Even as we mapped the 1400 community nominations who'd applied for the Big Art process we had the first broad brushstrokes of a new portrait of Britain: a country that wanted art to capture, celebrate or perhaps even heal something at the heart of their community. We also knew it would be good telly - a clash of cultures and a big challenge to the art world as the generation that's witnessed the erection of more public art than any other in history would at last have their say in what was put up.

But hang on - who the hell were we? Isn't commissioning public art a professional activity? We quickly sought out public art practitioners who liked our premise and were prepared to put their necks on the line to help us pull it off. These were the people who knew the bear traps and realised more than we did what we'd bitten off. But the notion of the audience for art being participants in the process was exactly the mood of the moment and before long we had major funding partners signing up ready to write their cheques for the art the public wanted.

From the start being on Big Art shoots has been a tight rope walk. Projects of this nature create unfamiliar editorial dynamics because we are both the instigators of the concept and the delivery model as well as the programme makers following the resulting narratives. What if the shoot is in a town divided about whether it wants Big Art? Should we be delighted that its great telly or distraught at the prospect that a great art work might not get built? What when the community doesn't succeed and it's us in the firing line for if expectations we've created aren't met? Or when the necessary probing question is to an art funder who has given us money?

To answer this conflict we recruited the expertise we needed to take care of the art project and created with Channel 4's backing The Big Art Trust - a not for profit company formally separated from the pressures of the tv production that could be at arms length from the series and have the excellence of the art and the process that created it as its unambiguous concern, liberating us to make great telly without fear or favour.

Over the past four years we've followed seven communities as they have battled to realise their Big Art dream. The process invented by the Big Art Trust drawing on the talents of some of the country's leading curators ultimately secured support from 19 different funding partners. Leading artists from across the world have generated stunning proposals, which reveal what art can do in some beautiful and some very challenging parts of the country. But the ultimate challenge is met by the final shoot of the series at St Helens just off the M62 between Manchester and Liverpool. The final section of a twenty metre high sculpture (called Dream) will be lifted into place a few days before the series goes on air. It will be a landmark for passing motorists and for the community of ex miners who have commissioned it. It is also a landmark for a partnership between the public, artists and broadcasters that has unquestionably produced something bigger than the sum of its parts: artworks the public actually want where they live. For me after all this time the whole Big Art process is testimony to a brave broadcaster that held its nerve and a lasting monument to the confident years when telly could inspire things outside the box.