WE ARE AN EXPERIENCED TEAM OF ARTISTS, DESIGNERS AND ENABLERS THAT RESPOND IMAGINATIVELY TO PLACE AND PEOPLE.

We conceive and champion public art and design projects in collaboration with architects and urban designers, allowing a community to become active participators in a process of change, celebration or remembrance.

The studio facilitates creative engagement projects, developing specific strategies and frameworks for cultural activities and creative intervention.

We are also a studio of makers, with an equipped workshop, and proven relationships with manufacturing partners, that enable us to not just conceive ideas but to also craft elements large and small that are site specific and beautifully integrated into their environment.

The studio has been built around the artist Stephen Broadbent, who has over the last thirty years successfully completed many public art projects, demonstrating a role where artists can be radically engaged in the community, finding solutions, selecting and interpreting themes that enlarge, enliven and enlighten our experience of the world.

If you have a project or would like more information about how we work, please get in touch with the studio.

OUR PHILOSOPHY

THE ART OF PLACE

Art as part of the built environment works with the rest of its surroundings to create a sense of place. This type of art can’t be simply an added decoration, like rhinestones sewn on a jacket. If it is to help develop the character of a place, it must grow out of the existing fabric.

Art that ‘grows from local soil’ in this way stands more chance of belonging. More chance of being embraced by people who live and work in the neighbourhood. Less chance of coming across as bombastic or pompous.

So we begin each job with looking. Looking for the stories a place has to tell. Stories sometimes alive and well, sometimes forgotten, sometimes just overlooked. That’s our starting point. The point where we get excited about a place and say: 'Look what we’ve found!'

OUR PROCESS

HOW WE BEGIN:

LOOK around - find the threads already there
SEE potential - get excited about stories to be told
REFLECT on meanings - draw out what is relevant
DEVELOP themes - out of which designs emerge
CO-OPERATE - with planners, architects, engineers & local people

DELIVERY:

Often the greater art is ‘making it happen’, crafting the idea within budget in a robust medium and at a scale that honours the people and the place. Our practice has delivered many complex projects and we are proud to say that we have never exceeded the agreed project budget following approval of detailed designs.

CONCEPT:

We first develop a range of concepts within a target price these are tested and approved before proceeding to detailed development.

DETAILED DESIGN:

The designs are developed, engineered and costed, with CAD drawings and models created to allow final approvals. Where necessary, together with the client, the designs will be value engineered to within the budget.