Why Public Art?
Public art contains a strong educational element in the sense that it is a powerful conduit for bringing art to the people.

Credo
I strongly believe that public art should be accessible and relevant and should appeal to the viewer's sensibilities and consciousness.

Community Involvement
These objectives are achieved through igniting public imagination, and encouraging involvement and input from the interpretation right through to the resolution of a project.

Accessible/Interactive/Site Specific
As an object based sculptor whose practice encompass both gallery and public work, the key elements of my sculpture in a public arena are site specificity, accessibility, interactivity and tactility. Therefore my interest in this project stems from the challenge of applying these criteria to the brief.

Personal Criteria for Public Sculpture
Site specificity -In order to be relevant to its audience, a public artwork must be thematically linked to its environment. It must harmonise sculpturally, ie. be 'in context' with its surroundings.

Accessibility
The artwork should be physically and visually accessible to the public. Recent sculpture has tended to be inaccessible to its public (eg. placed on roundabouts/motorways). This not only marginalises the work but can also make it irrelevant and ignored by its public. Preferably public art should be placed in a local scenic area, frequented by people or in/near a local town or village. These areas could be accessed by the public by foot or car, and in some cases could constitute small 'parks'. The park, or elements of it, could then be the sculpture.

The only realistic alternative to this in a motorway context is to make the budgets much bigger to allow the artwork to come to grips with its context, ie. involving much more of the motorway.

Accessibility can also be maximised by incorporating sculpture or sculptural elements in to the architecture of a building. This can be done at the design stage where sculptor and architect collaborate.

Interactivity and Tactility
For me these two elements are indispensable in object based public sculpture. Public art should invite the spectator to physically interact with it. Contrasting materials and surfaces are used to create a sensory environment that should heighten the sense of touch. Combinations of horizontal and vertical elements, as well as colour, allow the viewer to become a participant in an event, beginning at the conceptual stage of the piece.
In a very real sense the audience comple