(Re)Making Public Campus Art: Connecting the University, Publics and the City

Abstract

This article analyses how public campus art is used and envisaged as mode for engagement with diverse and broad publics. Public engagement not only forms a spearhead of British universities today, it is also a major topical concern of policymaking, governance and the creative industries. Precisely in this context, universities’ broader rationales for commissioning/implementing public artworks on campus have been overlooked. Attention has been mainly focused on the intents of artists for creating the public artwork, while public campus art is in need to be studied as a phenomenon itself. In our mixed positionalities as public-art scholars and curators, we specifically contrast public-art visions and engagement practices on the basis of the recent Public Art Programme supported by a Public Art Strategy (2015–present) of the University of Leeds vis-a-vis the long-duration public-art initiative entitled In Certain Places (2003–present), mediated through the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, UK. The article discusses the roles, uses and alleged effects of public art across these two case-study localities at the intra-campus level and beyond the campus. In so doing, the article critically attends to how public-art visions are collaboratively developed to produce mutual benefits for the campus and the city at large.