Beneath The Pavement

In 2014 Anna Francis (lead artist) and AirSpace Gallery were commissioned by Appetite Stoke and the City Centre Partnership, Stoke-on-Trent to design and lead a professional artist development programme, bringing 15 artists to work with 4 lead artists to explore the role of the artist in city development. \n \nInformation about the programme, its remit and aims: \n \nCity planners, governors and stakeholders all over the world are waking up to the value (both in economic terms, and in placemaking terms) of culture and creativity, and for that reason many are building art and artists into their vision. \nStoke-on-Trent is a city very much in the process of changing and developing, making now the perfect time to discuss the role of the artist within these developments, and to begin to demonstrate how artists can rethink public space and open the conversation with the public about it’s experience and consumption of it. \nIn July, 2014, Appetite and the City Centre Partnership commissioned AirSpace Gallery to design a consultation and visioning programme designed to work with artists to find spaces and opportunities in the city centre for artists and other creative practitioners to work, put on events and activities, but also to consider how the city might work differently, identifying the gaps and the opportunities to be found here. From this, AirSpace Director, Anna Francis created Beneath the Pavement, drawing on previous experience of leading professional development activity for artists, as well as a working knowledge of a city in flux. \nOver two days, four lead artists - Anna Francis, Emily Speed, S Mark Gubb and Dan Thompson worked with fifteen applicant artists to explore the City Centre; scrutinising it’s open and overlooked spaces, identifying opportunities and responding to it’s particularities and peculiarities. The artists then used their own artistic practice and experience to develop a series of proposals for a brighter cultural future for the city centre of StokeOn-Trent. \n \nThis publication was created to document the outcomes of the programme.