Many public art projects begin with a period of community consultation.  This serves to inform the artist about where the work, that they are to make and install, will be sited and to meet the community who will live with it. It gives the artist an opportunity to  engage with the community and to listen to their expectations for the artwork. This process also gives the community a real opportunity to get involved with the design stage, and to take ownership of the work, often contributing directly to the details as well as the concept of the work.  This process can be through hands-on artmaking or through discussion.

Hilary Cartmel has completed over 60 public art projects in the UK and most of these have begun with a period of community consultation. Below is a snapshot of some of that consultation taking place. Sometimes the artmaking becomes incidental to the conversations which take place around the creative mess-making, it is these which can open up the pathways to solutions for the finished artwork.

Her experience is based on working in Nottinghamshire’s Youth and Community service, working as artist in Residence in a large psychiatric hospital in Leicester, in schools, in Grizedale forest Cumbria and many more