“Art doesn't have to be a stranger”
Poet and artist Alec Finlay is working with a Cambridge housing developer to explore how public art can help create a sense of place
AN Edinburgh poet and mixed-media artist is helping a council housebuilding venture 'tart' up its developments with a little public artistry.
Alec Finlay (main picture) is working with Cambridge Investment Partnerships (CIP) on an extensive programme of public art called 'Resonance Cambridge'.
Artists are commissioned for the programme to deliver talks, walks, and workshops with the local community. These serve to inform the design and character of the artworks created to adorn public spaces at the developments.
CIP is equal joint-venture company between the city council, and private developer Hill Investment Partnerships, part of The Hill Group. It was created to build new council homes, as well as housing intended for private sale, but it clearly wants to add a little icing to the cake.
Part of the thinking behind the public art project isn't just about 'prettifying' the developments, though; there's a practical aspect too – in the sense of creating 'navigational links' between them.
“I was approached and asked if I would be interested in working in Cambridge across CIP’s developments to bring some integration and pattern to them,” said Finlay, who's been working on the project since 2020.
“When you work in a public realm, whether it is a landscape or urban situation, your brief is to enhance a place and community. I look at how art might be used to help build that sense of community and give people a greater sense of belonging.
“The idea of connecting these different housing developments in the same city really interested me. I wanted to come up with something that would work across these sites whilst thinking about Cambridge itself and the mix of private and public homes being created.
“That was really the brief for me, and the conversations I would have with the community were more important than any kind of written statement. It was about the feel of what they wanted to achieve.”
Finlay is an internationally recognised artist and poet whose work crosses over a range of media and forms. Much of his work seeks to consider how cultures relate to landscape and ecology. Recently his work has focussed on place-awareness and ecopoetics.
“I am a poet who makes art,” he said. “I have taken the approach of using ordinary things that people will recognise – like a beehive – and sometimes people are unsure if it is art. What I hope is that when they see the beehive, it will give them fondness, and make them think: that is a good thing as it is a home; it also gives us honey and helps nature too. Art doesn’t have to be a stranger.
“On each object, I have created one-word poems. I try and work with how language can be a family of meanings, such as talking about seasons, sunsets, and sunrises, and bring that commonality across the developments.
“Art isn’t only the sculpture; but it's the relationship to the planting around it, whether it's trees, lavender, bees etc. I chose to work in a series of simple forms that everyone would recognise and connect with, and that I could repeat on each development. Things like a beehive, which is a beautiful object that everyone knows, or signposts and nest boxes. I have added a poem to them and created a family in one place with its cousins, aunts, and uncles in another.”
For the Cambridge project, as he indicated, his art installations include a series of beehives, sundials, nest boxes, and signposts, each adorned with a unique poem and located across five of CIP’s developments: Timber Works, Ironworks, Colville Road Phase 2, Campkin Road, and The Meadows and Buchan Street.
“Once I have finished, I hope to make a map with a key to where the poems and artwork are across Cambridge to allow the community to see all the poems with the different colours and meanings and create a different way to enjoy the city,” Finlay added.
“What really counts now in our world is how we all belong together – if art can be part of that sense of belonging, that would make me feel happy.”
MC