Summary

Burnley Elevate Artist Injection was a one-year Burnley Borough Council project involving artist Kevin Carter of Co Lab Projects and architects Dan Jones and Andrew Siddall of civic Architects. They developed public art proposals for a Housing Market Renewal (HMR) scheme that is tackling housing market failure in this hard-hit area of northwest England.

The artist-team’s brief emphasised involving young people and other local groups in the formation of ideas and also developing relationships between the community and private developers. They found that people of all ages were suffering from ‘consultation fatigue’. It also proved difficult to make links with a multitude of existing local initiatives. Therefore the brief proved over-ambitious in many respects. However, the artist-team succeeded in drawing up four imaginative proposals for public art projects in consultation with mixed-age community groups.