Report on Creative Collaborations 3 or Mayhem?
	Background
Creative Collaborations 3 – Merger or Mayhem? was developed jointly by Axis and Public Art South West (PASW), delivered in the Phoenix Art Centre, Exeter on Wednesday, June 14 2000. 89 delegates attended and there were presentations by 4 speakers. Architect John Lyall was chair. The event was structured as follows:
1.00pm	Registration
1.30pm	Opening by John Lyall, Chair
1.40pm	Richard Wilson, Sculptor
2.20pm	Juliet Bidgood, Architect, muf partner
3.00pm	Tea & coffee break
3.30pm	Gail Bolland, Arts Co-ordinator for Tonic, the Arts and Environments 
Programme for Leeds Teaching Hospitals & Dr.Phil Leather, Deputy Director, Institute of Work, Health & Organisations, University of Nottingham Business School
4.10pm	Kate HainsworthExecutive of AXIS
4.30pm	Plenary session
5.00pm	Close and thanks
5.05pm	Discover Axis –a demonstration of the Axis database, together with 
representatives from Axis and South West Arts Board. 
This report summarises the main outcomes of the presentations and subsequent debate.
	Introductions
Maggie Bolt, Director of PASW opened the session, welcoming all delegates, explaining there were opportunities to find out more about Axis, PASW and three of the featured speaker’s work either through South West Arts, PASW or the Web. 
	John Lyall, RIBA Vice President for Future Studies (Chair)
John Lyall is the managing director of John Lyall Architects, a practice with a reputation for innovative buildings and urban regeneration schemes.The projects undertaken by his busy, young practice range from derelict conservation areas in Leeds and Norwich, to large waterside schemes in Cardiff Bay where strategies and individual buildings act as catalysts for long term regeneration.
Recently completed projects include Tottenham Hale Underground Station and Station Forecourt and North Greenwich Station on the Jubilee Line.The practice is currently developing a large mixed-use riverside scheme at St. Anne’s Wharf in Norwich, together with projects in Covent Garden and Carnaby Street in London.
John Lyall is much sought after as a speaker and writer on urban regeneration (Context: New Buildings in Historical Settings) and collaborations between artists and architects.He is a design advisor to English Partnerships and Cardiff Bay Development Corporation.He currently holds the position of the RIBA Vice President for Future Studies.The Italian publishers L’Arcaedizioni recently published a monograph book on his practice’s work.
John Lyall, Chair, is also the Vice President of Future Studies at the Royal Institute of British Architects. As such he was interested to find out how many of the audience were architects with a show of hands – just a couple. And a few clients and local authority officers were present. With such a small turn out from his own profession, John insisted that the findings of the day should be as widely publicised as possible to architects – who needed to know these things are happening.
John outlined the two strands in the collaboration merger/mayhem question, which have exercised him. First there are the people who collaborate; who is involved, and how is the balance to work? How can they work together? In his experience, the best collaborations are a result of a blank sheet of paper, no preconceptions; the end piece being a surprise, impossible for either individual to predict. Non-collaboration is where people are arranged to work together, actually work in parallel and their output is somehow joined at the end (he referenced a dance video piece by Jasper Johns, John Cage and Merce Cunningham which in his view has ‘no soul’, because the artist, the composer and the choreographer did not really interact to create something unique). 
The second strand is the people who will use or inhabit the result of the collaboration. The public, the client should be involved in the collaboration. Sometimes it works well – John had worked with a school involving them in the process of creating a big town square installation, which brought more to the project than the artistic collaborators could have done. The weakness of this example, though, was the lack of follow up. By the time the funding was in place and the project completed the children who had been involved had moved to other schools.
The range of speakers for the day reflects the range of practice we are exploring: a sculptor, an architect, an artist-turned-arts instigator and a psychologist.
	Richard Wilson, sculptor
(Richard Wilson is one of Britain’s most renowned sculptors, celebrated for his inspired interventions in architectural space which draw heavily for their inspiration from the worlds of engineering and construction.
Wilson is currently one of only a handful of artists invited to make a major work for the year long North Meadow Sculpture Projectat The Millennium Dome.Wilson has produced A Slice of Reality, a narrow 70 foot high vertical section cut from a scrapped ocean dredger, installed in the Thames next to The Dome, as a melancholy homage to the loss of Britain’s sea-faring industries.
Wilson has been exhibiting internationally for the past twenty years and has made major museum exhibition and public works in countries as diverse as Japan, USA, Brazil, Mexico, Russia and Australia, and worked throughout numerous countries in Europe. Wilson has also represented Britain in Sydney, Sao Paolo and Venice Biennales and been nominated for the Turner Prize on two occasions. His seminal installation, 20:50, a sea of reflective sump oil, is permanently installed in the Saatchi Collection.)
Richard explained that all work conducted at a certain scale became collaborative, in his opinion, because without other contributions his work would not get made. Advantages of this team working he outlined as follows:
•	Problems were shared
•	Extend your own practice
•	Extend your profession into other areas, getting different type of recognition for work achieved
•	Taken more seriously, when approach funder with other professionals lined up to assist, the project is more credible
•	Challenge your own aesthetic, keeping artist agile in redefining original ideas
•	Allows for more output.
	Millennium Dome project –‘A slice of Reality’
A tribute to the long history of merchant seamanship on the Thames, A Slice of Reality was a sliced ship (The Trent) which involved co-ordinated teamwork from engineers, English Partnership, Seaworks transport company and many others. The work is intended to present a slice of heritage on the point the meridian line slices Greenwich as well as revealing an envelope for space, rather like the Dome. 
	Tokyo public art project –‘Entrance to the Utility Tunnel’
A service area, which supported utilities access to hotels and banks, was a staircase 4m x 1m going down into the ground. Richard was asked to respond to the area as an artist and installed a staircase on top of the hole. Richard used a London architectural team to draw up his plans. The project was co-ordinated in Japan by Art Front Gallery, who imposed earthquake resistant specifications onto Richard’s specifications the final instructions were imposed on him.
	The Art Necklace Project, Japan ‘Set North for Japan 74:33:2’
Richard described how he had been asked to make an artistic statement about relationships and human nature, for a project to regenerate part of the West coast of Japan. Richard’s response was a skeletal structure of his own London house transposed to Japan, but retaining its London position in terms of verticals and horizontals. So the Japanese house is virtually upside-down and tilted to one side. In this way the relationship between the London real house and its Japanese clone/shadow could be explored artistically. Originally planned for a paddy field, it has been constructed on the site of a primary school. The project was realised through extensive involvement of structural engineers and architects in London and Japan. 
	Water table, Matt's Gallery, London 1994
Installation into the Matt's gallery, London originally conceived as an upside-down cricket pavilion set into the floor of the gallery. Hitting the London water table however completely revised the artwork and water table was created, letting a billiard table into the floor to a dept of 1metre and providing a seventh pocket to view London’s ground water. The experts provided the parameters within which the artwork could be made.
	Over Easy, ARC Arts Centre, Stockton on Tees, 1999
Over Easy is something Americans do with eggs – they flip them over and back again.A complicated project, developing over two years fraught with problems. The architects working on the ARC Arts Centre would not take responsibility for the artwork, so Richard put together his own team of mechanical and structural engineers and construction company.
The sculpture is an 8m-diameter disc, which is part glazed and part rendered in rich yellow with a small steel walkway to break the sunlight. In resting position the sculpture appears to be part of the main exterior wall of the building, but gradually the piece moves, dislocating from the main wall and referencing the activities of the people and dynamic artwork inside the building. 
Some of the project’s problems centred on the individuality of the specification required to operate and maintain the work. Other problems arose over the liability of the separate parties t one point Richard was personally liable. The final protective seal to keep grit out of the brushwork has never been completed, but otherwise the work is operational and met its brief of providing a distinctive flag for the ARC and a strong reference to the performing art work it presents.
	Questions to Richard Wilson
Q: What is the public understanding of your work? How much of the expression of your thought processes and motivations have been conveyed to the public, or does the work have to stand on its own?
A: I don’t go out to educate people. As a sculptor I play with architectural space rather than stone or bronze, I like to manipulate interiors in such a way that people will have to rethink what is the building’s function. Over Easy works for a child as well as an older person. It works for a motorist, a cyclist, passing trade and people inside the venue. I want little moments to grow quite gently so that the work becomes integrated into the local folklore, a moving building as part of a city’s culture, without me having to be a preacher about it.
Q: Your version of collaboration seems to be working with people with different expertise in different areas and seeing what happens when they coincide.
A: Collaborating keeps you aesthetically fit. If you work alone, you have an idea then you fabricate it and the thinking process often tails off a bit. Working with others, the idea continues to be challenged and honed resulting in something created by a team, which is almost anonymous.
Q: You always seem to be the instigator. Do you ever sit down with a collaborator and a blank sheet of paper as John Lyall suggested?
A: A project that is unrealised was starting from scratch with architect Dominic Williams working on the Baltic in Newcastle. I wanted to make the building move somehow to demonstrate that the place was going through a major process of change. Dominic’s proposals regarding removing most of the building to allow light into the space, to me suggested working with exterior lights. Our close working on these ideas generated the piece.
Q: It seems sad that the original architects disowned the piece.
A: They didn’t disown it. But insurance and health and safety are big issues when you are talking about permanent works have spent 25 years making temporary works and I know now there are two sets of rules, you can play in the gallery but in the public area you have to face these issues, and they are big issues.
	Juliet Bidgood, MUF, Any Day Now
Juliet works on the urban scale of projects and in their material resolution.She is the lead designer on Shared Ground, the regeneration project for Southwark Street that pioneered methods of working with existing communities.She led the team in the competition winning the Car Free Londonproposal.As part of the muf initiated Scarman Trust ‘practice to policy, Juliet devised The Restless Youth Club, a user generated 24 hour access to existing under used amenities.
muf is a collaborative practice of art and architecture committed to working in the public realm.The practice was formed in 1994 by artist Katherine Clarke and architects Juliet Bidgood and Liza Fior.
muf’s ambition is “to embed enlightened and enduring interventions that address both the physical and social fabric of the urban environment and extend the potential pleasures of public space by making room for speculative dreaming and imaginary thinking.”
muf’s process of design development makes space to value the desires, imagination and skills of those people that live, work or play in a given area.The organisation seeks to establish effective means of consultation, negotiation and collaboration to enable it to research existing situations and to give a precision to the realisation of the proposals.
The practice is experienced in extending the collaborative process of working to include the client and client constituency or user/audience, as well as experts in the subject area of the proposal.
What forms can collaboration take? What effects do the collaborative processes have on other kinds of work you can make? My talk is entitled “Any day now ..” because it is intended as a snapshot of the work in the studio now and how the projects I will demonstrate are linked through our collaboration together. So I begin with a slide of our lounge  this collaboration takes place.
Main themes of my presentation:
•	Work with cultural institutions
•	Work concerned with landscape and geography
•	Work to do with funding providing space for young people 
The Museum of Women's Art project, 94 was a model which encouraged the client to put their hand in and move things about the model.
Preoccupation with linking the look of the highly visual experience of spaces with the experience of movement grew in the next project bid for Walsall Art Gallery. Our proposal for making the building fully accessible, involved the lines of elevation being described as lines of negotiation. It was conceived that the elevation should negotiate or mediate between the art gallery and town. 
This idea of wider links between an institution and its social and physical geography was developed across a range of projects for the Walsall Art Gallery.
Artist Katherine Clarke later made a video called ‘Illuminate’ in collaboration with a social entrepreneur who wished to improve contact between young people and the people she worked with in an old people's home. Fragments of people's romantic reflections in relation to the town were recorded at a local festival and projected at the annual Walsall Illuminations. A billboard was shown outside the Walsall Art Gallery at the end of the project commending all the people involved.
This is one trajectory in time, which shows the development of certain types of collaboration. Another project to house a Roman Mosaic in St Albans which was running in parallel at muf with the Walsall video, shows how the two influenced each other, one dealing with a town’s geography and history and the other a town’s geography of romance.
Our proposal for Southwark Street was to enliven the space on the (sunny) south side of the street. Artist Katherine Clarke made a video, which conceptualised the idea of a 'Shared Ground' by editing together the desires of the residents and users of the street. Using Thames Shingle and concrete, cast in situ, the pleasure of walking on a street was explored with the geometry of the pavement. The pavement has swollen to reclaim part of the road.
The third strand, to do with funding began with a commission from an Austrian gallery to create a work about water as a metaphor. Our response was resolved through a series of conversations within the studio, but broadly we became interested in what water meant, how it was used and what for. We gave the artists’ fee to a charity called Woman Aid to repair pipes to the water supply to Armenia. Images of the pipes that were in disrepair were shown against the distressed interior of the Austrian Gallery
This work precedes our proposal for the local zone of the Dome. We wanted to make a series of projects around the country in real locales and then bring back duplicate pieces to the Dome deploying the budget outside of the exhibition. It was a critique on the idea of focusing so much energy and resource on this central site in London. The project was eventually rejected by the client, but we developed a relationship with the Scarman Trust, which aims to enable democracy at a local level. Their 'Can Do' project invited 'Can Doers' to apply for small awards to make changes to their locale. The play strip was devised with Elaine Bill as a template for how to make a playground for her own and other local children on a modular basis, adding a new strip each year to realise her larger ambition. Daniel Rogan wished to make more space in his area of Birmingham for young, disaffected men. An audit of current local authority provision for young people and a parallel audit of where young people were hanging out, was drawn together as a critique of existing facilities.
	Questions for Juliet Bidgood
Q (from artist): The process of collaboration seems to have given your work a moral conscience. Was that deliberate at the outset, or something that happened because of collaboration, making you want to extend the collaboration to your audience?
A: More a part of the way we work response to any brief is a series of questions which then need to be researched to find answers to them. For example if the brief is to ‘improve' Southwark Street, on who's terms will it be 'improved' so we need outside input to answer that question.
Q (from architect): Has the collaboration worked for muf because the projects are kept simple. Projects that are very complex could easily go drastically wrong if there is a weak link in the collaborative chain. muf has obviously achieved a lot, do you think it is better to collaborate on simpler projects with low risks?
A: Not sure. It seems risky to us. The skill or expertise in good collaboration relates as much to how you respond to things going wrong/not to plan.
Q: It seems the quality of the art projects has to equal the shelf life of the building. 
A: I really enjoy the idea that the artwork the video work – makes space conceptually for another kind of building to come along later. These different time frames for different works I find exciting.
Q: Do you think that because clients feel they cannot comment about art in the way they can about buildings and architecture, artists can get away with more than an architect can, and therefore your practice can be more creative because of involving artists as you do?
A: Certainly I’ve always thought that our Southwark Street work went in a different direction because Katherine (the artist) did not ask pragmatic questions like “would you like a tree, or a car“what is your wildest dream scenario, your wish come true and where would you like to be in 5 year’s time?”
Q: How did the idea of the shoreline on Southwark Street come about?
A: Our response to the site, you always had a sense that the river was near, but you couldn’t see it.
Q: So not from a member of the public saying “I wish I had the river by my front window”
A: No, the things people told us had indirect influence, not a straight or literal interpretation.
Q: I’m interested in today’s title “Merger or mayhem”. I wonder which word best describes your collaborative process?
A: Both in the sense that the merger or the meeting is highly negotiated, but sometimes there is mayhem. I’ve tried to show you different ways in which we work, allowing us to use our different visions.
Q: How do you involve users in your work?
A: We try to involve the people who live and work in an area. We try to find ways to listen to what people say. The Birmingham work showed how much real expertise about their own situation people have, which seems self-evident when you find it out, and you wonder why nobody else has found that out already.
John Lyall: Malcolm Miles said that people are experts on their own city.
Comment (from a psychologist):Stephen Hawkins has said recently he doesn’t care what people think or feel, he is interested only in scientific truth. I think that is an untenable position. Surely the ultimate use of any project must be its starting point, and the real meaning of collaboration is involving the ultimate users right at the start. 
Q: How much practical input is there from you and your colleagues in the making of the products?
A: It varies. We make the videos ourselves, some projects are conventionally produced. We work with artists and craftspeople on some making, and contract builders for others.
	Gail Boland and Dr Philip Leather
Gail Boland trained in Fine Art at Middlesex Polytechnic and practised as a sculptor in London before moving to the Midlands. She initiated projects with Radio 3 and commercial radio to promote and interpret the visual arts as an important element of mainstream culture.She has also worked on a long-term community video project in partnership with Wolverhampton Polytechnic, Faculty of Fine Art.
Gail became Arts Co-ordinator for United Leeds Teaching Hospitals (now the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust) in 1992.Between 1996 and 1998, the project she co-ordinates, Tonic, created an interior design strategy and commissioned over £1.5 million of artwork for the Jubilee Building of the General Infirmary in Leeds (LGI).The framework for the interior design scheme and the arts projects was an environmental policy which aimed to support patients and staff physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually in order to allow for the optimum ‘patient outcome’.
Dr. Phil Leather, Deputy Director, Institute of Work, Health & Organisations (I-WHO), University of Nottingham Business School is an applied psychologist who specialises in investigating the effects of the physical environment (whether natural or person made) upon human health and well-being.He was educated at the University of Lancaster, where he gained a BA in English, followed by an MA and PhD in Psychology.He moved to the University of Nottingham in 1983, where he lectured in the School of Psychology until the creation of I-WHO in 1999.
Phil has undertaken a number of important studies on the effects of buildings on their users and was asked by Tonic if his institute would be interested in designing and undertaking an evaluation of aspects of the LGI Jubilee Building, in terms of patient benefit. His study set out to test the veracity of the claim that a more ‘pleasing‘reassuringenvironment can promote patient well-being and recovery.
	Gail Boland, TONIC
Gail began by saying that she has always believed in the value of art in creating a healthy society, in Healthcare this value is taken literally, and Phil Leather’s studies have quantified that value.
TONIC sits within the NHS system, but derives no funding from it funds are raised separately. Three full-time art specialists work with Tonic to service the largest NHS Trust in Britain – 6 acute hospitals, a dental institute, a chest clinic, 16,000 staff, 4.5million square feet of floor space and over 1.25million patients every year. This gives you an idea of the scale we operate on, and the numbers of stakeholders in any initiative. 
Esme Davies championed a big art input into a major redevelopment of the General Infirmary in Leeds £92 million project. The idea was not revolutionary work in Staffordshire, Chelsea and Westminster, St Mary’s, St George’s, St Luke’s in Bradford and others provided useful models. The Leeds Trust has a strong environmental policy should be supported physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. Physically it should be warm and comfortable, intellectually it should be well laid out and logically designed, emotionally it should be soothing and promote recovery, but spiritually is where the arts come in! Arguments used to push for art in the hospital were:
•	Arts offer a relief from blank walls
•	Arts provide landmarks for navigating large buildings
•	Art can give departments and wards an individual identity and encourage staff morale
•	Arts bring human-crafted elements to a highly technological, clinical space
•	Arts create talking points to break down formality and improve communication between clinicians and patients.
•	Arts reflect the world in which patients normally live
•	Arts create positive distractions to reduce anxiety and stress
•	Patients can participate in arts activity
•	Arts give dignity to the surroundings of the very old and dying.
Hospitals tend to derive from several traditions religious houses where care of the ill is seen as central to the fulfilment of one’s faith, workhouses where the sick poor were treated to a kind of moral correction, and the military hospitals which were functional and temporary. Leeds had inherited buildings from the first two traditions, the Gilbert Scott building was an elaborate and costly construction with an arts collection for the sick. St Jamesbeen a workhouse.
For the new building a culture change was required. The art involvement was designed to change the whole experience of coming to this hospital. Artist Tess Jaray designed the entrance square, with sculpture commissioned from Tom Lomax. Planting of lavender and lilac provided a fragrant entrance. 
There were staff committees to work out operational requirements for each area designated for artistic input. Each lift vestibule was given a different identity to help with navigation. Light boxes were installed in the ceilings above beds of patients who have to lie still, artists were involved in all areas parks, children’s areas, residencies. We were trying to change the culture with staff as much as the environment.
	Dr Philip Leather, I-WHO
The study was to compare patient experience of Leeds General Infirmary (LGI) before and after the environmental changes. 
The thesis was that changes in the hospital environment to become more supportive would enable patients to cope better with stress through:
•	not contributing to stress (traditionally hospital environments are stressful in themselves) 
•	helping you to cope by providing positive distraction your mind off your illness allows you to recover faster.
Methodology employed included convergence of evidence, evidence of purely subjective opinion, evaluation, appraisal, and judgement. As a psychologist, Phil wanted to investigate whether positive effects were simply an epi-phenomenon, is it something which just resides and has nothing beyond it? Therefore a range of outcomes were measured such as people’s mood-states, stress, arousal and cognitive ability. Physiological reactions were also measured, such as pulse, blood pressure, drug use, and length of recovery time after surgery. 
So the same studies were carried out prior to the environmental changes as were afterwards. Patient sampling was carefully made so that subjects of the same age range, illness type, gender, smoking profile, and weight were compared before and after. These are the factors known to be correlated with heart problems.
Phil focused on one particular study cardiology ward. Patients were subject to major heart surgery. In the old LGI the ward was the old Nightingale-style ward with beds on either side. It was at ground level, the road outside was on an incline and so half the ward’s windows were blanked out. Intuitively staff used daylight therapy – if patients were not recovering well their beds were moved to the part of the ward with better natural light. In the new wards, there were a maximum of 6 beds with proper access to natural light and use of artwork. 
Phil and his team had done a lot of research to establish a scale for environmental appraisal. This ranked the images and words people use when talking about hospital environments so that an objective measure could be made of the patient’s descriptions of their environment before and after the changes. The results of the environmental appraisal tests showed a marked improvement in the phraseology used to describe the environment – pleasant, relaxing, welcoming etc. Also there was a marked improvement in mood, patients found the new environment more stimulating and positively arousing. Their pulse readings were lower, their consumption of analgesics (particularly strong ones) was reduced and their post-operative stay in hospital was shorter by 3 days. These results were so startling, we went back to check there had been no other changes – in terms of medication used, consultants operating, type of care offered there was none.
This is persuasive evidence. Although the statistical data is complicated to measure, there are clear trends which demonstrate the very real effect of design on patient recovery. For this research to be compelling, more studies need to be carried out in other environments ensure the benefits of these artwork interventions are more widely available. There is no accident in the correlation between people’s subjective appraisals of the new building – pleasant, welcoming, friendly the statistical evidence of lower pulse rates, lower drug intake and swifter recovery. 
Further specification is the next step, in Phil’s view, for this research. Greater specification for the precise elements in any image or design which promote these positive outcomes, and greater understanding of the processes on which art, design and architecture work. Phil suspects it is partly emotional, but partly to do with cognition, appraisal and interpretation of meaning.
	Questions for Gail Boland and Dr Philip Leather
Q: How do you go about commissioning the artists, Gail?
A: Some artists were invited to submit work, some were found through open national competition. We were looking for artists who had a track record of working in health care.
Q: (architect) What do you mean by ‘cultural? And is it not true that the elements which have involved artists in LGI are the usual bits of peripheral furniture, while the rest of the building is not the result of any sort of artist/architect ‘collaboration’?
A: The subject of ‘cultural imagesthought to be a key factor in human response. If we all derived from peoples in the savannah of Africa, it has been suggested that we would all provide a common response to certain natural images, ‘hard-wiredto speak in our consciousness. But there is a counter view that certain societies have learned to associate certain imagery with particular emotions, such as a snake with very negative feelings. 
In terms of the elements involved in the LGI project, some of them could be termed trivial, although their effects can be quite significant. However, if the importance of involving art and design in these health-care effects is only partially understood, then it is the smaller elements which must prove their use and pave the way for more fundamental involvement.
Q: I understand that the materials used in Leeds were very important for the finished artworks, can you talk a bit about the collaboration required to effect that?
A: Nowadays I get the impression that architects are sometimes limited by the finishes and ranges of building materials suppliers offer them. We had to work very closely with some of the manufacturers on Tess Jaray’s work produce the result the artist wanted. This has been a challenge and a triumph of the process.
	Axis presentation by Kate Hainsworth, Chief Executive
The Creative Collaboration series is important to Axis because it is about getting people together to move forward a debate, which in turn translates into action. This reflects what Axis does. Axis provides a kind of dating–agency service, helping to match those people who want to work with artists, with the artists who suit their needs to facilitate creative collaborations. 
Axis is the national information service for contemporary visual artists and craftspeople living/working in the UK. Run from Leeds, Axis has a national remit to try to raise awareness of visual culture. The main tool for doing this is the Axis database, which is a computer database of images and text about contemporary visual artists and makers.
Axis began as a research project in the late ’80s. In 1993 the company was designated a national strategic initiative by the Arts Council of England and in 1999 the launch of the Axis database on-line and on CD ROM saw the culmination of the work to make the information on artists fully accessible. 
The service is used most by consultants, commissioning agents, exhibition and gallery organisers, some significant others being local authorities, architects, researchers and libraries. They use Axis to find artists to work on commissions, in residencies, in exhibitions, to buy work and to research for academic study. Axis is useful in the very early stages of sourcing artists. Quite often it is apparent that artists sourced through Axis have their name put forward up to 4 years after the initial contact for details.
The Axis database can be reached via a number of mechanisms:
•	Axispoints. These are computer terminals, which present the Axis database, hosted in appropriate venues around the country.
•	Axis database on CD ROM. The CD ROM allows users to access the artwork images quickly and at their leisure. This was made with funding from the DTi and in 1999 exported to British Council offices and British embassies worldwide.
•	Axis database online –www.axisartists.org.uk. The online database provides 5 basic searches and is very popular, averaging 16,000 visitors to the search page every month.
•	Axis information service – via telephone, fax, email. Axis staff carry out searches according to the criteria described by the caller and post/email the results to them with thumbnail images. Colour printouts and CVs are available at cost.
[There was a quick demonstration of how the Axis database can be used.]
	Plenary session
John Lyle introduced the plenary session with a proposal on how the Axis database could be expanded to contain some information from artists on why they would like to collaborate with architects and why they think they are/would be good at it. He also suggested that a similar section should be introduced for architects who want to collaborate with artists, side by side on the same database.
Art consultant: It is difficult for young artists to get involved in this process, because you need experience to start work in a public field. It’s quite different to working in a gallery space, is there any way we can overcome that through some kind of training?
Artist: Perhaps you could go and join a public arts project as part of your training as an artist. There is a new kind of spiel, a vocabulary you need to learn and certainly a kind of confidence you need to develop to know what kind of presentation is appropriate in projects like this.
Architect: I think architects should take some responsibility. If we promote a culture which is embracing rather than competitive, where architects welcome the idea of working with younger artists, then it is up to the architects to persuade their clients and take responsibility for the artist. It is wrong to leave the artist as a solo agent, be they young or experienced.
Artists: I want the responsibility of a big project, but I don’t want to be liable. Most contracts written between an agency and an artist focus on copyright and artistic integrity but fail to address liability.
Arts administrator: I would like to see Axis develop this national database beyond architects to include engineers, consultants, landscape consultants and so on.
Artist/art consultant: A project I worked on recently is an example of good collaboration – the architect took the bold move to commission an artist to design the main staircase, and the structural engineers who worked with the artist to build the staircase made truly collaborative contribution to the process. These engineers are now looking for other artists to work with to push their technical expertise in new ways. The result was positive in many directions, but the experience showed how much had to be taken on trust.
Artist: Can I play devil’s advocate? Institutions, which try to promote collaboration, are the wrong way to go – good collaboration arises out of need. Once the barrier is broken and, as an artist, you approach a specialist, you realise they are human. This gives you confidence and develops you professionally. It can’t be taught at art college.
Architect: If I can add, most architects when they take the plunge and collaborate with an artist find to their surprise that they are very practical, not creative prima donnas. We need to bring more architects into this kind of discussion.
Artist: In our education system, art is still marginal, people tend to think of art as a celebrity thing rather than a discipline we can all enjoy. Involving artists in other walks of life is one way of advocating the value of art throughout society.
Artist/researcher: There are different ways of being an artist now. Artists operate as sole practitioners, but also as groups to facilitate urban regeneration, rather as muff do. There is a place in course of art and design for this collaborative practice to be introduced to students. Students from Exeter University faculty of Art have been shadowing professional artists working on collaborative art projects, and it is a very good way of introducing them to processes that work. Evaluation is absolutely fundamental to judge the effect of collaboration to all participants.
Arts administrator: Collaboration requires those involved to be compatible. Artists want to work collaboratively, and we need to facilitate artists getting access to sympathetic architects. In evaluation, the RSA Art for Architecture scheme has done an evaluation of all funded projects which will be published and disseminated. 
Architect: In the past, there was a strong divide between the fine and applied arts/design courses at art school. I think that has changed and the barriers have come down, but certainly in the past the artists did not want to ‘taint’ their practice with practical applications.
Planner: I’m part of the Urban Design Alliance, a council initiative to bring together planners, engineers and architects. Sadly artists aren’t seen as part and parcel of this group, which is an oversight. However, as part of our public consultation process, it is required that those involved in the process are articulate and able to communicate with the public. Artists need to have these skills too if they are to be involved.
Architect: There are artists who have these skills. You need to specify that those skills are needed. Artists interested in people and communities can usually find very creative ways of engaging the public in the process.
Artist: I don’t see engagement in the public consultation as something fluffy and nice. I see it as part of my responsibility in that I am working in the public realm, and it would be peculiar to dismiss public opinion in that case. It has to be accurate, like any research.
Artist: If chosen for a public art project, you are given a budget for the work and told to collaborate with your audience as part of that budget. Should you be negotiating with the commissioner to say you need more time for the talking to people bit, or what?
Architect: Yes, if that is part of your artwork proposition. Your client should understand the value of the public communication part of your work as much as the resulting artwork. I would like to see artists engaged on urban regeneration teams simply to contribute their vision on the outcome, not to produce an artwork.
Artist: I think it is vital to engage artists at the earliest stages of a building project, so that their input can best be used to influence the spaces as well as to decorate the walls.
Arts Council funder: The Arts Council and colleagues in the regional arts boards works hard to develop a framework policy for the support of professional and economic involvement of artists with other sectors. We have developed guidance on the key principles and objectives of involving artists in professional projects. We try to facilitate professional development of artists through support to agencies such as Axis, Artists’ newsletter and the National Artists Association. We recommend guidance on rates of pay, produce documents and templates on best practice. There is a lot going on and a lot of research has been done into status of artists, fees and how payments can be organised. This is being drawn together into an action plan to improve the status and well being of artists.

	Feedback from delegates
Highlighting issues for future discussion
	Number responding yes	
1) Evidence of successful collaboration	11	
2) Creation of documentation to reference successful projects	10	
3) Infrastructure and support for collaborative projects	13	
NB: Attendees could give more than one response.
The most popular issue for the future was Infrastructure and support for collaborative projects, which received 13 ticks. Evidence of successful collaboration gained 11 ticks, being the second main issue from the choices given.
There was also an opportunity to give your own ideas for the future. Some of the comments and ideas included:
•	How smaller collaborative groups could attract more support
•	Winning funding to support artists involvement in projects from the outset
•	The acknowledgement of two distinct yet equally valid practices, public art and art in public spaces
•	Inclusion of artist, architect, engineer and constructors at the debate.
•	More focus on what different kinds of collaboration take place and not as much time on discussing collaboration between experts rather than interdisciplinary collaboration and collaboration with non-expert partners

Axis, September 2000