Mapping Contemporary Art in the Heritage Experience: Creation, Consumption and Exchange

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'Mapping contemporary art in the heritage experience: Creation, Consumption and Exchange' is an interdisciplinary research project that will critically examine the role and practice of temporary visual art commissioning within heritage properties in Britain today, mapping the current landscape and exploring the impact of this activity on its producers and audiences. It approaches this subject from multiple perspectives, bringing together the knowledge and experience of scholars, artists, heritage professionals, volunteers and visitors. Art commissioning has always been linked with Britain's great historic properties. Recent decades have seen many heritage organisations vigorously re-engaging with contemporary art, investing in this as a way of developing new opportunities for public engagement with heritage properties and their histories. Arts organisations including Arts Council England (ACE) strategically support this work, promoting it as a significant means of fulfilling their mission to promote excellence and public benefit. For many artists commissioned work for heritage properties is an increasingly important strand within their practice.However, and despite strong support from major organisations including the National Trust and ACE, the actual impact of such projects on their producers and audiences is poorly understood. Similarly there is little collective professional understanding of the broader character of the contemporary arts in heritage field and its commissioning practices. As a creative practice-led collaboration with two major UK heritage partners this project makes a strong and unique contribution to the production of new knowledge around this significant but under researched area of the visual arts.Through case study research centring on the development of new art commissions at four heritage properties the project will explore in detail how contemporary artists engage with heritage narratives and how these artworks are received and consumed by visitors. The case studies will be accompanied by the production of a new online resource that develops, expands and digitises an existing audit of such projects making this publicly available as a platform for further professional exchange. In doing so the research will generate a better understanding of UK contemporary arts in heritage practice and its future development needs. To deliver the project, specialist scholars and artists from Newcastle and Leeds Universities will be joined by a professional curator from the leading art in heritage organisation Art & Heritage to work in partnership with ACE, The National Trust, Churches Conservation Trust and the Contemporary Visual Art Network. The new understandings and insights generated by the project will be disseminated across the contemporary arts and heritage sectors. This will be achieved through the use of complementary channels designed for different target audiences: the public exhibition of the commissioned artworks at the heritage properties; a website and blog that will document the project for an online audience; a project exhibition profiling the commissioning process for the benefit of an arts and practitioner audience; a research report for circulation to our project partners, strategic arts and heritage organisations and relevant policy makers; an international conference aimed at sector specialists and academic audiences; conference papers and published articles in academic and professional journals.As public facing research this project will have specific benefit for practitioners, organisations and heritage visitors as well as for other academics working in the contemporary arts and heritage field, including creative-practice led researchers. It has the capacity and potential to stimulate new public interest in contemporary arts in heritage practice in the UK and internationally as well as providing much needed new knowledge for the sector, including for its funders and policy makers.