Island making: planning artistic collaboration

Abstract

A knowledge exchange programme exploring the role of art in relation to the planning context of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, this paper explores the role of artistic knowledge in making landscape. During 2013, 25 artistic workshops were developed in collaboration with residents and planning officials, resulting in an exhibition of works produced. From a pragmatist perspective this paper draws on ethnographic accounts of the realisation of the exhibition to reveal artistic knowledge exchange as ‘relational knowing’. The contribution of the paper is to recommend we account for artistic work as an ingredient of landscape planning. Although specifically drawing on fieldwork in Holy Island the experiential nature of this article makes a novel contribution across the field of rural planning.

Keywords:

• Anthropology
• art
• community
• island
• landscape
• making
• rural

Acknowledgements

This paper draws on the Holy Island case study, as part of Northumbrian Exchanges, an interdisciplinary AHRC knowledge exchange project at the Newcastle Institute for Contemporary Arts Practice, Newcastle University: a collaboration between the Centre for Rural Economy, Newcastle University Business School, Music, Fine Art and research partners across rural Northumberland. The artistic interventions were supported by the Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal. They were developed by the following artists: Claire Pencak; Tess Denman-Cleaver; Emma Rothera; James Wyness and Jenny Moffitt. Thank you to the reviewers for their extremely helpful comments and Martyn Hudson, David Suggett and Gary Charlton for their support in the development of this paper.