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Showing posts from February, 2018

Irwell Sculpture Trail Tales (2) – Ed Allington

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In the first IST blog, I mentioned how the National Lottery Assessor, Mike Sixsmith, who recommended we receive the funding to build the trail, observed that we hadn’t bid for enough money to achieve the scale of its ambition. My previous experience had been with projects of up to about £15,000. When describing the aim of commissioning internationally significant artworks which would put IST on the world stage, I had guessed that such commissions would cost about £80,000. Mike and I were standing in Ramsbottom Market Square which was one of the highest profile sites on the whole trail. He really like the site and thought it had massive potential for a sculpture but, like with other key sites, he observed that such a location would need nearer to £250,000. It was this conversation that prompted the significant increase in the final lottery grant referred to in the last blog. Because of the high visibility of the sculpture, we created a selection panel of local councillors and o

Irwell Sculpture Trail – 25 Years of Public Art (1)

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This year is officially the 25 th Anniversary of the  Irwell Sculpture Trail   (IST). It’s a funny feeling realising that you have been working on something that long, provoking, inevitably, the urge to reminisce. As anyone who tried to study the Text Festival, before Susan Lord stepped in to establish the Text Archive , will know I am notoriously disinterested in past projects – as John Peel used to say: “The last song isn’t as interesting as the next song”.   Someone wanting to know about the IST can look at the website, visit the sculptures or, if studying public art, make an appointment to see the historical files. But there are very few people left who can tell the stories behind the IST and the artists, and actually only me left still able to recount the tales of the 40+ artworks plus supporting community projects, temporary works and exhibitions, and ultimately also the creation of the Bury Sculpture Centre in 2014. The first sculpture I curated was by an artist called