PLACE

Jonathan Adamson - Huddersfield, West Yorkshire

Andrew Darke - Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire

A number of artists came together as a result of attending the international "Landscape & Sculpture" symposium, Manchester Polytechnic, 1-3 September 1989. Six artists including Sue Hilder, Ute Kreyman, Anneke Pettican and John Sexton formed the group Art & Place shortly afterwards. PLACE evolved from this group in 1994. Anneke Pettican worked with PLACE until 2001. Dr. Richard Cowell - Research Fellow at the Department of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University - has collaborated closely with PLACE since 1997.

• The group is a forum for debate and exchange on a variety of issues surrounding art, public art, aesthetics, society, infrastructure, architecture and the environment.

• The group works on ideas, papers for publication, exhibitions, open meetings and initiatives in these fields

• New responses and approaches are sought.

• Work is presented by the group, and others, for discussion and constructive criticism.

• Visits are made to sites of interest.

Note: all members have not necessarily been involved in all PLACE projects.

PLACE is an unincorporated association.

_____________________________________

December 1995 Work begins on proposals for Mount Stuart Graving Docks, Cardiff Bay - see the synopsis of the ATLAS project on www.atlasplace.clara.net.

December 1996 Andrew Darke initiates, through the Public Art Commissions Agency, Binningham, a collaboration with Ove Amp & Partners, Consulting Engineers, on a multi-client project to look at ways of reducing the environmental intrusiveness of mobile telephony base stations and infrastructure.

May 1997 Arts Council of Great Britain grants £5000 to facilitate the employment of artists' skills on the above project.

June 1998 PLACE and Ove Arup organise the "Beauty and the Mast" seminar and issues
meeting which brings together the mobile telephony industry, the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, Countryside Agency, Scottish Natural Heritage, Council for the Preservation of Rural England, planners, and others, for the first time in relation to this issue.

July 1998 PLACE and Ove Arup issue the ASPIRE TO CLEAR HORIZONS prospectus which proposes a cross industry project to reduce the impact of mobile telephony infrastructure, especially in rural areas.

November 1998 The potential sponsors meeting attended by participants of the "Beauty and the Mast" seminar and issues meeting, results in a revision of the above prospectus. The revised prospectus CLEAR HORIZONS is issued to the mobile telephony industry in March 1999.

April 2000 CLEAR HORIZONS report 'Mobile Telephony and the Environmental Intrusiveness of Base Stations' is published with copies sent to the DETR, conservation and heritage organisations, the mobile telephony industry and the press. Website - www.clearhorizons.fsnet.co.uk.

October 2000 Response to the Department of the Environment, Transport and Regions (DETR)
"Consultation Paper on Telecommunication Mast Development (by Telecommunications Code System Operators)" is returned.

January 2001 Andrew Darke initiates a collaboration between PLACE, the Forest of Dean District Council and The Countryside Agency which aims to draw the telecomms companies into a special project to reduce the impact of their infrastructure on the environment of the Forest of Dean.

February 2001 PLACE submits a response to the Scottish Executive's "Consultation Paper on
Telecommunications Mast Development - November 2000."

February 2001 ASPIRE TO CLEAR HORIZONS and CLEAR HORIZONS documents become
available on the Technical Indexes Ltd. Planning CD-Rom.

April 2001 Jonathan Adamson writes to the Chairman of the Peak National Park outlining a
number of ideas and suggestions that would reduce the impact of high voltage power transmission, initially in the Hazelhead, Longdendale area of the park, but with potential applications in other National Parks, AONB and the UK as a whole.

1 June 2001 SKY MAP (balloon release). Commissioned by PLACE to coincide with the official
opening of Cardiff Bay Barrage. Adrian Holme's and Hana Sakuma's collaborative performance/event offers an alternative experience to the erasure, enclosure and consumerism embodied in the development of Cardiff Bay.

1 August 2001 ATLAS website goes online - www.atlasplace.clara.net

11 August - 2 September 2001 ATLAS project presented at Galleri 21, Radmansgatan 5, 211 46 Malmo, Sweden as part of the exhibition "River, Estuary, Ocean."

September 2001 Scottish Executive Development Department publishes Planning Advice Note 62 (PAN 62) on Radio Telecommunications. PLACE's help is acknowledged by Senior Planner, Ben Train.

September 2002 Director of Planning for the Forest of Dean District Council, Jim Stewart, acknowledges PLACE's help on the new Supplementary Planning Guidance for Telecommunications Masts. The new Guidance will be sent to companies wishing to erect new telecomms installations in the Forest of Dean.

July 2003 The Countryside Agency organises a meeting in response to PLACE's Forest of Dean telecomms initiative, which brings together a range of interested parties.

PUBLICATIONS

1995 Article by Andrew Darke" Art & Place: Cardiff Bay" in "ECOS. A Review of Conservation," Vo1.16 No.1, 1995.

July 1998 PUBLIC:ART:SPACE, a book published by Public Art Commissions Agency (Merrell Holberton, London), includes the ATLAS project in its chapter "A strategy for public art in Cardiff Bay." The book documents a decade of PACA's advocacy, and commissioning, of art for public spaces.

August 2000 "alias" (artist led initiative advisory service) publication, documenting a pilot project, includes information on PLACE's contact with the service. The publication also uses a photograph on its cover of the pre-barrage tidal mud in Mount Stuart Graving Docks, Cardiff Bay, taken by Andrew Darke. The publication was commissioned by South West Arts and produced by Stroud Valleys Artspace.

February 2001 ASPIRE TO CLEAR HORIZONS and CLEAR HORIZONS documents become
available on the Technical fudexes Ltd. Planning CD-Rom.

June 2001 "Landscape Research," Vol. 26 No.1, publishes a polemic by Tim Hall and lain Robertson - "Public Art and Urban Regeneration: advocacy, claims and critical debates" - which includes a number of references to Andrew Darke's "ECOS" article. (See above.)

Januarv 2003 Dr. Richard Cowell’s report “The Scope for Undergrounding Overhead Electricity Lines” (commissioned by Friends of the Lake District from the UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development), reproduces two of PLACE's photographs of National Grid's 400Kv open trough system, in use at Woodhead, within the Peak National Park, for approximately 1/4 mile.

PLACE contends that the Woodhead, ground level, open trough system could be deployed more extensively by National Grid, particularly in and around National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The open trough system dramatically reduces the intrusiveness of the National Grid.

Contact:

Andrew Darke

tel. +44 (0)1594 562646
e.mail: place@atlascardiffbay.freeserve.co.uk
andrew@yorkleywood.freeserve.co.uk

Jonathan Adamson

tel. +44 (0)1484 536103

January 2004