Potential Artwork
A transdisciplinary group will be formed from the local community, businesses, professionals and artistic community. As a group, they will suggest, source and discuss artwork to be exhibited within Alvanley Community Sculpture Meadow. Any acquisitions of work will be a group/committee decision.
Community Art
‘Community art is artistic activity that is based in a community setting, characterised by interaction or dialogue with the community and often involving a professional artist collaborating with people who may not otherwise engage in the arts’. It is a practice in which culture and artistic expression are generated by individuals and communities rather than by institutions of central power.’ (Community Art, 2022)
A concerted effort should be made to include a community artwork within the sculpture meadow, as the bringing together of the community to produce a work of art would epitomise the whole ethos of the project.
Owen Griffiths ‘Vetch Veg’ 2011 (owen griffiths artist - Google Search, n.d.)
Owen Griffiths
I have a huge admiration for artists whose work has a positive impact on the communities and landscapes they interact with. This includes artists like Owen Griffiths, whose socially engaged practice creates a catalyst for change within communities by bringing people and communities together to initiate new social cohesion and cross-community understanding.
In 2011, Owen was commissioned to create an interdisciplinary project working with the community, the Olympics and the city of Swansea. Using the artist as the communicator and the art as the catalyst, Griffiths produced the ‘Vetch Veg’ project, a socially engaged artwork which empowered, inspired and educated a society, developing a permanent community vegetable garden on unused, local authority land.
11 years on, the project is going strong and is still run by the community for the community. My aim is for Alvanley Community Sculpture Meadow to be a project that will continue to develop in the future, as the ‘Vetch Veg’ project has, with or without my input. In order for this to happen, the community must feel ownership and feel it to be mutually beneficial.