Preamble

While growing up only 8 miles from Stirling, ‘the Raploch’ was a by-word for social deprivation, drug-addiction and an area to be avoided at all costs. As with ‘the Gorbals’ the unique identity afforded by the prefix, seemed only to heighten notoriety rather than distinction. Nestled between Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument, in a valley carved through by the Forth, the Raploch was somewhere you went through to get to Stirling, it was not a destination in its own right. Maligned by local myth and demonized by the actions of prominent individuals, the Raploch faced an uphill struggle, riven, as it was, with endemic social and economic problems. A new chapter is, however, now being written as the Raploch is undergoing significant regeneration and transformation, part of which has featured the development of a series of public artworks.

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A Viewpoint

Public art is one of those subjects that draw attention from a myriad of professions and disciplines, perhaps unsurprisingly given the level of negotiation needed to realise projects and the often very ‘public’ nature of its presence. This is a key strength. It opens dialogues that would otherwise have stayed within academic ivory towers or have been kept within the suited-and-booted confines of the board room. From these various perspectives, public art is considered aesthetically, socially, politically and, increasingly, economically. At some point, however, the spectre of ‘evaluation’ tends to rear its troublesome presence. Paradoxically, despite the significant claims made for public art in policy documents and by advocates, it has been subject to very little evaluation. What evaluation there has been tends to be of the ‘tick box variety and carried out shortly after a piece has been realised thereby allowing little time for due reflection or for a work to ‘embed’ itself, positively or otherwise, within its locale. What tends to be evaluated is driven by funding criteria, pre-existing rhetoric, or the need to find something meaningful to fill a box on a completion report. Within this, the voice of the public is often a soundbite, but rarely taken as a meaningful contributor to debate. Between the rhetoric and the reality, there are a network of mediating factors in the process that have fundamental and often neglected impacts on the realisation of the final piece.

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Mapping Process

It was whilst sitting behind my desk, wading through a pile of rhetoric, that I received an e-mail about Creative Spaces. Serendipitously I was also in the process of applying for a grant to follow-up previous research in the Gorbals with another pilot project looking at public art processes. The artist, Peter McCaughey was about to begin working with a group of local participants to realise a series of, as the name suggests, creatively designed spaces along the Riverwalk in the Raploch. It would be false to claim that this was an opportunity to get involved at the start of a process, as Creative Spaces was the culmination of several years of planning and advocacy, but it was an opportunity to shadow the delivery of the project, to watch how it unfolded and, crucially, to begin to get a sense of this process and the mediating factors that would ultimately shape the final work and, arguably, its reception.

After contacting Kate Stancliffe, Stirling Council’s then Public Art Officer and the project manager, and Peter McCaughey to get a sense of ‘the story thus far’, Jo Sharp and I then approached the Raploch Urban Regeneration Company, charged with spearheading the regeneration of the Raploch. It is important to recognise that the Raploch URC is a pathfinder organisation, status which demands a degree of innovation and gives a mandate for experimentation but, consequently, means the URC will be scrutinised. It is a delicate line to tread, particularly in an area which has, in the past, been promised so much but in which so little has actually happened. Two of the URC’s key aims are to develop effective partnership working with a number of organisations and, wherever possible, to engage the community at every stage of the process. In order to facilitate this they set up an Enhanced Community Support Team (ECST), whose principal objective was to engage as wide and representative a section of the Raploch community as possible. Although a noble aim, this is by no means an easy task. Our first introduction to the Raploch community was through one of their monthly community meetings and what quickly became evident was the passion of local people for their place and also the delicate process of trust building and negotiation in which the URC was engaged – balanced with the reality of delivering a major regeneration project. The realisation dawned that, in conducting our research, we would have to work sensitively and diligently to develop a sense of the community/communities (I purposely avoid the term ‘understanding’ as to claim such a thing would be naïve) and to earn a degree of trust were we to really be able to interrogate the artistic process.

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A Rough Timeline

I can remember not being entirely sure what to expect whilst standing outside one of Glasgow School of Art’s buildings in Garnethill, Glasgow. This was to be one of the first real gatherings of the ‘participants’ who had been drawn together to work with Peter on Creative Spaces. They were coming to Glasgow to get some sense of the various forms public art could take and also to visit some of the professionals who were going to be involved in crafting the actual artworks. The URC was engaged in a series of capacity building projects which sought to develop skills for employment for local people and in a sense the arts process mirrored this, giving the participants an opportunity to meet a range of professionals and to get some ‘hands on’ experience through workshops. For some, this offered the prospect of furthering a pre-existing interest in the arts and one participant went on to advance an interest in stonemasonry through a subsequent apprenticeship leading to employment. What followed over the next few months was a series of events – visits, workshops, brainstorming sessions – both in the Raploch and further a-field, all of which fed into the creation of the final artist-led Creative Spaces: Map, Timeline and Viewpoint, along with an additional interpretation panel. The content of the work was fashioned through research by the participants and work undertaken by a creative facilitator, Claire Hunter, drawing forth memories and histories from local people. In addition, throughout the process, Peter sought to engage the wider community, assisted by the ECST, through community presentations and more innovative methods – including sitting in the post office and chatting to passers-by and erecting a gazebo on the site of future development to garner the opinions and capture the imaginations of local residents. On the 19th of August 2006, in a day of celebration involving much of the local community and community groups, the Timeline and associated works were officially opened.

Throughout we attended as many of these events as possible, observing and interviewing participants, individually and collectively, at various points. There was also the information gleaned from informal conversations and casual commentary. In addition to the verbal, we also asked the participants to make ‘photo diaries’ in order to gain a sense of their perception of place. As well as gaining a sense of the process from within, it was important to step without, to get a sense of the process from those who were not directly engaged. To this end, we issued a questionnaire to the entire community, held community focus groups (albeit poorly attended), site-specific interviews and regularly attended the community meetings, sometimes giving presentations and taking feedback. We also conducted several interviews with the other professionals engaged in the delivery of the Spaces. For all of this we were fortunate to have the luxury of time, something rarely afforded to those involved in the delivery or appraisal of such projects.

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Reflections

Just as the process of regeneration is rarely pain-free and seamless, so it would be wrong to reflect our research as entirely unproblematic. On a number of levels it raised questions about methodology and our own position within the research process. There were practical problems common to much research: interviews were arranged but interviewees absent; community ructions created issues of representation and parity; carefully devised postal questionnaires reaped few returns; and, there was the focus group with only one participant. Gradually the Raploch began to betray symptoms of consultation fatigue as, with the locals being questioned about housing, their environment and the regeneration as a whole, there came a point where carrying a clipboard or any paraphernalia of ‘the interviewer’ was an automatic signal for people to cross the road.

In our research we tried to mimic the artist’s capacity for negotiation, responsiveness and creativity. For academics, this had to be a carefully considered process, acknowledging that the innovative had to be combined with the traditional in order to triangulate our results and ensure, as far as we could, credibility. In this process certain ethical issues must also be acknowledged. Although all involved were fully informed about the purpose of our research, our ‘being around’ so much naturally resulted in a greater margin of trust that would otherwise have developed. Our understanding of the project, process and impact would have been significantly less without this but concurrently information was perhaps shared that would not have been otherwise. In being part of the process we become implicated within it. This is not to outweigh, however, the positives of the embedded research process through which we gained exceptional insight (from a variety of viewpoints), were able to follow the effect of the experience on the participants and to engage with the wider community at pivotal stages of the process.

As the first stage of works in the Raploch has been completed and work begins on The Village Square, we are beginning to draw together our research. It is hoped that, over the next few years, we will return to the Raploch periodically to get a longitudinal impression of whether and, if so, how the artworks are embedding themselves in the community. Through this, and other pilot projects, it is hoped that more innovative methodologies might be forged for considering public art, for engaging communities in the research process in order to understanding the role, if any, of public art and public art processes within communities.

The social and physical regeneration of the Raploch continues. At the time of writing, its central thoroughfare is closed as a new community centre, school, housing and the Village Square take shape. Problems inevitably remain as does a niggling notoriety but there is a sense that opinion is beginning to change. At various stages in the regeneration the idea of changing the name of the area was mooted but this was fiercely rejected by residents – despite its chequered history, and the extensive redevelopment, one thing that became clear during the research was that ‘the Raploch’ was a proud and purposeful community currently engaged in the difficult process of re-imagining itself and its identity.

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Credits

All images are courtesy Venda Louise Pollock, Jo Sharp and Raploch Urban Regeneration Company.

Vee and Jo are grateful to Peter McCaughey, the Raploch URC (particularly Judy Barrow, Fiona Spiers, Lynn Walker and Gillian Smith), Stirling’s Public Art Officer/Gingko Projects, the participants, Mike Hyatt, members of the Raploch Community Partnership and the Raploch community for their assistance in carrying out the research.

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