Picture © Tony Griffiths
Hot on the heels of some of the North East’s most famous public artworks, the town of Spennymoor, near Sedgefield in County Durham, has launched the latest instalment of a public art project that they hope will capitalise on the region’s reputation as a hotbed of open air sculpture and art.
Not as tall and imposing as the region’s most famous piece, Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North, ‘The Spennymoor Signs’ do however involve the local community by incorporating 2500 different surnames of Spennymoor residents. The result is a series of eyecatching large scale sculptures that work as boundary signs near the town centre.
Designed and developed by visual poet Ira Lightman and design artist Dan Civico, the imposing art pieces are made of steel, with finely engraved names on them and light illuminations within. The two artists worked very closely with local residents to realise the project.
Picture © Tony Griffiths
"Over the past 18 months I've met some wonderful people in County Durham, all of whom feel very passionately about where they live,” said Lightman. “It's refreshing that so many residents are proud of their town and want to see it flourish."
"Visual art is a fantastic way to reach people en masse and Spennymoor has embraced these values and produced visual statements that will become focal points for generations to come. Hopefully future residents and visitors to the town will be enthralled by its public art work and will become part of Spennymoor's cultural heritage."
Like many former industrial towns in the UK, Spennymoor has suffered from economic depression since the decline of the coal industry. Projects such as these are at the centre of an ambitious regeneration project aimed at profiling the town's desire to be recognised as a rejuvenated place for people to live, work and visit.
Picture © Tony Griffiths
The unveiling of the signs is the second piece of permanent public art signage to be launched in the town during 2006. The Spennymoor Letters, launched earlier in the year, uses 10 large scale pieces of visual poetry written by residents to form a highly conspicuous poetry trail in the town centre that spells out the word S-P-E-N-N-Y-M-O-O-R.
"Both Spennymoor public art projects are a demonstration of all that we are trying to achieve with the wider town centre works,” said Graham Wood, Strategy and Regeneration Manager for Sedgefield Borough Council. "The Spennymoor Town Centre Improvement Project has been developed in the recognition that we need to make the town centre appealing to residents and visitors.”
“By working with so many local people in taking forward these projects, the expectation has always been that increasing numbers of people would feel an affiliation to their own town centre.”
These projects represent the immense sense of civic pride the residents and authorities feel about Spennymoor and reflect a wider commitment to the use of public art in the North East where investment and regeneration are top of the agenda.
