An introduction to the double issue of the Art & the Public Sphere journal on the subject of public art.
Not much has been written about public art in the UK, not recently anyway so when Birmingham Big Art Project approached Art & the Public Sphere journal with the generous offer of six funded bursaries for writers, curators and artists it meant we were able to actively support some new work in this area. The project commissioned work by Garnett, Graham, Jordan and Whipps and launched an open call for papers from commentators actively engaged in discussing the topic of public art now. This has resulted in a series of contributions that: utilise theories on the contemporary political and cultural condition (Garnett, Orr and Lacy); consider new approaches to the function of art (Deturk, Medina and Saviotti, Szreder) and employ a more comprehensive concept of the public (Child, Graham and Jordan). A range of different positions, opinions and concepts are shared here.

The paper was used as an introduction to the conference 'Public Art Thinking' (Birmingham, UK, 22 November 2017) exploring the history of public art in the UK and the term 'public'. Item in this repository http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/3213/