This article discusses some the issues of creating art interventions in a public space like a London red telephone kiosk in Holborn. Part o

Tell us your story... In exchange for a penny artwork, artist Dawn Cole invites you to write a story inside a 1930s reproduced blank telephone book telling us an early encounter with a red telephone box or a telephone. A Penny For Your Thoughts is part of an ongoing art intervention in a grade II listed K2 telephone box in Holborn, exploring notions of innovation. We wish to collect anecdotes from people of all ages and from all places about their experience, whether hap

A surprising conversation took place in December 2014 with an Insurance Underwriter who underwrites recycling businesses where he explained that recycling as an industry could be jeopardised as insurance underwriters, like himself, are pulling out of the market. In the UK, not having adequate business insurance means you cannot legitimately trade. His firm had just refused to underwrite a major local authority’s recycling facilities and in his opinion they were unlikely to

While researching folk music for the Dead Rat Orchestra's The Cut tour across canals of England, Daniel Merrill discovered that corporate songs were written to celebrate the feat of construction. Corporate Songs was an evening discussion that followed on from this initial research describing how corporate songs have evolved and developed since the early days of the canals. City insurance worker sing IBM Auld Lang Syne outside The Lamb pub, December 2014 IBM Corporate Songbook

Could insurance be the unlikely environmental hero in forcing business practice and individual behavioural change? The Waste.Agency two months on... Photo by Graham Barker, John Lewis Bag in Regent's Canal When beginning the Waste.Agency intervention two months ago, the intention was to draw in people from the insurance industries to bring a perspective that might be at odds with artists and academics regarding how the economy is constructed. What surprises has been the gr

Is there a role for the insurance industry to become more attuned with abstract art as a way of reducing their liabilities, increasing profits while simultaneously helping forge a new way of societal interaction? Utopian drivel? Or possibly an unexpected outcome noted during the Waste.Agency’s abstract art intervention presently taking place in the insurance district of the City of London. Waste.Agency, Jon Pigram "I Love Vectrex, Nov 2014 Police forces, councils, NGOs, prop

A fascinating conversation during Tuesday (24 Nov 14) lunchtime took place with a Lloyd's Register employee discussing the difference in sea salt densities in the northern and southern hemispheres and the risk to super freighters. While developing our thoughts and approach to our upcoming series on plastic in the sea, discussion turned to the risk to ship propellers. A senior worker comes in from Lloyd’s Register who joins the conversation and explained in great detail that

Walking through London’s Trafalgar Square this evening, I happened upon a small but vocal protest against Shell Oil funding the Rembrandt exhibition, which recently opened at the National Gallery. As I stop to observe, a casual conversation developed with one of the protesters. Although respectful to the principle, and sympathetic to the underlying point the protest was attempting to make, there was a certain amount of simplicity that I found uncomfortably, and I often find

Provocation Article 4: This is the fourth in a series of provocative articles taken from a paper by Platform-7's founder critiquing the fad for hubs and the idea (within the UK) of the creative economy. These article will appear over the summer of 2014 in advance of a major new Platform-7 intervention, Creative Publics, beginning Autumn 2014. Professor Andy Pratt states in his study, The Enigma that is Platform-7, that the company ‘offers in civil society realms, new modaliti

Loretta Lees and John McKiernan have been invited to write a chapter for Geographies of Urban Public Art: Spatial Mediations of Art, People and Identities. “We’d like to include your chapter in the book section that explicitly yet critically addresses the production perspective of urban public art.” Returning to the 2012 essay, Art-led Regeneration in Margate: Learning from Moonbow Jakes Café and Lido Nightclub intervention, [click] John McKiernan will revisit Margate in sum

Taken from John McKiernan's Re-imagining Ladies Tights blog post, 20th March 2014 Public Tights Wash: Swiss Cottage, Camden Outside Swiss Cottage Public Library On Saturday 15th March 2014, students from the MA Music Theatre course at The Royal Central School of Speech & Drama joined Re-imagining Ladies Tights artists Anna Kompaniets and Lenka Horakova to create the Swiss Cottage public tights wash. This is the first of three street interventions with Royal Central, supported