VISION

Knokke-Heist has a very diverse cultural offer.  The municipality is not only a place of tradition, but moreover a place of renewal and broadening. Knokke-Heist is a creative town that attracts talented artists. But it is also a city of participants: a municipality that believes that the involvement of the population in the cultural life is of great importance.

Art in public spaces means: all spaces that are accessible to the public. Those public spaces are not homogenous or uniform: they consist of several places that have all been embedded in a neighbourhood and a surrounding.  We also set goals for our vision on art in public spaces. We do not simply want to drop art in a public space; we want to integrate it in a way that can create meaning and promote encounters. And we want to realise this together with the inhabitants and users for whom those artworks are intended.

 When is art in a public space “good” art? It simply does not suffice to drop a beautiful, interesting or an aesthetically challenging work of art somewhere. It makes much more sense for a work of art to tie in with the context of the place in which it is embedded, with its history, its surrounding buildings, its functions and so on.

 A place is also the people living, working and walking there. A work of art must have a relation with the community of inhabitants and users in order to achieve artistic quality. What this relation looks like is different for every situation. There is no blueprint.

 For each project, one has to think about the scope, goals and partners: what is possible, desirable and necessary for providing a wide social basis?