Evaluating Scotland’s London 2012 Cultural Programme

FOREST PITCH Craig Coulthard’s Forest Pitch commission was part of Artists Taking the Lead, a series of 12 public arts commissions across the UK, funded by the UK’s Arts Councils to celebrate the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The project aimed to encourage debate about national identity, the natural world, sustainability, the nature of collective memory and the benefits of sporting participation. Football, art, the environment and social change all came into focus on 25th August when four unique amateur teams played two matches on a specially-created pitch in the heart of a Borders forest near Selkirk. Craig was initially inspired to create Forest Pitch by his own childhood experiences of playing football in the middle of a forest. The project invited the public to explore and challenge their views on landscape, memory, community, national identity and what it meant to be British. The project created a full-size football pitch hidden deep within a forest in the Scottish Borders. The commercial trees felled to make space for the pitch were used to create goalposts, a shelter and other infrastructure on site. The two football matches, one for men and one for women, involved amateur players from across Scotland who had taken up British citizenship or ‘leave to remain’ since 2000. It was anticipated that the matches would be watched by over 1,000 spectators and followed on line via a live internet broadcast. The players wore colourful team strips designed by Scottish school children from across Scotland. After the games, the site was designed to grow back naturally, with some native species replanted to encourage a more diverse environment. The shelter remains a place where people can come to witness the gradual reclamation of the pitch by nature. The artist received funding of £460,000 from Scottish Arts Council (Creative Scotland’s predecessor) which was subsequently managed by Creative Scotland. An additional £10,000 was received from Arts Council England. Forest Pitch was latterly included in the London 2012 Festival programme allowing for additional marketing, promotion and profile for both the project and the artist. Of the six themes governing the data gathering for the case study (quality artistic production and experience; audience participation and development; contribution to place identity; international impact; skills, leadership and social capital; legacy and sustainability) this case study focuses on three areas deemed of most importance by the artist and the objectives of Creative Scotland – namely quality artistic production and experience; participation and audience engagement; and contribution to place identity. QUALITY ARTISTIC PRODUCTION AND EXPERIENCE KEY DRIVER: The development of the artist to produce the best piece of art he could at this stage in his career was a key driver for this project Forest Pitch explored the relationship between the artist and the art he wanted to create. The artist wanted to explore his creative limits to produce as exceptional a work of art as possible at this stage in his career. Improving his work and skills in both the process of producing the artistic vision and delivering the final product, were imperative. The collaborative element of this project allowed the artist to increase his profile, engage with new creative and cultural organisations and develop the fusion of art and sport in unusual places. The participatory element of the project came as a secondary consideration. The artist wanted to test to see if he could translate what he wanted and imagined into reality. He worked with two companies, Public Art Commissions and Exhibitions (PACE) as project producers and Culture Creatives as the match day producers for the August 25th event. Delivering a project of the scale and size of Forest Pitch was not something the artist had embarked on previously and, whilst driving his own artistic development, he envisioned a final project that made people question themselves, their place in the natural world and their understanding of it. He wanted the audience to think about Scotland’s diverse cultures and the evolving notion of Scottish national identity. In terms of assessing artistic excellence externally, this was captured by comments on the day, the artist’s peers and media contributions. A media content analysis conducted by the evaluation team revealed that Forest Pitch received 13% negative press stories predominantly relating to issues of governance and legacy reported principally by Scottish newspapers. The press did not focuses extensively on the issue of artistic excellence but that is likely to be because discussion over funding had been the focus of pre-event press coverage. 90