4.14 Public Art, Statues and Monuments
Related SPD sections • 4 5 Street furniture
Key City Plan policies 15. Visitor Economy 43. Public Realm
The City Plan specifies that applicants will be encouraged to provide high quality public art as an integral part of the design of new major developments, particularly around gateway locations and where they benefit legibility. It states that new statues, monuments, or memorials in the public realm will be directed outside of the Monument Saturation Zone.
The City Council has also developed a Cultural Strategy 84 which commits the council to ensuring Westminster remains a vibrant, welcoming, and inclusive cultural hub. The strategy emphasises that ‘art and culture in public spaces is about enhancing the public space and making it more appealing, but also about encouraging the social cohesion and identity of a neighbourhood’. Creative placemaking is identified as one of the key priorities, with various actions listed to improve and ensure culture is at the heart of public realm schemes.
This policy draws a distinction between public art, which is ordinarily developer or community led, and ordinarily located on private land, and commemorative art (such as statues, monuments or memorials) which often take the form of freestanding sculpture, and are usually proposed on public land.
Public
Art
Context
Public art is defined as a creation by professional artists or craftspeople to be enjoyed in public spaces and related to that particular space, site, or community. It can be freestanding or integrated within the fabric of a development. It is ordinarily on private land but must be readily visible and publicly accessible. Public art can take many forms, it is ordinarily permanent in the form of fixed art, statues and monuments, but may occasionally be more temporary in nature including artist residencies, interactive events, performances, augmented reality, sound, and light which adds to public enjoyment of the public realm.
Art plays an important role adding interest to the public realm and attracting tourists and visitors, and can assist in highlighting important buildings and spaces, creating a sense of space in new sites, and aiding wayfinding and legibility, and can define an area which people can identify and use to navigate. Art can be educational and thought provoking to help reveal aspects of our history and contribute to sense of place.
Only the best quality examples of new public art will be acceptable for Westminster’s buildings, streets, and spaces. The City Council encourages property owners, developers, designers, and architects to invest in the conservation of existing and creation of high-quality new public art in appropriate locations.
84 https://www.westminster.gov.uk/cultural-strategy
Where public art is proposed or required applicants are encouraged to engage with the planning service at an early stage of their application process. Documentation accompanying the application should set out how this guidance has been addressed and provide details of public art proposed, including:
• Theme, content, and relationship to place
• Explanation of artist selection process and artist involvement in design
• Community engagement
• Arrangements for future care and maintenance.
Planning permission will usually be required for the removal of public artwork, and this will be resisted without an equivalent or greater public art contribution.
Public art can often be successfully integrated into the fabric of the building, for example as relief sculpture, artist designed metalwork or glazing, artist designed landscaping. Free standing sculpture should not be the default approach to public art provision.
Developers and/or architects are encouraged to work collaboratively with professional artists during the design phase of the project. In selecting the public art approach in a new development, the artist will often be as well placed to identify opportunities for art as the design team.
Considerations to be demonstrated in new Public Art applications:
Public Art Guidance
A. Art works included in a development should be of high quality, be easily and regularly maintained by the owner or occupier, not impact on movement, fulfil all relevant public safety requirements, and should relate well to the form and quality of the surrounding environment.
B. Permanent public art delivered under a developer obligation will not normally be acceptable on the highway and should be provided within the development site itself
C. Proposals for public art should be located where it is accessible to and can be enjoyed by the public such as within piazza spaces between buildings. Art within buildings or behind gates will rarely be acceptable.
D. The artist’s name and title of the work should always be incorporated into permanent public art.
E. Innovation in the creation of public art is encouraged to create diverse and vibrant experiences in public spaces to meet the aspirations of modern-day communities and visitors.
Maintenance
Considerations to be demonstrated in maintenance of new Public Art applications:
Public Art Maintenance Guidance
A. The materials used should be considered for their robustness and suitability for the intended lifespan, their ongoing maintenance and in the context of the setting.
B. New installations should be accompanied by management plans to keep them in good order and these need to be maintained with the construction manuals for buildings and other property to allow future commissioners and contractors to retrieve the correct procedures, products and techniques for their proper conservation and good appearance.
C. The maintenance of public artwork within the private boundary of a site provided through a s106 agreement will usually be the responsibility of the developer or landowner.
D. Public Art should meet the Equality Act 2010 and should not pose a health and safety risk or restrict sightlines or pose a trip hazard.
E. All art installations on the highway (temporary or permanent) should be detectable at ground level by a symbol or long cane and consider all users experience of them in the context of the city environment
Temporary Art Installations
Temporary public art is an artwork which has a specific duration time as part of the project held in the public realm. Temporary public art can vary from performances and installations, which are a highly engaging experience for the public, animating under-utilised spaces and add to the diversity and interest of life in the city The installation of temporary art work may require other temporary uses (including tables and chairs) of the highway to be paused while the art work is in place.
Considerations to be demonstrated in temporary art applications:
Temporary Art Installations Guidance
A. Applications for temporary displays of art and performances should be considered in relation to issues of duration, safety, and management. Proposals should have regard to street trading/commercial activity guidance section in this SPD.
B. Any proposed temporary installation should not add burden to the existing highways maintenance regime.
C. The temporary installations should be appropriate and safe for both the intended location and anticipated footfall from visitors.
D. Public benefits for the community should be clearly defined and the consideration of the impact on all users taken into account
E. Where there are physical object(s), a decommissioning plan should be in place with a circular economy/recycling approach to minimise environmental impacts
Water and Light Features
Public art, both developer-led and commemorative, can take the form of artist designed lighting schemes and moving water installations. The maintenance of these elements is often costly and complex. If water or light schemes fail to be adequately maintained the public art contribution for that site becomes limited, or even nil. For this reason, proposals for new water features or relying entirely on lighting should be treated with great caution. Proposals in relation to light features should take into account the City Council’s published Lighting Masterplan 2019-2040 85 and Lighting Design Guide 2020 86
Statues, Monuments and Memorials
Context
Westminster has an outstanding heritage of more than 300 statues and memorials. Many of these were designed by the leading artists of their day and are major works of art in their own right. Almost half of all memorials, 47%, are situated in the royal and governmental heart of Westminster – a relatively small area centred on Whitehall and in the Royal Parks. It is not possible to continue to accommodate new statues and monuments in Westminster in the same scale as in the past, and the most central areas are already saturated. However, where new statues and monuments are acceptable their location within other areas of Westminster, where public art is under-represented, is encouraged.
Saturation Zone
The City Council has established a monument saturation zone as referenced in Policy 43 in the City Plan, where applications for new statues and monuments will not normally be permitted. The area of concern consists of the five Royal Parks, and seven conservation areas:
• Westminster Abbey and Parliament Square
• St James’s
• Adelphi
• Strand
85 Lighting Masterplan 2019-2040
86 Lighting Design Guide 2020
• Whitehall
• Trafalgar Square
• Savoy
Maintenance
Where a new statue or monument is, exceptionally, located on the highway or in Westminster’s parks or gardens, the City Council will need to be satisfied of the arrangements for future maintenance, including maintenance in perpetuity and associated landscaping works. Ordinarily this means that a one-off commuted sum payment will be required to cover future maintenance costs.
Existing Statues, Monuments and Memorials
The City Council is also responsible, as a local planning authority, for dealing with planning or listed building consent applications to remove any statues, whether in our care or the care of others. Many existing status and sculptures within Westminster are listed and therefore, any works to a listed public artwork will require listed building consent and planning permission will also be required for the removal of public artwork.
The Mayor of London is committed to ensuring that the capital’s population and history are celebrated and commemorated. As part of this, the Mayor set about establishing the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm. The role of the Commission is to enrich and add to the current public realm and advise on better ways to raise public understanding behind existing statues, street names, building names and memorials. It is committed to building an accessible programme which is sensitive to the beliefs, views, and opinions of all Londoners, helping people have a better understanding of London’s diverse histories.
Community engagement
Local community engagement in the selection and commissioning process is encouraged. Explanation of the work to be provided, where appropriate is encouraged.
For proposals to relocate or remove public artworks, consideration should be had to seeking views of the artist or commissioner of the artwork, as well as local communities.
We will normally seek the retention of existing statues, monuments and memorials but will follow the approach set out in the NPPF to ‘retain and explain’ (paragraph 204, NPPF 2023) . This may include re-interpretation, added layers and installations, new artworks, displays and counter-memorials, as well as non-physical interventions, such as education programmes, where appropriate.
Considerations to be demonstrated in new Statues, Monuments and Memorial applications: Statues, Monuments and Memorials Guidance
A. Existing statues should generally be retained and where appropriate, explain their historic and social context
B. New statues or memorials should generally be resisted within the monument saturation zone.
C. Where new statues and monuments are acceptable in principle, they should generally be located in areas of Westminster outside the identified saturation zone, where public art, statues and monuments are under-represented
D. Proposals for new statues and monuments should demonstrate how they relate to the context of their proposed setting. Proposals for new statues and monuments where there is no relationship between subject and location should be resisted
E. No statues or memorials should be erected before ten years have elapsed from the death of the individual the statue or monument relates to or the event commemorated.
F. Free-standing public sculptures or monuments are encouraged where they are designed to the very highest standards, where they are appropriate and where they sit happily in the street scene.
G. Multiple memorials to the same individual or event will be resisted unless exceptional circumstances can be demonstrated for the proposal.
H. Local community engagement in the selection and commissioning process is encouraged.
I. In circumstances where it is considered necessary to relocate or remove a statue, clear and convincing justification should be provided, for example where the existing site has been compromised by changes to context and where the relocation will help to better reveal their significance proposed for removal