Quayside Public Art Strategy

In 2003, Douglas Development Partnership produced a report outlining opportunities for improvements to Douglas Quayside. One of these opportunities was to use public art to create unique recognisable landmarks and to employ artists in the design of the environment in order to create a unique and interesting environment. As a result the Development Partnership commissioned Noah Rose, a public artist from Salford to prepare a Public Art Framework for the Quayside.

Katrina Bass's design for seating on North Quay is based on "Buckie Pots" which were historically used as fenders on boats in the harbour.

This strategy identified a number of opportunities for public art to be incorporated in the improvements to North Quay. The first of these was the new harbourside railings. A public art competition advertised in the Isle of Man, UK and Ireland resulted in the commission to design the railings being offered to Ian Moran, an artist blacksmith from the West Midlands.

Chris Pycroft, the Partnership’s Development Manager explains,

“It was vital to the future success of the overall public art programme in the Quayside that this first commission was successful and so the selection of the right artist was very important and it was disappointing that we received very few submissions for the competition from local artists as clearly we would have liked to have commissioned an artist living and working in the Isle of Man."

"In order to try to build up the pool of locally based artists able to undertake work of this sort we developed a project with the Isle of Man Arts Council to develop the skills and experience of island based artists. We jointly engaged Noah Rose, the artist who originally put together the Quayside Public Art Strategy, to deliver an artist professional development programme on the island. This is something he does regularly in the North West of England. Nine artists participated in the programme. In order to make it as productive as possible we offered five commissions to artists participating in the programme. Four commissions were for sculptural seats and one was for a sculpture to mark the start and finish of the Raad ny Foillan coastal path.”

The four seats are due to be installed in October towards the end of the current phase of work on North Quay. The Raad ny Foillan sculpture is currently the subject of a planning application.  Computer generated images of the seats can be found in the Photo Gallery.

Click on the links here to download the documents “Opportunities for Douglas Quayside” and “Quayside Public Art Framework” in .pdf format. 

 

Selected Project List

• North Quay Improvements
• Quayside Public Art Strategy.
• Raad ny Foillan Sculpture.
• Town Centre Improvements.
• ShopWatch
• Independent Retailer Support Scheme
• Douglas Trail
• "Dhoo Glas Experience"
• Pavement Cafes.