New Bluecoat Outdoor Artwork to be Co-Designed by Liverpool Children
Bluecoat, Liverpool’s Centre for the Contemporary Arts, will bring an ambitious new artwork to its front courtyard in summer 2020.
Created by artists Simon & Tom Bloor, the public artwork will be made in collaboration with Liverpool children from Out of the Blue, Bluecoat’s outreach art programme for children aged 5-11.
The new work is based on the idea of making a platform to bring some of Bluecoat’s artistic activities out of the building for the public to enjoy, including both family activities and events from the wider arts programme. The platform will be located in Bluecoat’s historic courtyard, which has been home to a number of public art commissions including Danish artist Anne Harild, American conceptual artist Dan Graham and British artist Alec Finlay, while most recently Serena Korda made a new work for our garden in collaboration with Trust New Art.
The artwork is part of a UK wide project, Here and Now, celebrating the legacy of arts centres. Forty commissions at arts venues across England will explore stories of The National Lottery’s impact to mark its 25th birthday, and people’s hopes and dreams for their communities’ futures. The programme, led by Future Arts Centres (FAC), will share local stories with each commission creatively linked to create national impact.
Artist duo Simon & Tom Bloor previously worked with Bluecoat as part of the 2017 exhibition Abacus, for which they made a wildly popular artwork that encouraged children to bend conventional gallery rules and draw on the walls of Bluecoat’s gallery.
Betty Ritchie, Bluecoat’s Head of Participation, said: “We’re thrilled to be involved in this nation-wide project, which will see children from our Out of the Blue project creating artwork in a meaningful collaboration with artists Simon and Tom Bloor. The artists’ previous work at Bluecoat really captured our visitors’ imagination and we are sure that this new artwork will quickly become a popular fixture for families visiting Liverpool city centre this summer, as well as providing an exciting new setting for our wider events programme.”