Delegating (community) action: Stuart Brisley’s Peterlee Project

In the first half of the 1970s, the Artist Placement Group[1] (APG, 1966–1979) applied to several New Towns in order to arrange the scheme through which artists could be placed in the town.[2] Like other APG placements in industrial or governmental organizations, this application rested on the idea that an artist could have a positive effect on a town and its people. The only response came from the Peterlee Development Corporation (PDC) and, in 1975, Stuart Brisley (Surrey, 1933) was placed in Peterlee. After a month of feasibility research around the town, Brisley went back to the corporation and told them that it was “absolutely useless” to make artworks for his placement. He had concluded that any presumed aesthetic value attached to an artwork would fail to benefit people living in Peterlee.