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Art as industrial heritage: deindustrialisation and public sculpture in Britain’s steel-making regions, 1976–2020

Louise Miskell Orcid Logo, Hilary Orange Orcid Logo, Gemma Almond-Brown

Social History, Volume: 49, Issue: 4, Pages: 510 - 542

Swansea University Authors: Louise Miskell Orcid Logo, Hilary Orange Orcid Logo

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Abstract

This study analyses the emergence of steel industry-related public sculpture in Britain in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The creation of these sculptures is viewed as part of the response of local authorities, artists and community groups to the large-scale loss of steel-makin...

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Published in: Social History
ISSN: 0307-1022 1470-1200
Published: Informa UK Limited 2024
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa66226
Abstract: This study analyses the emergence of steel industry-related public sculpture in Britain in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The creation of these sculptures is viewed as part of the response of local authorities, artists and community groups to the large-scale loss of steel-making jobs and infrastructure in Britain since the mid-1970s. It posits that the rapid demolition of redundant steelworks plants after closure erased many of the physical reference points to steelmaking in its traditional heartlands, creating a material void which public sculpture has helped to fill. While belief in the ability of public art to stimulate urban regeneration lay behind the commissioning of many of these sculptures, especially from the 1990s onwards, we argue that they make more sense when viewed as a form of industrial heritage. Sometimes depicting the skills, clothing or iconic structures associated with steel, sculptures provided visual references to the industry, often in places where it no longer existed, thus becoming important sites of steel industry memory in Britain.
Keywords: steel, sculpture, deindustrialisation, urban regeneration, industrial heritage
College: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Funders: AHRC 0000-0003-1279-1199
Issue: 4
Start Page: 510
End Page: 542