Public Art

The arts impact positively on practitioners, participants and audiences. They are a vibrant part of our society and serve to encourage creative thinking and stimulate new ideas and approaches to how we live and work. For everybody, the arts can act as a tool by which we engage with the world, view ourselves, examine our value systems, provoke thought and express ourselves as individuals, groups and as a society.

In line with a 1997 Government decision, public bodies delivering capital projects should include a percentage for public art under the Per Cent for Art Scheme. It is the intention of Leitrim County Council to fulfill this and contribute to the creative and cultural well being of Leitrim through the utilisation of Percent for Art as a means of funding innovative one-off arts projects.

In the context of Leitrim County Council, Public Art generally refers to the implementation by the local authority of the Percent for Art Scheme.

Public art has long been associated with the visual and tangible, mostly because Percent for Art in Ireland evolved from the commissioning of ‘artistic features’ and permanent public sculpture to adorn buildings and infrastructural schemes. Since 1997 under direction from the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government, and in particular since the publication of the National Guidelines for the Per Cent for Art Scheme in 2004, the definition, understanding and scope of public art has broadened to include all artforms and arts disciplines and the scheme now encompasses work that takes many different approaches.

It is the policy of the Leitrim County Council to contribute to the cultural well being of Leitrim through the implementation of Percent for Art as a means of funding arts projects. The underlying principle of the scheme is to support innovative once-off large scale arts projects in a manner consistent with wider capital development and economic growth.