ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an account of authors' role as Principle Investigator leading the research team, and as an artist in creating one of the project commissions. It provides an account of how approached some of the challenges, tensions, and creative opportunities that developed into both personal artistic journal and the collaborative, creative process that the work entailed. The geographical focus of the research was North East England. This was partly pragmatic – the properties selected had to be close to one another to allow for regular visits by the research team and focus groups that would be asked to respond to each commission – but was also grounded in a dynamic history of public art commissioning in the region. Gibside’s landscape and architecture are grounded in the classicising world-view of the eighteenth century.
