The selection
panel

The Big Art Project selection panellists travelled around the UK meeting nominators, funders, politicians, public authorities and landowners to make the selection.

The selection panellists were:

Dr Augustus (Gus) Casely-Hayford
Curator and cultural historian

Dr Gus Casely-Hayford is Executive Director, Arts Strategy, for Arts Council England. He was previously director of inIVA (Institute of International Visual Arts), a London-based arts organisation with a particular emphasis on international practice, which collaborates with partner venues throughout the UK and worldwide. Prior to this he was director of Africa 05, the largest and most successful African arts season ever hosted in Britain.

His work for television and radio includes presenting an award-winning South Bank Show on African art, producing a documentary on Chris Ofili for Channel 4 and presenting several series on African culture for BBC World Service.

Dr Casely-Hayford has written and curated widely, including collaborations with Nelson Mandela. He lectures on world art at Sotheby's, Goldsmiths and University of Westminster, and is a consultant for organisations such as the United Nations, the Arts Council and the BBC. He is a Clore Fellow and sits on a variety of committees including Tate Britain Council and the African Express music festival. He is currently a commissioner of arts for the Greater London Authority.

Peter Jenkinson OBE
Cultural broker

Peter Jenkinson established and led Creative Partnerships, the £40 million transformative creativity and education programme, which links the very best of the creative and cultural sectors with schools in 16 of the most disadvantaged communities across England. Creative Partnerships is the first ever nationally-coordinated and government-funded programme designed to engender creative learning and is unique in the world.

Peter is regarded as a pioneer of new practice and a risk taker. Alongside Creative Partnerships, his greatest achievement to date has been the initiation and delivery of the world-class £21 million New Art Gallery Walsall, which opened to extraordinary popular and critical acclaim, nationally and internationally, in Spring 2000. It was feted by the DCMS and Arts Council England as one of their model Lottery projects and described by Sir Nicholas Serota as "arguably a greater achievement than Tate Modern". Peter is passionate about increasing cultural and creative participation within communities.

Kevin Murray
Regeneration facilitator

Kevin Murray is a leading town planner, working at the cutting edge of innovation in urban design and regeneration. He collaborates across the UK with communities, public agencies and developers, helping them to figure out what they want for their communities and how to achieve it.

Typically Kevin works creatively with people who disagree with each other: residents angry with their council, NIMBYs who want absolutely no change at all, architects fixated on their own designs, developers seeking planning permission, children with nowhere to go, and politicians of different persuasions. It is his job to help them confront a fast-changing world and build shared visions of their town's future. – then identify how to make it all happen.

His inventive techniques have led him to be known as a 'spatial therapist', as he gets people to recognise and agree about how their community works. He defines success as "enabling people to make a positive difference in changing their own area for the better – by embracing change, not fearing it."

Kevin is a past president of the Royal Town Planning Institute and a board member of the Academy for Sustainable Communities (ASC), a special regeneration skills body.

Isabel Vasseur
Curator

Isabel Vasseur has been a pioneer of the Public Arts movement since the start of the 1980s when she encouraged and advised on the use of the Arts Council's Works of Art in Public Places funding scheme.

During her career she has co-ordinated numerous public art events including the National Garden Festival in Glasgow and Gateshead and the Lux Europae in Edinburgh, which she initiated, planned and curated. In 1991 she won the Arts Council British Gas Working for Cities award.

Isabel provides consultancy to development agencies, local authorities and the private sector on public art strategy and commissions management. She is a trustee of the Baltic Art Gallery in Gateshead and an advisor on public arts strategy to Arts Council England.

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