Bus-Tops will be a public art installation on the roofs of 40 bus shelters across all London boroughs. Artists Alfie Dennen and Paula Le Dieu will offer LED panels as canvases on which Londoners can talk to each other, display their creativity, play games and express what is special about their London. The installations will add a joyful surprise to the experience of riding on buses, inspiring wonder and creativity in one of the last places expected.
The project aims to empower and inspire a new understanding of public art that embraces and celebrates people’s creativity, an approach the artists call ‘Art Public’. Alfie and Paula believe that public art should do everything we expect of great art, but that it can do so through numerous points of view. They also believe that the ‘art public’ is a new audience for art, one that looks for artistic expression that touches on their world.
These stories may be small, intimate depictions of a neighbourhood, or citywide adventures. Alongside work submitted by the London public, Bus-Tops will be working directly with individual artists and organisations to bring established artists’ work to the public in a new way.
People will be able to submit artwork (and view others’) through a number of mediums, including a website and mobile applications. Using drawing toolkits, people can create images, text or animations for display on the panels. The site will provide accessibility to a range of users, who will also be able to interact through mobile technologies. For those unable to view the roofs of bus shelters, the website will provide live updates of the artwork and the opportunity to construct personal 'routes' through the works.
The project is now in development, with the website under construction and prototypes being built. The team is also creating public consultation processes to give people a voice in the final incarnation of the project. The canvases will appear on bus top roofs across London from July 2011.
Bus-Tops is a collaboration between Alfie Dennen and Paula Ledieu. Alfie is a technologist and artist, his most recent projects in collaborative art being Britglyph, The Big Art Mob (For Channel 4) and 'What Is The Question'. His interest in mass-collaboration started with the site We're Not Afraid, which he started in 2005 as a response to the 7/7 London Bombings, and since then he has worked on projects which explore public participation and have collaboration at their core.
Paula Le Dieu has a background in technology, media and theatre. She has been involved in facilitating creative communities since 2003 when she started working on the Creative Archive at the BBC. Since then she has designed and championed public participation tools and platforms. She is currently Director of Digital BFI at the British Film Institute.