Introducing Clare Moloney
Clare has been leading projects within the Environment and Communities department for the past two years. She co-leads the Place Shaping team, which is part of the Journeys and places team. She also leads the Curate Enfield programme to deliver creative, community engaged public art, ensuring local creatives and communities can participate and are able to benefit. This includes building and managing the Curate Enfield network, developing professional development and skills attainment opportunities for Enfield’s creative sector, local marketing and communications for the programme, financial administration, and overseeing project delivery and complex liaison across the council to ensure the requirements of Planning, Heritage, Property, Parks, Housing etc. are all factored in and delivered as appropriate for public realm work.
In this interview, she will talk about what inspired her to get into her role, what her typical morning is like and what advice she would give to aspiring managers.
What has inspired you to get into this role?
I am interested in how art and culture is delivered in different kinds of spaces and contexts. For example, in a shopping centre, high street or on a bit of green space. I enjoy delivering art and culture and generating positive change in close partnership with local communities.
The role gives me the opportunity to engage with people who are not in the habit of going to a conventional art space, for example, a theatre, cinema or museum. They are still interested in culture and creativity but want to experience it or consume it in a more localised way.
I am passionate about the arts, and I like to be creative in my approach, and responsive to what is already happening in Enfield’s local spaces and how communities are using these. The role of communities in changing and shaping places is at the forefront of what we do in our team. We want the local community to be custodians and the stewards of the projects being delivered.
What is your typical morning like?
It’s hard to say and I don’t know if I could describe a typical morning because it’s such a varied role with so many different things happening. The rhythm of my week tends to be a lot of briefings, project reviews, reporting and meetings (with internal stakeholders, councillors and residents etc.) at the start, and then from mid-week onwards it’s more practical and action based. For example, site visits, consulting local residents and communities on plans and designs for projects and of course project delivery – installations of new work and launches.
In Place Shaping, to deliver what we do effectively and in a joined-up way, we work across the council with Planning, Inclusive Growth, Culture, Property and Parks teams. It is quite multi-disciplinary.
What advice would you like to have had if you were starting out now?
It’s incredibly important to build trusting and meaningful relationships with residents, communities and council colleagues. That can’t be underestimated. This is time consuming, but it’s not something that should be rushed. In a job like mine, you need to be invested in and committed to building these relationships because nothing can successfully happen without them.
We need to earn the communities’ trust and I think that probably goes for most council departments. This takes a lot of time, and it should be an integral part of the job, and not be skated over. The work I do is not just about the end result – which could be a new public piece of art or a new creative work-space, but it’s also about the process and journey which gets you there and what comes after – how it is used by its intended beneficiaries.
It’s also understanding that people’s outside perception of the council is different to what you imagine it to be. So, there is a lot of work to be done first, around understanding different perspectives. This is something I did not fully appreciate until I began to work directly for a council. There is a difference between working with a council as a freelancer and being embedded within it. Fundamentally, the council is a political organisation, so there is bound to be lots of different perspectives and views and it’s important to learn how to navigate and manage this, respecting them even if they are very different from your own!
What is your biggest achievement so far and what is your biggest learn?
I am really proud of the Curate Enfield Public Art programme that I have developed with local residents and artists which is being delivered across five town centres.
Young people and community leaders from across the borough have been recruited as ‘public art champions’ to curate 5 new public art commissions – one for each of our town centres. The champions have received specialist mentoring from local artists and have selected the sites they would like to see transformed and enriched by public art; consulted communities in their respective town centres for ideas and feedback, devised and developed artist briefs and selected the artists to deliver the public art commissions.
So far, this has produced beautiful, vibrant, ambitious new murals in Enfield town and in Palmers Green, and a striking new sculpture soon to be launched in Angel Edmonton. Additional projects including a new arts trail will be launched in Southgate and Edmonton Green later this year. All of these have been conceived and developed by local residents.
Curate Enfield is grassroots in its approach, and this is important. Meaningful collaboration, empowerment, and partnership working with the community is key to the success of any public art. The purpose of this approach is to ensure local communities have creative agency. They decide which site is to be chosen for the public artwork, the genre of artwork, and which artists are the most qualified and appropriate to deliver. It’s about giving the local community autonomy and the opportunity to take the lead in how they want to enrich their town centres and other public spaces. There are risks involved, but it is important to take these risks and provide participants with the support needed to navigate these challenges.
What are your future aspirations?
I’m happy with what I am doing now as I’ve only been working for the council two years and my role has expanded and diversified quite a lot already in that time.
I want to keep on delivering lots more high quality, ambitious and collaborative public art and public realm projects across the borough. Beyond that I would love to lead a major cultural or place shaping project such as a London Borough of Culture programme or a Creative People and Places programme. My interest also lies in multi-disciplinary work and approaches. For example, working with health, wellbeing, climate, sustainability, heritage, regeneration, community engagement specialists to deliver inclusive culture and meaningful place shaping.
Ultimately, I want to be involved in projects that magnify and amplify what I am doing now, which explore the development of a place with the communities that know and understand their locality better than anyone else; and who are best placed to create their own narrative about their experiences of that place. I see my role as supporting how this can be manifested through art, culture and place shaping.