Walking the Line: The Value of Public Realm in COVID-19 Recovery with Megan Piper and Laetitia Lucy
by Holly Howe
Megan Piper is Co-Founder and Director of The Line, a public art walk established in 2015 in London, which connects the Olympic Park in the north with the O2 Arena in the south. Megan is also a Founding Member of AWITA.
Laetitia Lucy is a social scientist working in the Integrated City Planning team at Arup with colleagues from economics, urban design, landscape architecture and planning disciplines. Arup is currently working with The Line as their valuation advisors, helping develop a methodology for capturing the impact and social value of The Line’s work. Together they spoke with our members about the importance of art in the public realm and the impact it can have on health and wellbeing.
Can The Line support recovery?
Megan described the geography of The Line which runs through three boroughs: Greenwich Tower Hamlets, and Newham. Newham has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic – it has the second highest mortality rate due to Covid-19 and it also has the largest number of furloughed workers of any local authority with 50,000 jobs at stake.
“One of the things that we are really thinking about at the moment is how The Line can support community recovery post Covid-19.”
Laetitia then explained the nature of their project:
“The work that we do is specifically around social value and evaluation, we look at what parties are doing, what interventions are being made and how they’re impacting people’s lives and the quality of their lives as well.”
For this particular project, they are trying to see to what extent public art can benefit social cohesion or healthy well-being (physical or mental), as well as whether it can have an impact on social isolation and loneliness.
An unexpected opportunity
In these pandemic times, people have been encouraged to avoid public transport where possible. And during lockdown, when galleries and museums were closed, people still sought to get there art fix from somewhere. The Line proved useful on many counts. Not only is it a scenic route where people can get from A to B on foot or by bicycle, it was also fulfilling people’s daily exercise quota, while providing people with public art works to enjoy along the way. Given that obesity can double the risk of death from Covid-19, encouraging people to exercise more at the moment is a key priority. Megan said:
“The Line can be a catalyst for improvements to infrastructure and to help communities that are local to The Line to use the route to improve their physical health, and also their mental well-being.”
Megan then spoke about social prescribing where local providers, nurses, or GPs refer individuals for non-clinical services such as community projects, engagement with the arts, or gardening.
“We are particularly interested in how people could visit The Line to improve their physical health and mental well-being… a study was done in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire that actually found that GP referrals dropped by 37% and hospital admissions by 27% through an arts on prescription service.”
Though as Laetitia pointed out: “The qualitative benefits of things like walking The Line or going to a gallery goes further [than putting a price on it].”
Returning to nature
Megan reflected: “One of the things that has really brought people together during this period is a new appreciation of nature and being outdoors and an enjoyment of public spaces.” The provides a unique interaction between art, nature, and heritage, though as Megan mused “Something can be accessible but that doesn’t mean that it is accessed.”
Laetitia sees one of the benefits of The Line is that it provides incidental interaction with art, in particular to people who may not actively visit museums or galleries. While many people may traverse the route simply to get to where they need to go, “it also allows people who might not go out of their way to interact with art to encounter art on an ad hoc basis.”
Megan is hoping to develop a programme of targeted walks working with people who experience social isolation or older groups, to help bring people together to support recovery.
“It’s not just about recovery but a long term shift in thinking. There are benefits that have come out of this slowing down.”
Changing the way we think about green space
Laetitia flagged that given that the size of housing units is shrinking rapidly, yet we seem to be moving towards a world where people are working from home more and more, then the importance of high quality and accessible public realm and public greenspaces is going to go up exponentially:
“It’s also important to think about social equity – access to a garden or getting to the countryside – not everyone has this.”
Megan agreed, stating that although London is one of the world’s greenest city, there is huge inequality in access: “The installations on The Line can be a magnet to attract people to the greenspaces… It provides an unfamiliar view of the city [and it can be] an unexpected experience even for people who think they know London really well.”