Writing the brief: the document the whole commission is judged against
An artist brief for a public art commission is the document that states the place, the money, the timetable, the constraints and the criteria, and a brief that does that job properly covers twelve sections and runs to a few thousand words. No UK body publishes a standard length or a standard structure for one, so the twelve sections set out below are this site’s working scheme rather than a published norm; what fixes the length is how complicated the site is and how much the commissioner has already decided. It is the document the finished work will be judged against by everybody who was not in the room when it was written. A brief is not an advertisement and not a wish list. It is the specification against which a proposal is scored, a contract is drafted and, eventually, a dispute is settled.
The test of a brief is simple: can an artist who has never seen the site work out from it whether they want the job, whether they could do the job, and roughly what they would propose? If any of those three is unanswerable, the brief is not finished.
What the brief has to do before it does anything else
The brief has to do four jobs at once, and they pull against each other. It has to attract the right artists and deter the wrong ones. It has to constrain the work enough that it can be built, consented and maintained. It has to leave enough room that the artist is doing something other than executing somebody else’s idea. And it has to be honest about the money, because an unrealistic budget is discovered at proposal stage, when everybody has already spent time.
The commonest structural fault is writing the brief after the artist has been chosen, which happens more often than anyone admits, usually with a direct appointment. That inverts the whole process: there is now no independent standard, so any later disagreement about whether the work is what was asked for has no document to appeal to.
The twelve sections a commissioning brief needs
Twelve sections cover a public art commission brief without padding. Work through them in order; each column on the right is what goes wrong when the section is thin or absent.
| Section | What it must state | Cost of leaving it vague |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The commissioner and the decision route | Who is commissioning, who chairs the panel, who holds final approval | Late design changes from a person nobody knew could object |
| 2. The site | Address, dimensions, ownership, ground conditions, services, footfall, orientation, existing photographs | Proposals that cannot be built where they are drawn |
| 3. The opportunity | What the commission is for, in one paragraph, in plain words | Proposals answering four different assumptions |
| 4. Context and background | The place, its history, the development or scheme this sits within, any adopted public art strategy | Work that reads as generic because it was given nothing to respond to |
| 5. Audience and community | Who passes, who lives there, who has already been consulted and what they said | Consultation restarted from zero at proposal stage |
| 6. Budget | The total, inclusive or exclusive of VAT, and which cost lines it must cover | Proposals priced against different scopes, none comparable |
| 7. Scope and exclusions | What the artist is responsible for, and what the commissioner supplies: foundations, power, lighting, surveys, planning application | A gap in the middle of the budget that neither party costed |
| 8. Constraints | Consents needed, maintenance regime, health and safety, adoption standards, materials that are prohibited | An approved concept that cannot get consent |
| 9. Timetable | Deadline, shortlist date, interview date, proposal deadline, contract date, installation window | A programme that collides with the construction contract |
| 10. Selection criteria and weightings | What is scored, out of how much, at each stage | A decision that cannot be defended if challenged |
| 11. Intellectual property and credit | Who holds copyright, what images the commissioner may use, how the artist is credited | A contract negotiation that stalls after selection |
| 12. How to apply | Format, page limit, file size, submission route, contact for questions, deadline time zone | Strong applicants excluded on a technicality |
Writing the site section so an artist can use it
Write the site section as though the reader will never visit, because many applicants will not. Give dimensions in metres, state which way the site faces, say what the ground is made of and what is under it, name the prevailing weather exposure, and attach photographs taken in ordinary light rather than at sunset. Say who cleans it and how often, and with what. A pressure-washing regime rules out several finishes on its own.
State the things that cannot move. Sightlines for drivers, a fire escape route, a market stall pitch, a maintenance access strip, a root protection area for a tree with a preservation order: these are not details, they are the actual shape of the available space, and an artist who learns about them at planning stage has drawn the wrong thing.
Stating the budget honestly
State one total figure, say whether it includes VAT, and list what it must cover. A budget written as “up to” with no floor invites every applicant to guess, and the guesses will differ by a factor of three. If the total has to cover foundations, engineering and installation, say so on the same line as the number, because an artist reading a figure will otherwise read it as a making budget.
The two sentences that save the most trouble later are these: what the commissioner supplies in kind, and what the shortlisted artists are paid to develop a proposal. Development fees for shortlisted artists are normal UK practice, and a brief that asks for a developed concept, a drawing and a costing without paying for them is asking three or four people to carry the commissioner’s risk for free.
Selection criteria, and publishing the weightings
Publish the criteria and the weightings in the brief itself. Four criteria are usually enough at first stage: relevance of previous work to this site, quality of previous work, evidence of delivering at this scale and in this environment, and approach to working with the client and the community. At proposal stage the criteria change, and the brief should say so: concept, buildability, cost, maintenance and durability.
Weightings do real work. A commission that scores deliverability at forty per cent and concept at twenty is telling artists something true and useful about what the panel will reward, and a commission that publishes nothing is telling them to guess.
What a weak brief costs, and the words to strike out
A weak brief costs money at three predictable points. It costs at shortlisting, because a vague brief attracts a large unfocused field and somebody has to read all of it. It costs at proposal, because proposals answering different assumptions cannot be compared, and the panel ends up choosing on taste. And it costs at delivery, because a scope gap that nobody noticed in the brief turns into a variation, and variations are priced without competition.
Five words and phrases signal a brief that has not been thought through: iconic, vibrant, landmark attached to a four-figure budget, surprise us, and subject to funding. The first three describe an ambition the money must support. The fourth transfers the commissioner’s uncertainty to the applicant. The fifth means there is no commission yet, and it should be resolved before anyone is asked to apply. A brief that says “iconic” and a budget that says eighteen thousand pounds are not two statements; they are one contradiction, and every experienced artist reading them will see it first.