....that precious booty, the rounds and the rings they had reft erewhile, hardy heroes, from hoard in cave - trusting the ground with treasure of earls, gold in the earth, where ever it lies: Beowulf extract and translation from final chapter XLIII

Ian Banks - Atoll

Staffordshire Saxon public art advisor Ian Banks has worked as both an architect (since 1990) and arts and regeneration consultant (since 2000) across Britain. He specialises in the unique creative role that collaboration can have in energising regeneration. His own company Atoll Ltd was established in 2005 following a 4-year spell working as Public Art & Architecture Officer for Arts Council England, North West.







Ian has produced a range of public art and cultural strategies for the UK - in Burnley, Carlisle, Lancaster,  Preston, Halton and Cheshire County Councils and Weaver Valley Regional Park in the North West; For Sunniside Partnership and Wearmouth-Jarrow Partnership World Heritage bid in the North East; And for Bradford Metropolitan District Council in Yorkshire - where he project managed the pre-construction phases of a £1m public art commissioning proposal for the £25m Mirror Pool City Park. 


In March 2010 he acted as Joint Lead Artist with artist Noah Rose to deliver a mini-festival for public art called Hiddenplace for Burnley Borough Council. Hiddenplace was awarded the CreativityWorks business awards for 2009 -  under Best use of Creative Space. 


In October 2010 he facilitated What's Up-What's Down, a 5-day tour of Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool for Liverpool Biennial and the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture; He has recently completed a consultancy for Lancashire County Council linked to the NW Aerospace Alliance to develop the feasibility for a major aerospace monument for Preston; He is presently acting as Arts Strategist for Shine, the Local Education Partnership for Blackburn with Darwen and Balfour Beatty CJV - where he is helping facilitate delivery of 14 artist residencies for a borough-wide Building Schools for the Future programme. 


Since 2004, Ian has acted as Associate Consultant for Beam in Wakefield – part of the UK national Architecture Centre Network. Here, his past roles have included fronting the £4.5 million public art funding strategy development for the New Icons of the North pan-regional marketing programme for The Northern Way and the public art strategies for Widnes Waterfront EDZ and Derby. 


Ian has written regularly on art and architecture for a number of specialist publications. These  have included: Art & Architecture Journal; The Art Times supplement to the Times newspaper; Prospect North West (by publishers Urban Realm Ltd); A Magazine; Architecture Centre Network’s Snapshots, and the US publication Public Art Review. He has a selected series of these articles as podcasts and e-publications currently being uploaded onto Podbean and Amazon respectively. He has also written the feature article ‘Public Art - Guidelines for Commissioning ' in the Manual for Historic Streets produced by the English Historic Towns Forum.

Post & Studio: 73 Manchester Road, Knutsford, Cheshire, WA16 0LX
Mobile: +44 (0)7717710014





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