Love it, hate it, but let’s see it

2:47pm Thursday 13th March 2008

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ANY plans for public art are certain to attract a degree of opposition.

Considering the bizarre-looking objects that adorn some of our streets, and the large sums of money spent buying them, such complaints are no great surprise.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and individual tastes mean you would be hard pressed to find any piece of sculpture that everyone loved.

But surely the point about public art is that ultimately it should leave the places where it is sited looking more attractive than they did before - in the opinion of a significant number of people.

From that perspective, it's difficult to see how the European-funded dry-stone wall-like structure with a steel sphere pointing towards town could be anything but an improvement to the Red Lion roundabout at Whitebirk which until recently was just a tangled mess of bushes and trees.

Blackburn with Darwen Council leader Coun Colin Rigby, who was against the concept when he was opposition leader, says he would prefer the piece to go in "a quiet place" where it would not be a distraction.

But love it or hate it, there seems little point in putting a sculpture where virtually no-one will actually see it.