Say hello to our panel for Event 012 | 👋🏽
Wednesday 22 April 2026 | London | 🗣️
@_sum.place_ is a public art studio based in the UK on the north-east coast. Founded by artist Colin Davies and trainee art psychotherapist Nic Quinn, they create site-specific installations for civic, healthcare and regeneration environments | ✨
Their work in transport hubs, town squares, housing estates, and hospital atriums is rooted in the stories a place already holds. They research + listen. They run workshops, and then they make. In stone, marble, metal, and recycled plastic, they lead the production and fabrication of all site-specific materials at their studio + workshop. Community voices shape every project | 🌼
Nic and Colin both believe public art is a matter of public health. The quality of the spaces people move through every day has a measurable effect on how they feel, how they connect, and who they think they are | 🧠
Hear what they’ve got to say about the youth of today at Event 012 | 🎤
Doors at 18:00 | Debate starts at 18:30 |
Tickets are FREE (as usual) and available at the link in bio – or via our website | 🎟️
Images | 📸
01. Nic and Colin in their studio
02. Bronze New Age, Andover
03. Everysecondofeveryminuteofeveryhourof, North Shields
04. Detail from The North Ship, North Shields
#architecture #publicrealm #sumplace #community #debate
This is what we mean when we talk about art in everyday life.
Something you pass on the way to somewhere else, shopping trolley in hand, all wrapped up, not thinking about it at all.
The wall behind is 72 square metres of painted wood. Every silver dot and dash poured by hand over many late nights. They form Morse code in the pattern of synoptic weather maps - people at sea use these to chart their course. The code spells out the final verse of a Philip Larkin poem, The North Ship, that talks about being poised for a long journey.
She doesn’t need to know that for it to be doing its job. But now you do.
Crewe is a railway town, so we made the signals the starting point.
The pattern, every x, O and chevron, comes from the shapes used in Crewe’s historic rail signal infrastructure. We scaled them up and let the town choose the colours via a game we made called Crewlette. The local community could pick the order of the graphic components by spinning a wheel. We then painted them across the new, shipping container stage, the market canopy and the floor.
This is what it looks like when a town square becomes somewhere worth being.
The mound you can see here isn’t incidental to the work. It is the work.
We shaped it to mirror the burial mounds themselves. It’s the same crescent form, the same scale. Planted with native meadow seed and clover, it will grow and shift with the seasons.
The oak bench will weather. The granite will develop a natural patina. The corten steel legs will rust over time to a warm bronze tone (didn’t plan that last detail lightly).
We don’t make things to stay the same. We make them to settle into a place and become part of it.
You Are Here.
Etched into the top of a Welsh granite totem, marking the exact location of a Bronze Age burial site beneath a housing estate in Andover.
Finding the right stone took a while. The stonemason would send us pictures of different pieces - it had to be the right shape, the right size, a green hue, something that felt natural and sat seamlessly with the rest of the materials.
We eventually found this piece in Powys, Wales. The stonemason there was just shy of his 80th birthday. He lived on site. Told us he was going to get his mobility scooter and would meet us in the yard.
Turns out said scooter was a JCB Earth Mover. Big respect 👊
Beneath the Picket Twenty housing estate in Andover lie prehistoric burial grounds.
Test Valley Borough Council commissioned us to create something that honoured that - a living place for the people who live here now.
We ran workshops with residents about journeys, belonging and decoration. We made mosaic inspired by a Bronze Age pot from Andover Museum.
At the centre, a Welsh granite totem etched with the exact location of the burial site beneath the ground. All surrounded by a handmade bench formed from oak felled in the local forest.
Ancient history and new community, sharing the same earth. That’s why we called it Bronze New Age.
Joy lives in the simplicity of the ordinary.
The routes walked. The signs seen. The corners turned. The conversations overheard. The familiar textures of the place you pass through every day without thinking.
That’s where we work. Not in galleries or white cubes, but in the middle of everyday life. Making things that become part of people’s routines, journeys, memories.
It’s the best job there is 💚
📷 @nigeljohn_com
Two monkey’s fist knots. One Carrara marble, one Kilkenny black granite.
The Kilkenny is in focus. The Carrara is not. This is roughly how they sat in the square - facing each other across the seating, with life in the town moving around them.
We like that Nigel shot them like this. The blur in the foreground makes the farther one feel like a destination. Which is what public art is supposed to do, really.
📷 @nigeljohn_com
No ticket. No opening hours. No special knowledge required.
We think about this a lot - what it means to make art that lives in ordinary places. A bus station. A town square. A park at the end of someone’s road.
Public art and gallery art hold significance in different ways: one can offer scholarly curation, while the other provides a democratic encounter. Neither is more or less valuable; they’re just different kinds of conversation.
If it’s free to access, does that make it less valuable? Or more?
We wrote about this for @themodernist . Thank you to guest editor @leannecloudsdale for the opportunity.
📷 @nigeljohn_com
This is Carrara marble. Hand carved.
Up close it looked almost soft, like dough or something that could move. It didn’t. It weighed a tonne and actually felt like rope. The detail was unmatched.
The monkey’s fist is a maritime knot, historically used to throw a line between boats during supply exchanges at sea. North Shields is a town built on fishing and shipbuilding. It felt like the right thing to put in the ground.
Part of a suite of work for the reimagined town square, commissioned by North Tyneside Council.
📷 @nigeljohn_com
Recce in Romsey 🌿
We’ve been commissioned by Cambridge City Council to create a new public artwork for Romsey Recreation Ground, celebrating ecology, history and local life.
First time in the area - we loved exploring Pink Floyd’s hometown, meeting the community, and getting a good sense of the place. A history tour told us the small holes in the white walls were made with coins by people queuing for the cinema.
The work will be shaped through conversations with local residents, so we’ll be back soon to begin the engagement programme before moving into design 💚
Last weekend we visited the @nobelpeacecenter in Oslo and were reminded how change begins with conversation.
So many Nobel Peace Prize laureates have shown that listening and dialogue can shift even the most entrenched situations.
The Center sets out eight principles for dialogue. Each one resonated with us - in our lives and in the work we do in the public realm. Dialogue isn’t only for global conflicts; it’s for neighbourhoods, work places, within families, and shared spaces. It’s not about winning. It’s about understanding.
Our projects are shaped through conversation, care, and the belief that community voices matter. We don’t start with the answers. We always start by listening.
We’re carrying these principles with us, and hope you find meaning in them too.
1. Dialogue should be a basic attitude
2. Create safe spaces
3. Include all relevant parties
4. In dialogue, you must listen
5. Let everyone share their experiences
6. Ask questions
7. Talk about the difficult things
8. Contribute to forgiveness and reconciliation
💚
