Working with artists and creative producers is now an established feature of both public and private development, mediating between creative practice, community participation, and the creation of site-specific work. This paper considers how artists can surface local narratives, overlooked histories, and community identities that are often absent from conventional consultation processes.

In doing so, artists can offer planners situated, nuanced knowledge to inform local area plans, embedding aesthetic, cultural, and experiential considerations into development processes.

The paper/presentation argues that artist-led engagement, which invites audiences to act not only as viewers but also as contributors, can strengthen community engagement throughout the planning process. It demonstrates the value that artists and creative producers bring to design teams, communities, and sites through place-responsive and co-designed practices that generate emotional, sensory, and embodied experiences, shaping how individuals perceive, inhabit, and form attachments to place.

The boundary between art and community engagement — whether understood as social, situational, or relational — is increasingly fluid. Within planning contexts, artists and creative practitioners can produce work that acquires new meanings, functions, and relationships through durational and collective experiences with communities and their stories. Through co-creation and co-design, public art can generate engaging narratives and support authentic, transparent, and purposeful involvement in the public realm.