Historic England Exhibition Design brief Project: Monumental Season Exhibition

Project Background Historic England's exhibition and cultural programme for 2018 is built around England's monuments and memorials. The exhibition is about who we remember in the public realm, why certain groups are represented whilst others are forgotten, and how artists can contribute to meaningful memorialisation today. It will be accompanied by a programme of events including a competition to develop ideas for memorials to England today, an international symposium on contested heritage and street-level events around the country. The exhibition will look at how England's memory is visible in its heritage and tell joyful and heart-breaking stories that reflect our human drive to remember. From benches to plaques, memory is etched into the streets around us, and as free-space diminishes we must ask what form memory markers should take. It will look at what contemporary artists are doing to memorialise - the intangible and ephemeral, the traditional and pioneering. The programme will be announced in March 2018 with the competition launch. This will be followed by the publication of a report commissioned from Robert Bevan about the challenges in England's memorial landscape.