Could our town learn from France?!

I've just returned from our family holiday in France, where I was lucky enough to spend our final day in Paris. Wandering through the Museum of Modern Art, I found myself drawn to the bold, oversized works on display. Standing before Raoul Dufy's monumental 600 m² fresco, The Electricity Fairy (La Fée Électricité), I was struck not only by its sheer scale but by the way it transformed an entire room into a work of art. It was impossible not to feel immersed in it. What surprised me was how familiar that experience felt. Long before today's vibrant murals transformed city walls around the world, French artists such as Henri Matisse and Sonia and Robert Delaunay were already reimagining what art could become when it escaped the confines of the traditional canvas.

La Danse, Matisse 1931-33

Matisse, a trailblazer of monumental decorative art, believed that colour and form could completely transform a space, creating immersive environments rather than simply pictures to admire. Around the same time, in the 1930s, Sonia and Robert Delaunay were experimenting with vibrant geometric compositions designed to interact with architecture itself. Their large-scale decorative works helped pioneer the idea that walls could become artworks in their own right, not merely places to hang paintings.

Standing in front of one of the Delaunay's giant rhythm murals (1935) - Robert Delaunay said; 'myself the artist, myself the manual worker, I will make a revolution on the walls.'

Standing in the museum, it became clear that the public murals we now stop to admire on city streets owe a quiet debt to these early innovators. Their ambition was remarkably similar to that of many contemporary mural artists: to make art part of everyday life, integrated into the places where people live, work and gather, rather than something experienced only inside galleries.

That thought stayed with me as I wandered around Paris. Public art in France isn't confined to museums; it's woven into the fabric of daily life. Historic monuments sit alongside contemporary sculptures, murals appear on neighbourhood walls, and artworks are integrated into parks, schools, metro stations and public buildings. Art isn't treated as an optional extra but as part of the public realm.

Since the 1950s, France has reinforced that philosophy through its '1% artistique' programme, which dedicates around one per cent of the budget for many public building projects to commissioning original works of art. The result is that generations of artists have been invited to contribute to the places people use every day, enriching streets, civic buildings and public spaces with creativity that belongs to everyone.

Walking through Paris made me wonder what our own town might look like if we embraced a similar vision. Imagine if even a small percentage of the budget for new schools, parks, libraries or public buildings was invested in permanent artworks created by local artists. Beyond making our streets more attractive, it could celebrate our shared identity, create opportunities for artists, spark conversations, and foster a greater sense of pride in where we live.

Perhaps that's the real legacy of these pioneering muralists. They didn't simply decorate walls; they challenged us to think differently about where art belongs. More than a century later, their vision continues to shape our cities—and it leaves me wondering what might be possible if we showed the same commitment to public art here at home.