My own concern for the importance of the context in art making developed from working in Nigeria between 1963-67. In teaching and directing painted murals and mud wall reliefs I resisted the temptation to introduce European influences and insisted that images and forms be drawn from local experience and tradition. This may seem an obvious position to take now but at the very same time sculpture students at the nearest university were being taught to make Marino Marini look-alikes. On my return to Scotland in 1967 I wrote to towns suggesting they might employ me as an artist. Serendipity played a part and in September 1968 I became an employee of Glenrothes (pop. 35000) in Fife. I joined the planning section of the Dept. of Architecture and Planning and set up my studio in the Direct Labour yards amongst the joiners, bricklayers and other maintenance trades. I also joined UCAAT, the construction workers union. My intentions were to try to demystify the artist and to emphasise the notion of the artist as artisan and as part of the workforce building the town. My job description was, "to contribute as an artist to the development of the external environment of the town" and to this end I contributed to planning decisions and joined the design teams preparing ideas for housing, commercial, industrial, landscape and engineering developments integrating art works at all levels. Though it was not part of the brief, I added to these the concept of the artist as enabler and animateur so that local people could also contribute to the development of the town.

The early new towns were built on green field sites and what few buildings existed within the designated area were often demolished in the name of progress. This policy of 'tabula rasa' destroyed most physical links with the past. Furthermore, as people were moved to these towns from the cities, extended family structures were broken up and social and cultural dislocation ensued. The citizens of the new towns needed ways in which they could assert their identity on their town and to this end, in 1969, I began to go into primary schools and to get whole classes to make individual ceramic tiles in modeled relief which each child signed on the front. When fired, the children cemented them on to walls adjacent to their local play areas. In some small way each child was making a permanent visual contribution to its own place. In 1971 the BBC art programme Scope, broadcast a film about my work in Glenrothes. In it the producer and presenter W. Gordon Smith commented, "......encouraging them to put something of themselves into the very fabric of their new town is one of the most imaginative, successful and heartwarming things that this programme has ever seen." I worked with groups of secondary school pupils to design and execute painted murals. In one instance a class, described as 'unteachable', having painted a mural, returned to their school, "engaged in the art classes as never before" and began to organise their own murals within the school. In another instance a school group created designs for a cast concrete relief as part of the building of a new pedestrian underpass. I received many invitations to speak to groups and clubs in the town which I readily accepted as a way of promoting the role that art could play in the built environment of the town. Out of these discussions came projects in which adults participated in mural painting and other collaborative work.

At the same time some of the earliest street theatre in Scotland was being performed in Glenrothes. Frances Harding adapted and produced live performances of Punch and Judy all over the town. Lindsay Kemp played Punch and herself Judy. Local people played the other characters and the music was an original score locally written and played. So successful were these performances that other productions were performed in a similar format including a repeat of Punch and Judy, again with Lindsay Kemp, two years later.

Being a member of the planning department meant that I could contribute at the inception of developments and a clause was inserted in all planning briefs going to the design teams which stated, "The artist is to be consulted at every stage of development." An important precedent had been established. When asked to come up with a colour scheme for the repainting of the front doors of council houses in one neighbourhood (whole streets were usually painted in one or two colours), I decided that the tenants should choose their own colours. Though this was an action without precedent, I visited every house armed with a colour chart and invited the tenants to decide the colour of their own front door. This was often met with disbelief. After some convincing lively discussions ensued and choices were made of favourite colours or how a colour related to curtains and hallways. In my studio I worked on the drawings of the street elevations indicating the colours of each front door and presented it as my colour scheme to the architect in charge of the project. Any indication that these colours had been chosen by the tenants would have meant cancellation. The doors were duly painted.

In 1974 APG set up a meeting in Glenrothes for the General Managers of the Scottish new towns to promote the idea of artist placements. Barbara Steveni addressed the meeting and was intrigued by the way my activities in Glenrothes mirrored, in some ways, the aims of APG. Though no APG placements resulted in the new towns it was already in contact with the Scottish Office Ü the arm of the government in Scotland. I was invited to join Latham and Steveni at the meeting in the Scottish Office, to discuss their proposals for a placement there. Due in no small way to the open-mindedness and support of Derek Lyddon and Jim Ford, two of the most senior civil servants at the Scottish Office, John Latham spent six months carrying out one of the most productive of the APG placements, works from which continue to evolve today.