In Waterford, bringing art to the people is more than a lofty ideal, it is a practical reality. A £195,000 public art programme introduced by Waterford Corporation has attracted interest from artists in Australia, the United States, Germany and Britain, as well as Ireland.
Made up of five separate projects, Convergence II, as the programme is known, will include a major new work in the soon-to-be redeveloped People's Park.
It will also include public art works at New Ross Road, St John's Park, Farran Park and the Granary heritage centre.
Funded by the Department of the Environment under its "1 per cent for art" scheme, which allows local authorities to spend the equivalent of 1 per cent of capital projects on the arts, the scheme will build on the first phase of Convergence which began in 1996.
The final commission of that phase is Ms Mary Fitzgerald's fibre-optic and glass-line drawing in the rockface at Sallypark which will be completed when the N9 bypass is built next year.
Most of the foreign interest in Convergence II is in the £85,500 commission to replace the long-disused Victorian fountain in People's Park, a welcome development for this much-loved 19th-century landmark which fell into disuse and became victim to vandalism in the late 1960s.
"We're not looking at restoration, we're looking for perhaps some water-based sculpture as a replacement," said the corporation's arts officer, Mr Derek Verso.
"We're looking for artists to submit their ideas and later three or four will be invited to discuss their proposals in detail." The commission involved is huge, even by international standards, and the applications are pouring in.
The final decisions will be made by a jury comprising the director of the Project Arts Centre, Mr Fiach Mac Conghaill, Glasgow artist Ms Lucy Byatt and representatives of the corporation.
And just to show that arts funding can be used in the broadest of ways, the New Ross road commission, worth £27,750, will involve setting aside an "open house" for the community. The house will be one of 78 due to be constructed there and could be used for coffee mornings, as a creche, or for public meetings.
The successful artist will have to work with the community, but in what form depends on the proposals received. "We've no idea what shape this will take, but it must engage the residents, it must be totally interactive." At Farran Park on the south side of the city, residents have already informed the corporation they want some permanent work to enhance the local environment.
The smallest two projects will be at the Granary and St John's Park, where the work will be relevant to the park's associations with writers such as Mr Sean Dunne, Mr Liam Murphy and Mr Jim Nolan. The late Mr Dunne grew up in St John's, and Mr Nolan, whose play The Salvage Shop is currently showing at the Gaiety in Dublin, still lives there.