E31: How Art Creates Better Places with Marine Tanguy
What happens to a city that treats culture as an afterthought?
Founder of MTArt Agency, Marine Tanguy explains why culture is not a luxury but essential urban infrastructure - and why investing in art and artists is one of the smartest decisions cities can make.
Marine Tanguy has spent her career demonstrating that public art creates measurable economic, social, and mental health benefits.
In this episode, recorded live at SXSW London in Shoreditch, host Tanisha Raffiuddin and Marine get into the real argument: why art is not a cultural luxury but a form of urban infrastructure, what the economics of public art actually look like, how the visual environments of working-class communities are systematically under-resourced, and why the rise of AI makes human creativity more urgent, not less.
This is a conversation about cities, belonging, and what we owe each other in shared space.
TOPICS COVERED
• Why Marine built the world's first talent agency for visual artists
• How public art is valued economically - the academic frameworks
• The billboard inequality statistic and what it reveals about cultural access
• Cities doing culture well: London, Manchester, Liverpool, Sydney, New York, Lyon, Paris
• Public art, mental health, and social cohesion
• The cost-of-living crisis versus long-term cultural investment
• AI, creativity, and the class divide in access to critical thinking
• What a culturally thriving city looks like in the next ten years
Marine also shares practical advice for developers, local authorities and city leaders looking to build places people genuinely love.
MARINE TANGUY
Marine Tanguy is the Founder & CEO of MTArt Agency, the world's first talent agency for visual artists, a Certified B Corporation with offices in London and Paris. She has published academic work on the economic valuation of public art with both Warwick University and UCL, and her first book - The Visual Detox - was published by Penguin. She was appointed a Special Advisor for UN Women UK in 2025.
• MTArt Agency: https://mtart.agency
Episode recorded during SXSW London 2026 · Shoreditch, London
All images courtesy Marine Tanguy
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Talking Place is hosted by Tanisha Raffiuddin, Creative Director at Concept Culture.
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