AI Profile – John Cassy, channel director, Sky Arts
Monday’s “unveiling”, if that’s what it can be called, of Antony Gormley’s One & Other on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square is probably the biggest public art project to date, in terms of participation and of audience.

You know how it’s going to work: every hour, 24 hours a day for 100 days, individuals who have applied with an idea of something they want to do will take their place on the plinth and do it. They’ll be people like David Rosenberg, a London designer, who wants to pedal his pink bike to generate enough energy to make him glow in the dark. Or Heather Pringle here, who will celebrate her 20th birthday on the plinth. Or 83-year-old Gwynneth Pedler who wants to signal with semaphore flags (if she can find some).

It’s also the point at which reality television and art meet, because every minute is going to be covered by Sky Arts.

“We want to engage with arts audiences on air but also on the streets, and we think this a very democratic way of getting them involved in the arts” says John Cassy, the channel director.

After five years the sponsorship of ENO is ending, and the Fourth Plinth is part of Sky Arts’ next big thing in sponsorship.

They will go live on line from the plinth on Monday from 8.15am (the official start is 9) and you get it at www.oneandother.co.uk from then 24 hours a day. Every Friday at 7 Clive Sanderson will host a live Sky Arts 1 highlights show from Trafalgar Square, with droppers-in like Janet Street-Porter, Dan Snow and Tim Marlow. At the end of the 100 days there will be a full-length documentary about Gormley and how he arrived at One & Other.

This is part of the channel’s “evolution”, as Cassy puts it. For three years it has sponsored and covered the Hay Festival, and the Gormley marathon is only the beginning of a three-year sponsorship of Artichoke, the creative company that brought London the Sultan’s Elephant in 2006 and Liverpool the giant automaton spider La Machine last year, and is organising One & Other.