Why we’re celebrating the life of civil engineer John Smeaton at LEEDS 2023 - Abby Dix-Mason and Jane Earnshaw

And Smeaton had a lot to boast about. This was the man who dramatically stopped London Bridge from falling down, built the most iconic wave-washed lighthouse in the world and was eventually name checked in NASA’s history of flight. Almost 300 years after his birth our world is still shaped by his pioneering projects and we are lucky that he left a rich archive. The blueprints for lighthouses, waterwheels, bridges, harbours, canals, windmills, observatories, renewable energy sources and flight all form part of his incredible legacy.

Smeaton300 will bring this story into the 21st Century through a creative events programme with LEEDS2023 Year of Culture and will feature a new exhibition at Leeds Industrial Museum, talks and screenings from engineers, scientists and broadcasters, family friendly days at local libraries. The programme begins in earnest this week with our major new commission Moon Palace.

Moon Palace is an observatory on wheels created by artists Heather Peak and Ivan Morison alongside visual arts organisation East Leeds Project. The beautiful observatory has been created from a 1980s school coach and will be crisscrossing Leeds until November

As well as being an engineer, Smeaton was also a lifelong astronomer, building telescopes and observatories and meticulously recording his daily observations. The moon was a constant companion in Smeaton’s life, as it is in ours, gazing upon it even as his health was failing Smeaton remarked to his daughter Mary Dixon “how often I have looked up to it with enquiry and wonder".

Smeaton took inspiration from the natural world. The sweeping curved shape of his world famous Eddystone Lighthouse came directly from observations of the mighty oak tree. Taking Smeaton’s lead, Moon Palace is a magical place created for observation and contemplation, both of the here and now and the universe beyond us.

And of course, there will be stargazing on Moon Palace too, hosted by astronomers from the University of Leeds and Leeds Astronomical Society who will share their own love of the night sky.

Despite his modesty Smeaton understood the importance of storytelling and called upon those around him to be part of the creative process. He worked with his daughters to create exquisite technical illustrations of his work. His wife Ann took on the role of demonstrating the Eddystone Lighthouse with a detailed working model to a constant stream of visitors in Austhorpe, East Leeds. He collaborated with writers to fill the gaps in his simple Yorkshire prose.

The fact that Smeaton never patented his work says a lot about his character. He preferred to share his ideas freely and allow them to be improved on by others instead of for financial gain. In the same spirit he was quick to acknowledge the work of those that went before him. He understood that he was one amongst many engineers in world history and that his work would go on to be developed by others in the future.

The phrase civil engineering was coined by Smeaton to establish a new approach to engineering, one that created works for the public good and benefited society as a whole. This ethos sits at the heart of the Institution of Civil Engineers today.

Look around and you will see that Civil Engineering is everywhere. It builds the roads, railways and bridges we use to get to work, it makes our buildings stand up, allows goods to be transported and our sewers to work and it protects our homes from flooding. As the world faces some of the most serious problems it has ever seen, with the rapid acceleration of climate change, we need our engineers, designers and artists to work together to find solutions, imagine new ways to collaborate and be the most creative they have ever been. Just like Smeaton before them.

LEEDS2023 has given us the time to dive into Smeaton’s life, supported by an ever-growing team of engineers, archivists, curators and artists. This collaboration of art, science and engineering comes together in Smeaton300 and in 2024 the programme continues, supported by University of Leeds, South Asian Arts-UK and ICE Yorkshire and Humber. Together, we are on a mission to celebrate John Smeaton; to make his name synonymous with Leeds and inspire a new generation of artists and engineers.

Abby Dix-Mason and Jane Earnshaw are creative directors of Foxglove and Smeaton300.