The Screaming House - the website for placing a sculpture of Edvard Munch's lost house in Sunderland

Sunderland is not a place usually associated with art, modern or otherwise. Football, perhaps, or for people with longer memories, thriving shipbuilding and engineering industries. Some may know of Sunderland's tradition in producing glass.

But when I was growing up in the town (now a city) I spent a huge amount of time in the central art gallery. The gallery's collection spanned from classical seafaring scenes and portraits to exhibitions of challenging 70s experimentalism. The adjacent library had an extensive art section, and there I could further my appreciation with books covering everything from Renaissance murals to Abstract Expressionism.

But now the riverside industries have gone. The sound of hammering and welding I once heard from over two miles away as a child is silenced. A National Glass Centre sits where the cranes and derricks once stood. Sunderland is emerging from centuries of heavy industry and is seeking a redefined identity.

What better place then, to consider siting an artwork that is at the same time an engineering challenge and a remembrance; a celebration of creativity past and creative thinking for the future? And why not invite the spirit of a great Norwegian artist to travel across the North Sea as his Viking forefathers did and inspire a glowing sentinel that brings a light of international harmony and shared human understanding to a coastline still reeling from the ravages of post-industrialism? Inspirational art does not rely on obvious connections or correlations. It shuns them. Creativity blossoms when unlikely elements come together.

The Screaming House can be many things to many people: to me it is a personal statement and an homage to Munch; to others it can symbolize whatever comes into their minds. The Screaming House is an object of contemplation, a thought-stirring site, an existential conundrum. It is a sculpture to bring art lovers to Sunderland, and knowledge of Munch to a wider audience. It is the light of the soul under dark skies. It is the voice of the past screaming into the future.