Channel 4 offers the chance to have a piece of art on your street corner

Now communities across the UK are being offered the chance to cherish their own piece of public art in a multi-million pound initiative from Channel 4.

Anyone can recommend a choice of potential location for a new work of art to rival the North-east's iconic statue by logging on to www.channel4.com/bigart today.

And after a team of experts have sifted the sites for feasibility, six communities will be chosen in March to take part in a two-year process of commissioning and realising projects.

Although the work could be a large permanent sculpture, Jan Younghusband, Channel 4's commissioning editor for arts, said it could be as ephemeral as a performance or a project like the artist Jeremy Deller's filmed recreation of the miners' strike, The Battle of Orgreave.

In 2007, a series of programmes documenting the entire process will be broadcast to coincide with the unveiling of each work of art.

Ms Younghusband said she was originally inspired four years ago by seeing the public art exhibition Cow Parade in New York in which artists decorated model cows. "I thought it would be fantastic if we could do something that would engage with the outside world," she said.

Another new Channel 4 project, yet to be aired, has invited the public to write a play which will be produced in London's West End.