We spent Saturday last in St Davids in Wales. It is little more than a village, but claims the title of being Britain’s smallest city. This is because a city, by one definition, is a town with a cathedral. St Davids’ Cathedral is found in a hollow below the main city centre and reached by a flight of steps and a steep path. The building itself is also on a slope and from west to east is a distinct climb up an angled floor.

It is a cathedral I know well as earlier this year I held an exhibition there. It is smaller than say Canterbury or Lincoln and in many ways less grand, yet as a centre of real spiritual feeling it is probably unrivalled. In Medieval times it was one of the country’s main centres of pilgrimage and still today, despite being out on a geographical limb, receives 1000s of visitors a year. Compared with the big cathedrals it is run on a shoe-string and yet has a standard of music that is up with the best. It is a friendly, welcoming place with none of the in-your-face money-making that mars many of Britain’s best known religious buildings.

The bishop’s palace alongside the cathedral is now a ruin and managed as a heritage site. Between the palace and the cathedral there is a small, fast running river with a ford and two footbridges. At lunchtime, we sat on a bench in the sunshine of the late Welsh summer eating a picnic, looking across the water from the cathedral side. That evening we joined the Cathedral Friends in the new refectory for the annual Friends’ dinner. Between times we attended evensong in the nave. A day as near to perfection this side of heaven as is possible.

If all goes to plan, next summer our Unst Modern show will become a summer long event. Five Unst artists will be exhibiting in what will be both an arts’ centre and working studio at Saxavord. With a brewery and distillery at one end and a thriving arts community at the other, the former RAF camp will surely be on the top of the ‘must visit’ list of places in Shetland – if not Scotland!

At the weekend I spent time looking around another contemporary arts venue. The Folkestone Triennial is one of the most prestigious contemporary arts festivals in England. Held, as the name suggests, once every three years, it brings together artists from around the world to devise and show work in public places. It is all part of a plan to regenerate Folkestone’s old town and harbour area, which had, over recent years become shabby and neglected.

The Old High Street is re-branded ‘The Creative Quarter’ and is at the heart of the triennial. For this year’s event not only have a number of temporary exhibits been placed around the district, but an area of scrub land at the heart of the Creative Quarter has been landscaped as a permanent meeting area and children’s play park.

A lot of money has been spent on the event. Some of the works look very expensive. One artist has buried gold bars in the sandy beach just beyond the harbour. The populous is being encouraged to scrabble in the sand to find them. The money comes from the charitable trust of the family that started the Saga empire, but the lottery fund and various other public sources chip in with substantial sums.

That money spent on public art can rejuvenate a run-down urban area is yet unproven. It is certainly a popular way of attempting to pull an area up in the world. Margate has the new Turner and Hastings the Jerwood Galleries. While the Turner buzzes with activity, the Jerwood, when I saw it last weekend, was entirely empty even though the seafront at Hastings was teeming with people. But then the Turner is free and the Jerwood charges £8 to go in.

Should an area that has attracted art investment show signs of improvement, an unanswerable question remains? Was the change brought about because of the art money, or would investment into any other social project have primed the economic pump?

And what is meant by improvement? I remember Folkestone old town not long ago being a collection of seedy arcades, massage parlours and pubs. Now there is a growing creative community at work – although derelict shops do remain. It is well on its way to being a popular place for the arty middle-classes to wander around, sip coffee at street cafes and eat at vegetarian or foodie restaurants. What has happened to the people who once dossed, injected and drank there? Who knows – but they are now out of sight and out of mind and Folkestone is well on its way to fashionable rehabilitation.

Surely the value of art is not solely assessed in economic terms? Art has an intrinsic value in and of itself. Once it was a way of exploring beauty. It was an aesthetic experience. In the past artists have been the prophets of their age. They have said uncomfortable things. They have explored dark and disturbing ideas.

Contemporary art employs many languages - not just traditional languages of art, such as painting and sculpture, but performance, film, installation etc. Yoko Ono’s contribution would, I suspect, be categorized as ‘conceptual’. Tim Etchells has his art idea displayed in neon lights. Sarah Staton’s steel structure is more recognizable as sculpture, although Alex Hartley’s work ‘Vigil’, which can be seen from across the harbour, consists of the artist sitting on a mountaineers' portaledge slung onto the side of a hotel. There’s a set of bamboo scaffolding for children to climb on and a series of faux water towers placed above an underground river.

The Folkestone Triennial illustrates well the many languages now used by artists. Sadly, the Triennial as a whole reminded me of the Peter Ustinov character who spoke 8 languages fluently and had little of interest to say in any of them.

The overwhelming impression was of a huge amount of work, skill, money and effort going into creating elaborate explorations of shallow and trivial ideas. Epitomised by Andy Goldsworthy’s clay window. Clay placed on a shop window is being allowed to dry and crack slowly to let light into a darkened room. Not only can you see it is real life, you can watch it on a video screen in another location in the next street. I could have got the same fun and enlightenment from watching paint dry.