This from the Self Service mailing list, announcing the next in the series of Pub Conversations:
Thursday 17th Jan from 7.30pm
back at our usual venue:
The Lamp Tavern,
257 Barford Street,
Birmingham.
B5 6AH
Aside from directions and past conversation podcasts, our website is playing up at the moment so it isn’t up-to-date. Instead, please see the biographies below to realise why this is a night in the pub not to miss.
Places are free but please rsvp to selfservice[at]hotmail.co.uk to book.
Also, please pass this on to your mailing lists and any others who may be interested.
Douglas White
A Royal College of Art graduate, Douglas White has won the Deutsche Bank Pyramid Award, and a Mann Drawing Prize. He was also shortlisted for the Jerwood Sculpture Prize and the Jerwood Drawing Prize. He has also won the Cockburn Art Prize (1999), the Southsquare Art Scholarship (1996) and the Margaret Pollock Scholarship (2004). His work was selected for the New Contemporaries exhibition in 2004 and 2006. His first solo show was held in October 2006 at Paradise Row, London.
Justin Coombes
Another Paradise Row solo show artist, Justin Coombes is a Goldsmith’s graduate, specialising in photography. He was short-listed for the Paul Hamlyn Award 2007 and the Vordemberge-Gildewart Prize 2006 and won the BOC Emerging Artist Award in 2005. He also has work in the British Government Art Collection.
Reproducing some of my notes from the recent studio conversation in an attempt to keep some momentum going over the Christmas slump and because it feeds into other stuff elsewhere…
Draw your own conclusions and do as you see fit!
Things in [square brackets] are notes I’ve added as I’ve typed these now.
Defensible space vs. shared spaces
£4 per square foot, including bills (national average £7 [national average for what? What were we comparing?])
Studios as something to exploit and then move on from
Nobody [at the studios] was talking about their work!
Programming vs studio space. Where is the activity?
Push people out into the city [to further their careers, make way for new artists and prevent a plug forming in the studios]
The functions of a café includes that of an ad hoc public space [cf actually making a direct financial profit, many projects are born here]
Associate programme:
collaborations
sharing knowledge
Friends model
Travel bursaries
How do you make it sweet enough for people to be dedicated?
computer access 24 hours
library
Access to space and to each other (primary function)
Draw on it for information and opportunities
£12 per month
not through a selection process, but available to anyone who feels they are following a path within the visual arts
Consists of an active core
Peer-to-peer networking
Studios as part of the ecology of the area and the region (how does it do this and how is it charged with energy?)
Using the institution to create networks
Who is the gallery for?
Spike Design as a way of getting the funders through the door
DCMS toolkit
What is our relationship with bricks and mortar that can fit our new economies?
related to profile
dependent on career stage of the artists involved
are studios actually the model of the future?
Where is the urgency?
24-hour access
Studios providing new ways for graduates to participate in the city
Cube in Bristol as a potential model based not on studio space, but on social activities that become the starting point for many initiatives, thereby leaving a legacy.
Do people need an ongoing space?
Do people need a temporary space?
A space that the city provides will never be your space – it is for generations
Nuclei around centres of common need
How to manage something that is fractured?
Artists do not want to be building managers
Lack of social confidence in Birmingham’s practitioners (by contrast Spike Island grew from activism and lobbying)
Merry Christmas everyone – what can you make happen in 2008?
Here are a few extracts that stood out for me and an indication as to possible routes for discussion/action to take as a response (sorry it’s quite cryptic but I’m away from home at the moment and not really in the right frame of mind to write anything more substantial):
Birmingham accepts the principle in its published creative strategies and ought, on the face of it, to be well placed to work with artists in helping to lift vast, run-down areas like Eastside. But for some reason it seems to have more difficulty in translating theory into practice than its rivals.
Terry Grimley on regeneration and competition between cities to attract investment and footloose young professionals
Jumping off points:
Working with artists.
Following up on pledges put into print.
Attracting new people into the city in contrast to that of keeping hold of the people who are here already. (The issue of graduate retention is briefly mentioned later on in the article.)
Rivalries between cities?
The studio situation is really difficult. The council says it wants all this stuff but you have to create structures to support people. It’s completely out of kilter with every other major city for the council not to be making empty buildings available.
–verb (used with object)
1. to bear or hold up (a load, mass, structure, part, etc.); serve as a foundation for. dictionary definition for ‘support’, my emphasis
Artists are key cultural assets for any city. Whenever a trade delegation visits Bristol nowadays, they are always taken to Spike Island. Artists need places to make work, and we have to address the whole question of artists’ workspaces. I feel it’s a joint responsibility between the city and the Arts Council.
quoting David Drake, Head of Visual Arts at ACE West Midlands
Jumping off points:
Using a bottom-up approach (with suitable top-down support at times).
Artists need places to make work – it’s not all about galleries and exhibitions and showcase events.
“Birmingham will get a reputation as a vibrant, creative, international city when it becomes a vibrant, creative, international city”. (Attempt at paraphrasing a commenter somewhere on CiB, I think).
Fundamental changes vs glossy patches.
Creating flexible frameworks around which people can build their own activities and value as appropriate to the work that they do and the way that they do it.
Update 02/12/2007: and now we’re pushing the capacity of VIVID too!
Demand for places at this event has been very high. If you have already booked and happen to have a fold up chair or cushion handy please feel free to bring it with you as we may be slightly short on seating.
There are (very) few spaces left, BUT BOOKING IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL. IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY, PLEASE EMAIL selfservice@hotmail.com ASAP TO BOOK
PLEASE DON’T JUST TURN UP – WE CANNOT GUARANTEE WE WILL BE ABLE TO LET YOU IN IF YOU HAVEN’T BOOKED.
Self Service mailing list
We’ve had so many people book places for the upcoming Pub(lic) Conversation about studio provision and support for artists in Birmingham that we’ve had to find an alternative venue.
The open discussion will now be held at VIVID. For those of you who haven’t got experience of Digbeth warehouse spaces, make sure you wrap up warm.
Unfortunately the new venue does not have a bar so you may want to bring your own (in addition to the extra jumper) if you feel you can’t wait until after to visit one of the local hostelries.
There may be a small budget for refreshments, and possibly a tea urn too!
Same as before though, please email selfservice@hotmail.co.uk to book a place.
PUB(LIC) CONVERSATION ABOUT STUDIOS AND ARTISTS WORKSPACE IN BIRMINGHAM
Guest speaker and host, Lucy Byatt, Director of Spike Island, Bristol.
In December, after a six month stay of execution, Birmingham Artists will lose the subsidy for their studios at Lee Bank. This space was the only Birmingham City Council subsidised artists’ workspace in the city. Meanwhile other studios (including those the majority of Self Service members inhabit) are in privately owned buildings that are often cold, damp, insecure and uninsurable.
Self Service feel this most recent withdrawal of support for artists’ practice, should act as a catalyst for a wider discussion about the lack of affordable, fit for purpose studio provision and production facilities in the city
How should artists in Birmingham respond to the council’s action?
Could artists be doing more to demonstrate the intrinsic value of arts practice to the city?
Are successful models for studio provision just about providing artists with space to work?
Is the Creative Industries agenda at odds with the realities of most artists’ practice?
With these, and many more, questions in mind we have have invited Lucy Byatt to host a pub(lic) conversation around this issue.
Everyone is welcome, though as we are limited by space, booking is essential.
PLEASE EMAIL selfservice@hotmail.co.uk TO BOOK A PLACE.
Spike Island is a national centre for the production and exhibition of contemporary art. Located in Bristol, Spike offers excellent studios as well as project and exhibition space for the making and showing of ambitious new work. Spike Island emerged from an artist run initiative developed in the late 70’s, Bristol Art Space. Whilst it is no longer ‘artist run’ the values of support to artists and those developing their career within the contemporary visual arts remains a high priority.
Lucy Byatt has been Artistic Director at Spike Island in Bristol since September ‘02. In her five years at Spike Island her role has been to build the vision and create the organisational change required to enable her to deliver the recently completed £2.25m capital development. Spike Island has retained its generous number of low cost studios and created new space within the building to establish the Associate Programme so providing access for many more people developing a path within the visual arts. The galleries, right at the heart of the building, now refurbished, are amongst the most exciting spaces in the UK. The much improved residency studio space has enabled Spike Island to enlarge the International Residency Programme so creating a web of networks across Europe and beyond.
Previous to this she was based in Glasgow, where in 1993 she did the MFA at Glasgow School of Art, and Concordia University Montreal. In 1995 she joined Visual Art Projects as co-director, balancing her own practice as an artist with the demands of working with this newly formed arts commissioning organisation. During her four years at VAP the agency became influential, commissioning some of the most ambitious artist’s projects in public space in Scotland. In 1999 she left VAP to establish The Centre also based in Glasgow, an agency again focussed on artists working in the public domain, The Priority for The Centre was to build a critical context for this work through discussion, collaboration, conferences and publications.
Currently Self Service is Tom Bloor, Jo Capper, Mona Casey, Faye Claridge, Ruth Claxton, Greg Cox, John Hall, Cheryl Jones, Nikki Pugh, Liz Rowe and Matt Westbrook.
Miles Thurlow is an artist based in Gateshead and co-director of Workplace Gallery (with Paul Moss). Recent exhibitions include Legacies of Dissolution, Colony, Birmingham, Formal Dining, Hales Gallery, London, Blue Star Red Wedge, Glasgow International 2006 and You Shall Know Our Velocity, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.
His guest, Carmen Cebreros Urzaiz (Mexico City, 1977) graduated in Visual Arts at the National School of Fine Arts-UNAM (Mexico), and the MA in Curating at Goldsmiths College. She has curated the exhibitions The Taming Power of the Small’ (Mexico City, 2003), Stages and Transfers (Mexico City, 2005), and recently an Audioguide for Sir John Soane’s Museum (London, 2006) constituted by the commentaries of international sound, performance and visual artists, architects, historians, and philosophers.
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