Case Study 1: Mivart Artists

Background: In 2003 I moved into a workshop in Mivart Street Studios in Easton, Bristol after working in a spare bedroom in rural Devon for the previous eight years. I was excited by the idea of meeting and networking with other artists, but after six months of being in the building I hadn’t met a soul. When I mentioned it to the landlady she put me in touch with Nicky Knowles another artist in the building who was experiencing a similar problem. Nicky and I got talking and the idea of organising an open studio event, as a way to meet and possibly collaborate with other artists in the building, was raised.

We got a questionnaire together and the response from other artists in the building was encouraging, so we held our first meeting and a small group of artists volunteered to help organise the event. The first Mivart Street Open Studios for seven years was held in October 2004 (please see editors note below for details of previous artist-led activity in the building).

Lessons Learned: In the early days, of this particular incarnation of Mivart Artists (see editors note below for more information), we were very lucky to have a single volunteer central coordinator at the reins, with Nicky providing her considerable expertise to coordinate the first two open studio events. Things changed when Nicky decided to take some time out to have a baby, suddenly we had to regroup and pick up where she had left off. We soon realised that Nicky had taken on far more than any one individual in the group was prepared to take on. We agreed to work more as a collective and that it would be much easier in the future if we shared her workload around as many people as possible so that if anyone wanted to take a back seat we weren’t left with a huge gap.

A group of artists contacted Alias to see if an advisor could come in to help draft a mission statement and constitution. We opted for a more collective approach with artists volunteering and being voted in to key posts including Treasurer, Communications Officer and a floating Chair - Mivart Artists was born.

As a group we learned to encourage as many people to get involved as possible so that no one person takes on the lion’s share; agreed a mission statement and constitution so that the group had a clear agenda; organised volunteers to work in small teams responsible for specific projects/activities (fundraising, PR & marketing, website, workshops, etc); and appointed a steering group made up of team leaders to monitor and report on progress.

Our Successes: We have worked together to achieve some great successes over the last few years. In 2006 Mivart Artists successfully applied for funding from the Arts Council SW to appoint a curator to work with us to develop new work for a group exhibition that would take place in the shared spaces in the building during the 2006 Open Studios.

Sarah Williams, from the Jerwood Space in London, agreed to act as curator and we embarked on a yearlong project. Artists in the building were invited to submit proposals to create new site-specific work for the exhibition. Sarah’s task was to review these proposals and to work with each artist to encourage the development of the new work. She suggested the title ‘Hide & Seek’ for the exhibition and visited the studios on several occasions during the year to discuss the development and direction of each artists work on a one-to-one basis, and to plan how the exhibition itself would be installed and promoted.

The exhibition was a huge success, visitor numbers nearly doubled for the Open Studio and feedback from participating artists was really positive. The only problem was that a small team of people had put in a huge amount of work with the funding bid, finding a curator and working with the curator to develop the project and coordinating the Open Studio event too. Mivart Artists faced ‘burn out’ for the first time, we had also set a precedent with the Hide & Seek exhibition and many were left feeling that we need to do something special every year or perhaps even biannually.

Current Challenges: 2007 saw a more traditional open studio event that was none the less successful, with over 35 artists taking part, and almost entirely self-funded. However, after the event fewer artists came to meetings and some of the key people who did attend wanted to take a year out in 2008 to concentrate on their own work. More recently we have experienced an unexpectedly large turnover of artists in the building with up to ten old tenants leaving and new ones moving in.

We are now regrouping and refocusing and are experiencing a number of new challenges including:

1. Ensuring new tenants are encouraged to join longer standing tenants in deciding the future direction of Mivart Artists. With over 40 artists in the building it is very difficult to ensure everyone has an opportunity to participate and to form a consensus;

2. Establishing if there is enough interest within the building in Mivart Artists’ hosting regular annual or biannual open studio events, and getting a new team of enthusiastic volunteers together to coordinate them;

3. Facilitating the discussion of new ideas for more ambitious projects and the dilemma of whether funding for any of these ideas is likely to be forthcoming given the current change in funding policies and whether there’s enough energy in the building to make them a reality.

Editors Note: It is interesting to note there has been a growing number of artists in the building since 1991, with open studio events being held in 1993 and 1994 culminating in 'Exposition Miv@rt' which ran from 12 - 20 November l995 and included other invited artists, performances, workshops and a discussion led by Jon Bewley from Locus+ (a facilitating group based at the University of Sunderland). But by 1998 many of the artists involved in coordinating these events had moved on and the building fell quiet until 2004 when the current incarnation of Mivart Artists began to be established.

Do you face similar challenges? Have you found away to sustain Open Studio events in your building? We’d like to hear from other open studio groups to hear how you deal with these challenges? What lessons have you learned? What advice can you give? How are you tackling diminishing funding opportunities?

You can post your response by either emailing sally@aliasarts.org or by posting your message on the Alias Forum. Please note we will publish your email responses here:

Response from Claire Loder at Widcombe Studios, Bath

WS has been in existence for over 10 years and we still have some of the core members here which has been great for continuity. We have 47 studios and nearly 60 artists. We have a committee drawn from the artist membership – so voluntary, by and large artists who join the committee stay for quite a while. Consensus on big decisions can be a problem but the committee generally deals with this.

But we also have many artists who are not on the committee who do a lot of work throughout the year. We do find it hard to get newer members involved though. But we try to stress the importance of their involvement from the outset. We talk to all new artists at interview about finding a role in the studios community. We have a list of jobs and responsibilities with assigned names that gets published so everyone can see what each artist is responsible for.

The paid admin days are 3.5 per week – I work 2 and Katie works 1 and a half. Our work load is constant and we are always playing catch-up – there are many things we would like to take on but can’t due to time. A typical day for me can involve dealing with solicitors, buying sugar, doing the accounts and taking phone enquiries about courses. Katie is developing the use of our gallery while juggling many general admin tasks too.

The admin team is heavily involved with big projects like the open studios but the input from artist volunteers is crucial. The event is self funding and we find that the majority of artists open their studios up, we also hold a group exhibition, run a café and sometimes other events or fundraisers. Attendance could be better and we would like to have all the studios open and develop what we do.

For the last two years we have held two open studios a year (December and May) but this year we have gone back to one – in May as we feel that two events was diluting our input and the audience reaction. For next May’s event we will start planning earlier than usual and hopefully have a more successful event in terms of involvement from artists and visitor numbers/sales – hopefully expanding what we offer to visitors.

Widcombe Studios is a non-profit-making visual arts centre in Bath. It exists to support the visual arts within the community through the provision of affordable studio space, art classes, talks and exhibitions. The Studios have grown in standing since their inception in 1997 to become a central part of the artistic community in Bath, as well as the largest provider of art courses and studio space.

You can post your response by either emailing sally@aliasarts.org or by posting your message on the Alias Forum. Please note we will publish your email responses here.

Response from Katie Lakie at Flameworks Creative Arts Facility, Plymouth

Flameworks was founded by myself (Katie Lake), Noah Taylor and Emma Spring when we were all teaching/studying on the Design Metals course at Plymouth College of Art and Design (PCAD) in 1996. Our aim was to try and help retain some of the artistic talent that was graduating from PCAD by providing a creative and affordable equipped workshop/studio facility. We approached the Art Dept of the Plymouth City Council (PCC) for a building and support and were directed to join another group of 2D artists, this collaboration became Plymouth Artists Initiative, a very loose and unwieldy group that meet in pubs mainly and really was too ambitious with its plans to set up a huge studio, cafe and gallery affair and find nearly £1 million!!! We were given a short lease by PCC on an old shop on the Barbican which ran as a gallery space for a few months. We had lots of Indians, but no clear chiefs and for about two years we looked at this building and wrote endless minutes, feasibility studies and reports. Eventually the Flameworks wing splinted off again and began the search for a workshop only space as most of us couldn’t work from bedrooms or garages and we were all mainly large scale metals based with a couple of jewellers. During this period through the piloted ALIAS scheme we wrote a feasibility study, visited Stroud Valley Artspace (SVA) and Spike Island in Bristol, which helped inform how we were constituted and organised.

Eventually we found the current building in Devonport in 2001 and were just in time to receive a small grant from The New Deals for Communities scheme, of which Devonport had just become part of, this helped us set up and do some basic and very necessary electrical work. We were also given a six month rent free period from PCC, which helped take the financial pressure off us. Unfortunately, the talented graduates which we intended to retain in the city and who had wanted space original had mostly left to move home or found their own spaces!

Not put off and with only four artists and a huge building we moved in and then word of mouth started, we welcomed (desperately!!!) any ‘artistic’ discipline and decided to be a flexible as possible, and in fact this variety of artforms is one of out strengths and has resulted in many artistic collaborations. After nine months and feeling the pressure of paying rent we held an official opening event and this helped fill nearly all our spaces and made us visible within the city, giving us a much needed voice and position as a viable city arts organisation.

During our first two years we worked closely with ALIAS and Jo Leahy our ALIAS advisor from SVA in particular, this helped highlight good and bad points about Artist-led initiatives, it stopped us making some mistakes, but a lot of issues are still faced by all similar organisation, like the ‘burn out’ mentioned in Mivarts case study, different requirements from the tenants – some are happy to muck in and help, some need persuasion and other just want the benefits of having a space and don’t want to get involved, financial worries of the organisation and also the artists within it!!, group/joint publicity and exhibitions, health and safety, funding, the aims of the organisation grow and become bigger than you originally expect, etc. The later is a good example, when we first started we were just an affordable space provider, now we have group shows/exhibitions, group publicity, an educational projects aspect, we act as an advocate/voice for a lot of Plymouth’s artistic/craft community, have, we hope, raised the profile of the arts/contemporary crafts in the region and Flameworks is the South West’s representative on the National Federation of Artists Studio Providers.

The burn-out issue was somewhat addressed by getting part-time administrative support in 2005, this took some of the day to day running pressure off a couple of the directors and helped towards the successful Arts Council grant for our exhibition programme as well as, a few smaller project grants, ie; IT equipment, security improvements, etc. It is still an issue as I think with any similar set up, our strength as a flexible artist-led group is probably also are biggest weakness, when artists, who are generally not known for there business acumen, are then trying to run their own business and also volunteer to run a successful regional arts organisation too, it can make for slightly fragile foundations and always means things take about 10 times longer to do than if someone was paid to do it!!!. We have known this was an issue for a while and have been quite proactive getting advice and help from more business minded supporters and organisations and are at present producing a long over due business plan and development document for our long term sustainability.

Running an Artist-Led initiative is highly rewarding at times and a lot of hard work, but adds so much value to the creative sector and economy, as well as the individual artists involved.

You can post your response by either emailing sally@aliasarts.org or by posting your message on the Alias Forum. Please note we will publish your email responses here.