New model for Scottish artists

We launched Outer Spaces in 2021, after the pandemic and in a significantly changed economic and social landscape. More than 800 resident artists occupy our spaces across Scotland, but there are still 800 more looking for space.

Our waiting lists continue to grow in all areas, the cities especially. This not only demonstrates the dynamism and energy in the Scottish arts scene but also the need for access to affordable spaces for artists to develop, make and share their work.

Because of Covid, inequality in the arts became visible. Freelance artists lost their incomes, communities with once thriving social networks were disconnected and precarity and instability was laid bare. Even before the pandemic, studio space was increasingly unaffordable with rents out of reach for many.

We began occupying commercial buildings that had closed and stayed shut and designed a new infrastructure based on need rather than historical practice. We began exploring different organisational models and structures and started to find ways to challenge inequalities.

Offering vital support

Although ‘temporary’, many of our spaces last for over a year, enabling artists to settle and work in relative security and with no financial burdens or commitments. When it is time to leave, artists are prioritised for new spaces, so there is continuity of support.

Our spaces in disused shops and offices are very different from what might traditionally be considered artists’ studios. This, in itself, provides opportunities for artists to adapt their practices to reflect the specifics and context of the individual vacant spaces and sites available.

Matching artists in need of space with the right property offers vital support, often at a pivotal moment in an artist’s career. This could be for developing large-scale work or preparing for an upcoming show. We can help existing artist-led initiatives and accelerate new ones to emerge.

Our spaces are particularly important for recent graduates navigating the difficult period between leaving the supportive community of art school and developing their own professional practice. At this crucial point, it is vital to build and sustain new communities and activity.

When artists have spaces to lead their own projects, it can generate a whole host of collective and collaborative approaches with – importantly – the artists firmly in control. This is a key part of our ethos: to trust and enable artists. When every advertised opportunity is oversubscribed, the chance to initiate and develop projects becomes more significant and we have a checklist for enterprising artists to do just that.

Continues…

The Dissenter for Spaces Studies commission activated a redundant Edinburgh city centre office block with events-based programming. Photo: Elliott Hatherley

Ambitious commissioning programme

When we launched Outer Spaces, we set out to create an alternative arts infrastructure, reaching beyond established studios with mostly static populations and very limited spaces for new generations of artists. We started from scratch and operated outside the regularly funded visual arts system – under standstill funding pressures, unable to realise the potential of Scotland’s energetic visual arts sector. Since the beginning, we have been developing, testing and refining our model, and building our professional development programming to support artists with much more than just space.

By 2024, with funding from Creative Scotland and Aberdeen City Council, we could offer cash bursaries and micro commissions with accompanying curators-in-residence designed to kickstart different ways of working in the former commercial spaces left empty by the pandemic.

What began with the Dissenter for Spaces Studies commission – which activated a redundant Edinburgh city centre office block with events-based programming involving artists, curators, designers and architects – has evolved into an ambitious commissioning programme in different Scottish locations.

In all, seven new works have been commissioned from artists including Suds McKenna and Morven Mulgrew, who both responded to the unique architectural features of a former insurance building in central Edinburgh, and 58 artists working in different areas of Scotland have been awarded bursaries since we began.

Entirely artist led

In February in Aberdeen, we presented an exhibition of new work by three socially engaged artists with the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF) 2024’s theme In/Visible as a starting point. While the project has had a positive impact on the communities the artists have engaged with, these commissions were planned primarily to support the artists.

The way the project was conceived and delivered was entirely led by the artists themselves and the only outcome required was a way to share the new commissions with audiences. Repurposing a redundant kitchen supplies showroom as workshop space and a temporary gallery gives the work a platform, and crucially, visibility from the street outside.

Later this spring, we will present a series of commissions in Glasgow city centre using our temporary occupation of a prestigious, spectacular and monumental space to create a different kind of opportunity: selected artists from our network of studio holders will make work for a former banking hall, responding to the symbolic power and opulence of the space.

Our support for artists is deliberately flexible and responsive as we continue to build a new way of working, supporting the ambitions of artists already in our network and those wanting to join. We are now a key provider of spaces to Scottish artists and what we offer is desirable and essential.

This is demonstrated not just by our waiting list but through our annual surveys of studio holders, and through day-to-day contact with our artists. We believe our model offers a new strand of support for Scottish artists, complementing already existing provision and reflective of the energy present in the sector as we navigate a post-pandemic, post-Brexit and current cost-of-living crisis art world.

Outer Spaces is a charity that supports artist development, artist-led activities and studio provision in empty commercial property across Scotland. Their programming and partnerships support visual artists, working in the context of vacant or disused spaces as sites of research and experimentation.