Recent exhibitions at the London-based non-profit arts venues Studio Voltaire, Chisenhale Gallery and The Showroom, part of the How to Work Together initiative, have brought into focus the challenges facing small visual arts organisations today, especially rising rents.
How to Work Together is a programme of contemporary art commissioning and research. The organisations involved are producing joint exhibitions over three years.
The artists commissioned in the second year are Ahmet Ogut (Chisenhale Gallery; ended 31 May), Wendelien van Oldenborgh (The Showroom; until 20 June) and Sanya Kantarovsky (Studio Voltaire; until 7 June).
The scheme has enabled Studio Voltaire to organise a project on a larger scale than normal and produce an extensive monograph, says Joe Scotland, the director of the Clapham-based gallery.
“Each organisation has grown and this is partly through us sharing information,” he says.
Andrea Phillips, a professor of fine art at Goldsmiths College, University of London, was commissioned to research How to Work Together.
She wrote that “the very real tension between how organisations would like to work, both internally and in collaboration with sister organisations, and the way they must work in order to sustain themselves financially and promotionally, is an increasing concern in the non-profit arts sector”.
In 2014, the project was awarded Catalyst funding of £210,000 from Arts Council England (ACE). Scotland says this improved the fundraising capacity of each organisation, but adds: “The aim of Catalyst is to make organisations less reliant on public funding. There is only a limited pool of supporters and everyone is after the same people at a time when there is increasing need, so it is competitive.”
Studio Voltaire, which employs five full-time staff, receives around 20% of its income from ACE, with the remainder coming from commercial activities, studio rents, sponsorship and trusts.
Small non-profit venues can be innovative with fundraising, but this needs to be underpinned by ongoing government funding.
“We don’t have large development teams, and have limited networks,” Scotland says. “We play a specific role in supporting emerging artistic practices.”
Many small venues lease buildings and are likely to pay a higher percentage of their turnover in rent compared with larger organisations. “As the property market continues to grow and our lease agreements come up, we are going to be priced out of the city,” Scotland says.
Marcel Baettig, the chief executive of Bow Arts, an educational arts charity in east London, also highlights the issue of rising rents.“Lease terms used to last 15 to 20 years but are now around three years,” he says. “We can’t write off costs against that time period.”
Bow Arts runs five venues across east London including the Nunnery, a contemporary art gallery in Mile End. Its artist studio complexes are at 98% capacity, with rent paid across three sites helping to sustain the organisation.
It has also converted the former home of Rupert Murdoch’s publishing company News International in Wapping, east London, into 90 artist studios, which are due to open this month. ACE is backing the project.
Bow Arts receives arts council revenue funding as a National Portfolio Organisation for small-scale educational projects. “But capital funding models are not keeping pace with commercial changes,” Baettig says.
Chris Brown, the co-director of the g39 artist- run gallery in Cardiff, also gives a candid assessment of how to survive.
“For us, resilience has meant maintaining scalability so that in any given scenario we can continue to operate,” he says. “That might mean an increase or decrease in staffing, programmes and support for artists.”
But the biggest challenge in the pipeline is Arts Council of Wales’s investment review due in October. “We’d like to see an uplift in our settlement in line with our increased output and reputation since the last review in 2010,” Brown says.
G39 received £70,000 in revenue funding in 2012-13 from the arts council.
How to Work Together is a programme of contemporary art commissioning and research. The organisations involved are producing joint exhibitions over three years.
The artists commissioned in the second year are Ahmet Ogut (Chisenhale Gallery; ended 31 May), Wendelien van Oldenborgh (The Showroom; until 20 June) and Sanya Kantarovsky (Studio Voltaire; until 7 June).
The scheme has enabled Studio Voltaire to organise a project on a larger scale than normal and produce an extensive monograph, says Joe Scotland, the director of the Clapham-based gallery.
“Each organisation has grown and this is partly through us sharing information,” he says.
Andrea Phillips, a professor of fine art at Goldsmiths College, University of London, was commissioned to research How to Work Together.
She wrote that “the very real tension between how organisations would like to work, both internally and in collaboration with sister organisations, and the way they must work in order to sustain themselves financially and promotionally, is an increasing concern in the non-profit arts sector”.
In 2014, the project was awarded Catalyst funding of £210,000 from Arts Council England (ACE). Scotland says this improved the fundraising capacity of each organisation, but adds: “The aim of Catalyst is to make organisations less reliant on public funding. There is only a limited pool of supporters and everyone is after the same people at a time when there is increasing need, so it is competitive.”
Studio Voltaire, which employs five full-time staff, receives around 20% of its income from ACE, with the remainder coming from commercial activities, studio rents, sponsorship and trusts.
Small non-profit venues can be innovative with fundraising, but this needs to be underpinned by ongoing government funding.
“We don’t have large development teams, and have limited networks,” Scotland says. “We play a specific role in supporting emerging artistic practices.”
Many small venues lease buildings and are likely to pay a higher percentage of their turnover in rent compared with larger organisations. “As the property market continues to grow and our lease agreements come up, we are going to be priced out of the city,” Scotland says.
Marcel Baettig, the chief executive of Bow Arts, an educational arts charity in east London, also highlights the issue of rising rents.“Lease terms used to last 15 to 20 years but are now around three years,” he says. “We can’t write off costs against that time period.”
Bow Arts runs five venues across east London including the Nunnery, a contemporary art gallery in Mile End. Its artist studio complexes are at 98% capacity, with rent paid across three sites helping to sustain the organisation.
It has also converted the former home of Rupert Murdoch’s publishing company News International in Wapping, east London, into 90 artist studios, which are due to open this month. ACE is backing the project.
Bow Arts receives arts council revenue funding as a National Portfolio Organisation for small-scale educational projects. “But capital funding models are not keeping pace with commercial changes,” Baettig says.
Chris Brown, the co-director of the g39 artist- run gallery in Cardiff, also gives a candid assessment of how to survive.
“For us, resilience has meant maintaining scalability so that in any given scenario we can continue to operate,” he says. “That might mean an increase or decrease in staffing, programmes and support for artists.”
But the biggest challenge in the pipeline is Arts Council of Wales’s investment review due in October. “We’d like to see an uplift in our settlement in line with our increased output and reputation since the last review in 2010,” Brown says.
G39 received £70,000 in revenue funding in 2012-13 from the arts council.