Allenheads in the remote Northumbrian countryside was described in the press as a dying village in the 1980s because it was isolated and the mining industry that once supported it no longer existed.
But salvation arrived in the unlikely form of contemporary art when Helen Ratcliffe and Alan Smith moved into the village in the mid-1990s. After working in the arts in the US, the couple wanted to find a rural location that could act as their home but also as a venue to support artists.
“In the beginning we weren’t looking at other models, we were propelled by our own convictions,” says Ratcliffe. “We had no funding or backing but had a little bit of that American optimism that you can do anything.”
Allenheads, the highest village in England, had an aging female population and under 200 residents: it did not seem the most promising location for an arts initiative. But Ratcliffe and Smith moved into the old school house after an 18-month redevelopment programme and Allenheads Contemporary Arts (ACA) was born.
The mid-1990s was a time when a number of other organisations and individuals were developing contemporary art projects in rural locations.
Also in Northumberland, the English Heritage property Belsay Hall staged its first contemporary art exhibition in 1996. At the other end of England, in Hampshire, ArtSway opened a white cube space in the village of Sway in 1997. In Scotland, Deveron Arts was formed in 1995 by Claudia Zeiske and two others in Huntly, a town of 2,000 people in the Aberdeenshire countryside.
All of these organisations were developing their own ways of working and facing similar challenges of securing funding, developing audiences and attracting artists. “It took a while because in the first years, the arts council, in fact nobody, was taking us seriously,” says Smith.
“Nobody wanted to touch us and even now there is an urban-centric head-set among most of the funding bodies. They struggle with anything rural unless it is something perhaps small scale or middle of the road.”
But ACA has secured a range of funding over the years. Its first substantial support came from the Rural Development Commission and funded a series of children’s workshops.
And in 2000 Northern Arts gave it funding for Year of the Artist residencies. It has hosted many residencies and worked with artists such as Marcus Coates and James Turrell. ACA has also formed partnerships with higher education bodies to support arts students.
Belsay Hall’s first contemporary show saw the main hall refurnished with 15 pieces of commissioned contemporary design. Its most recent exhibition was Extraordinary Measures in 2010, which featured artists including Ron Mueck, Mat Collishaw and Mariele Neudecker.
“When I began in 1996 it was quite difficult to get artists to take part as it was in rural Northumberland,” says Judith King, curator of the contemporary art programme at Belsay Hall.
“A lot of artists from London were quite quizzical about where it was and if it would be useful to their careers. But it has been progressively easier to invite artists, designers and fashion designers.”
Culture is not just urban
Even with funding in place and artists on board, organisers of contemporary art events in rural areas still have to persuade people to visit.
“Bringing high-quality art to this sort of environment is challenging and getting the audiences is challenging as well,” says ArtSway director Mark Segal.
ArtSway has been made all too aware of the difficulty of funding contemporary art in rural areas as it was one those that recently failed to get regular support through Arts Council England national portfolio status (see box below).
“The numbers [of visitors] were an issue for us,” says Segal. “Despite doing a lot of work to develop audiences, that has not always been successful.”
In the light of all the challenges of developing contemporary art in rural areas, why do it at all? Wouldn’t it be more straightforward just to stick to urban areas where many artists and audiences are based?
The simple response from those involved is that contemporary culture does not just belong to urban centres and therefore should not just take place in urban areas.
Grizedale Arts in the Lake District has its roots in a series of residencies that started in the 1970s and included artists such as David Nash, Richard Harris and Andy Goldsworthy creating a range of work in the forest. Its director, Adam Sutherland, says the idea that culture belongs to urban centres stems from the view that all rural locations are simply a backwater for recreation and bigotry.
But Sutherland says attitudes have changed in recent years, as has Grizedale itself, which has moved away from artists who have highlighted the beauty of nature to a programme that has asked artists to address some of the challenges affecting rural areas, such as tourism, and to come up with solutions that make sense to local inhabitants.
“One of the key shifts that has happened in the last few years is that the rural has started to be considered as a viable base for making contemporary art,” Sutherland says.
“This shift has been brought about in part by rural British residency projects like Grizedale Arts, Wysing Arts Centre, Deveron Arts, Cove Park and ArtSway.”
For those presenting contemporary art in rural areas, a key way that they make it relevant to their audiences is by working closely with local communities. ACA says its events are part of the way the village socialises.
“It did not take too much time to realise that we needed to make people comfortable, so we put in barrels of beer and pots of soup at our events,” says Smith.
“There is a very diverse audience at our events – there will be a dry-stone waller, a farmer, a dentist who commutes to the city, teachers, a lawyer, the whole mix, really.”
Deveron Arts is similarly inclusive, with Huntly residents being an integral part in creating projects. Claudia Zeiske says Deveron uses what she calls a 50/50 approach, which runs through all levels of a project, including the equal contribution residents and artists make.
Artists outside their safety zone
“Rather than a passive audience, the public we are concerned with becomes a participant or collaborator, shaping the project in many different ways than the ones prescribed by the artist,” says Zeiske.
Local residents are further drawn in by the fact that Deveron Arts does not have a dedicated venue. Spaces throughout Huntly are used, which Zeiske says helps to attract people who would not visit traditional galleries. The ability of contemporary art to attract new audiences is also its appeal to rural venues with dedicated arts spaces.
Ryedale Folk Museum, in Hutton-Le-Hole on the remote North Yorkshire moors, opened a small gallery space at the museum and has developed a range of contemporary art projects to be shown there.
A recent residency by the artist Flora Parrott was part of three exhibitions exploring the debates and practices surrounding modern and contemporary sculpture in a rural context.
Parrott, who is based in London but whose family live on the North Yorkshire moors, used the museum’s collections to explore the social, historical and artistic resonances of a small section of the moor.
The first exhibition in the series was in 2008 and saw a group of young curators select contemporary sculpture from the Arts Council Collection. Next month, Herbert Read: Yorkshire Modern will highlight the art critic’s connection with the region and his role in the development of British modernism.
“One of the key targets for the gallery was to engage and build new audiences,” says Andy Dalton, the museum’s gallery manager. “The museum was conscious that its function as a social history museum meant more than just preserving the past.”
Like others working in contemporary rural arts, Dalton is keen for artists to be radical, innovative and ambitious, and to produce work that challenges visitors.
“It would be easy to spoonfeed our visitors a nostalgic experience but we hope that they enjoy the fact that at the museum they will get a sense of place in all its aspects, traditional and contemporary.”
Segal at ArtSway says some visitors are challenged when they come face to face with contemporary works rather than traditional images of rural life.
“Some people do walk in and say: ‘Where is the picture of the pony on the wall?’” says Segal. “Occasionally there is that unexpectedness, but this is a good thing, as their pre-conceived ideas of what the rural world should be like have been completely thrown out of the window and they come and experience something entirely different.”
If contemporary art in rural locations challenges audiences, the environment also challenges artists. Many artists, protected by their small art world bubbles, find this difficult.
Smith at ACA believes that the direct contact artists have with local communities is vital: “Frequently, our artists here are educated by the local population of non-art audiences. That is where the bigger impact lies really, because the artists are actually being asked questions and confronted with things that they would not normally be confronted by among their safe art audiences.”
The sculptor Andy Goldsworthy has just completed a project on the Channel island of Alderney, where he has installed 11 two-and-a-half ton stones that will gradually decay and reveal objects hidden inside (see box below). Working on a relatively small island that can be walked around in a day involved frequent contact with members of the 2,500-strong population.
Goldsworthy says: “I love working in museums and private collections but this is what I need to do as an artist; put myself out there in public spaces. Island culture is quite tough, so if you are an artist making this work, you are not going to get an easy ride. It is good for me.”
The installation of sculptor Andy Goldsworthy’s stones have been described as the worst thing to happen on Alderney since the German occupation during world war two, but for most residents they are allowing locals and tourists alike to see the island in new and interesting ways.
The 11 Alderney Stones are made of compacted clay and each one, apart from the one in the bunker (above), contain material found on the island, such as rope, berries, seeds, old tools and discarded gloves. These will gradually be revealed as the stones decay. On and off, Goldsworthy has spent two and a half years on the project, which was unveiled in April.
Alderney Museum is acting as the hub for the project by putting it into context and giving visitors a more rounded view of the art and the island.
The museum’s curator, Francis Jeens, says the project has met with some resistance from a few residents: “People are really protective of the island, which is a good thing, but they are suspicious of outsiders.”
Goldsworthy gave public talks on Alderney in 2009 and 2010 to help residents understand the project. All involved felt it was important that the initiative should embrace the island rather than be imposed.
The driving force behind Alderney Stones is Eric Snell, who is the founding director of Art and Islands, which is developing a series of contemporary art projects on Alderney, Sark, Herm and Guernsey. An Antony Gormley sculpture has already been sited on Herm, and Snell is currently discussing future projects with Cai Guo-Qiang and Cornelia Parker.
Snell is convinced of the benefits contemporary art can bring to remote islands such as Alderney and Sark.
“Art and Islands is the complete antithesis to the city-centric white-walled gallery space,” says Snell.
“Not that I have anything against city-based galleries, but I believe that there is another way to look at and engage with art. Art and Islands is more about art and less about the art world.”
Snell says the involvement of Alderney Museum and the many residents has been vital.
“Art and Islands is not about hiding art away in buildings, it is about interacting with the community, being part of the community, giving the community ownership – but that’s not always easy. Small communities like Alderney are often resistant to change.
For some reason they think they don’t understand ‘modern’ art, they think it’s not for them. These are the kind of barriers that I am looking to break down.”
www.artandislands.com
www.alderneystones.com
The 54th Venice Art Biennale starts this month and among those taking part is ArtSway, a contemporary art gallery based in the New Forest village of Sway.
Director Mark Segal could be forgiven for seeing the irony of his gallery’s presence at Venice, since he only recently found out that ArtSway would not be given financial support under Arts Council England’s (ACE) national portfolio system, the replacement for Regularly Funded Organisation (RFO) funding.
“We are doing a major project in Venice and the funding just drops off a cliff, so it feels quite perverse,” says Segal.
Presumably ArtSway was one of the cases that Visual Arts and Galleries Association director Hilary Gresty was referring to when she said ACE had made some “odd decisions in rural areas” when it announced the national portfolio winners and losers in late March. Smiths Row in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, also lost out.
Not all rural contemporary arts organisations fared badly. Grizedale Arts in the Lake District and Stour Valley Arts, which both had RFO status, got uplifts.
And after many years presenting work in King’s Forest, Stour Valley Arts has just opened its own venue in Ashford. Director Sandra Drew says this will allow it to access more funding streams from sources such as the local authority. Like their urban peers, many rural arts organisations tap into a range of funding sources.
Deveron Arts, based in the small Aberdeenshire village of Huntly, has been particularly successful in creating a broad base of financial support. Only 20% of its funding comes from arts organisations, with the remainder coming from Europe (30%), the local authority (10%), and heritage, environmental and social funds.