It is a similar story with artists’ studios. “There is a pretty hellish pressure,” says Anna Harding of Space studios, which has been providing workspace to artists since the 1970s. “I don’t know how we can continue.” Because Space owns rather than rents some of its properties, it can cushion some of the shock that comes from rent increases of 100% or more and asks its tenants for no more than an extra 20%. But it is still “a stress for tenants. How can they find the extra?”
Duncan Smith, artistic director of another studio provider, Acava, says that the “situation is becoming critical. In the 12 months starting from six months ago we will have lost 200 studios. Traditionally, we rented premises for five-, 10- or 15-year terms, but suddenly they are all disappearing at once.” Eighty of these are in an Acava-managed block in Cremer Street, east London, where the artists were asked by the building’s owner to sign a letter in which they agreed not to oppose its redevelopment as flats, in return for which they will be evicted later rather than sooner. Mostly, they agreed, as “they have no legal basis to protest” and because “they have very few places to go. As “art is a profession and people have professional obligations”, they would rather stay put for as long as possible.
For Harding, artists are part of “the whole ecosystem that makes the city functional”. Smith points out that they come with networks of associated skills – “web designers, advertising people, film-makers and all the rest”. London has been selling itself on its creative reputation for at least 20 years. “There’s great talent,” says Harding, and “it would be really foolish for the whole city economy to kick it out”. Might it not be a good thing if artists took their regenerative stardust out of the capital to other parts of the country that would really benefit? Acava, indeed, is opening studios in Essex and Stoke-on-Trent. “But”, says Harding, “London works because there’s a market there. Collectors fly into London and want to visit studios. Galleries need to see them.” There are the technicians who support the art, many of them also artists, “people earning ten grand a year. The museums need them. The idea that you can devolve it all is nuts.”
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- London: the city that ate itself, Monday, June 29, 2015 - 03:53