Artists make spaces

On a chilly night in March, Fort Brockhurst on the outskirts of Gosport came alive with the voices of the town’s young people. Rochdale-based artists Breaking Barriers worked with local creatives, producers and youth organisations to create an immersive film and sound experience that took those of us lucky enough to be in the audience into the centre of the Victorian fort, elevating the young people’s hopes for their future.

Fort Brockhurst is a spectacular space at any time, an almost perfectly circular structure reminding us of Gosport’s significant military past. But in the hands of artists, it became a beacon for the future.

The event was a good point to pause and take a moment to reflect on artists and spaces. This is not a new subject – it’s been well documented that opening up space for artists to make, perform, sell and engage with their audiences leads to benefits for the artist, the space itself and the communities that intersect with it.

And I’m not just talking about spectacular performances in unusual moated Victorian forts. Empty shops, bandstands, meeting rooms in libraries, underutilised office space…they can all be transformed by artists.

We work across Rushmoor, Gosport and the New Forest, and these areas, like others up and down the country, are full of both empty spaces and artists crying out for affordable space. There are some brilliant examples of innovative ways of connecting the two: last year, Fluid Motion opened their Creative Support Hub in an empty shop in Southampton’s Totton Shopping Centre;  Rushmoor Borough Council have just launched their Makers’ Yard in Aldershot’s new Union Yard development; in Gosport, the Sustainable Conservation Trust is working to transform the historic Slaughterhouse in Royal Clarence Yard into a community-driven arts hub.

But this work isn’t as easy as it should be.

For every project, there are ideas that are bubbling away, a lot of good will, but barriers that mean it’s difficult to get things off the ground. Perhaps counterintuitively, the barriers can be worse for publicly-owned spaces than they are for commercial spaces, where an empty space and a creative business case can be enough to persuade a private landlord to move quickly.

It’s no secret that local authorities across the UK are facing challenging financial landscapes, and understandably, short-term financial targets grapple with longer-term benefits. As a sector, we need to work with local authorities to demonstrate the return on investment – both financial and social – that connecting artists and spaces brings. For this to work, local authorities must have strategic objectives for culture in the same way that they do for health or a region’s economy. With devolution and a change to local government structure rapidly approaching in Hampshire, there is opportunity here: the chance to implement a more joined-up approach that removes barriers.

In the meantime, we’re continuing to work with local authorities, artists and partner organisations to unlock as many spaces as possible, advocate for the amazing work that is already happening and to prove the concept that artists are central to a healthy local economy, a place’s identity and the happiness and healthiness of its communities.