Studio:
I’ve really enjoyed being part of the studio. We all get on well and are very supportive of each other. I realise that in one way (financially) we have been very lucky to have such a lax Landlord, I haven’t had a ‘rent’ rise in the six years I’ve been there. However that is my good fortune and the result of the Landlord not really managing our licenses. I am a professional and responsible person and if there had been reasonable annual increases managed through new licenses I would have paid them. However it feels as though the situation is becoming increasingly fraught as the Landlord realises that he and his office have allowed considerable debts to accrue – not least an entire year of rates.
It is inevitable that my monthly fee will have to increase to cover the future costs of the Non-domestic Rates. My feeling is that the increase will make the studio more expensive than one of a comparable size with a studio provider such as ASC. If the Landlord tries to recoup previous costs the increase will be massive.
For the time being I will wait and see what happens. The worse case scenario (which isn’t that bad) is that I am served with one month’s notice on my current license and offered a new one that I’m not prepared to accept. So I might have to come back from Stockholm for a few days to put things in storage.
Other artists have suggested routes “we” could explore: getting charitable status, and asking for a long-term lease.
• I am not interested in applying for charitable status. I’m aware that the criteria for this have become a lot tighter over the last few years and as I’m not interested in doing anything at the studio that could legitimately qualify for charitable work (i.e. education work) so I think it’s best if I make the positive decision not to get involved.
• I’m also not interested in taking on a long-term lease (or being part of a ‘group’ that does). This is too big a commitment at the moment. And I do not trust the Landlord sufficiently to enter a more complex arrangement than the one I already have.
I have to wonder at how acute the Landlord’s business sense is. I am still on the license that he acquired from the previous freeholder when they sold the property over fours ago. At the time the monthly fee was sufficient to cover maintenance and other costs the Landlord incurred. Obviously it is not now.
From the increasingly frequent lists of available studios I’m receiving it looks as though the current economic climate is making the studio providers very competitive …
