I’ll close this blog with a short reflection and shuffle off. Overall, the key themes for me were independence but also a willingness and ability to adapt to a changing landscape, and the importance of group activity in facilitating discussions and building a sense of community.
After a few weeks back preparing for Assembly, employment, and also most recently speaking at Creative Workspace Summit, Great Yarmouth, I do feel that the trip gave me some really valuable time to break away from the day to day and helped me create some head space to look more objectively at what we’re doing though Paradise Works. I do understand this to be a political act and am considering our social responsibility to support artist-list representation in the city, and how we might utilise this position to encourage more voices to step up, develop and demonstrate different ways that artists can be included in the city’s future. It is also a timely reminder that we need to build in financial sustainability into our model and to be transparent and generous with our knowledge and ideas.
Details and tickets for Assembly can be found here, and the full programme is here. Blurb below, I hope you can make it.
Assembly Salford will explore how artists can maintain their presence in a rapidly developing city region.
Manchester city centre has seen the relocation or loss of no fewer than eight artists’ studios since the start of 2017, and this has resulted in a growing artist-led presence in neighbouring city Salford and the surrounding areas. Relocation has resulted in new models of practice, collaboration and dialogue for artist-led activity, replacing the support structures which previously enabled artists to work in Manchester city centre.
Part symposium, part workshop, Assembly Salford will explore the different approaches, decisions and compromises which artists might need to take to petition their place in the city. The programme also includes an Artwork Exchanges dinner and, rounding off the day in style, a totally tropical party to celebrate Paradise Works first birthday.
