The seeds of New Work Network were sown in 1996 when a steering group of eleven artists, producers and curators came together to explore how a network of practitioners could support the sector. Research was carried out by Andrea Phillips and a year later, January 1997, an Inaugural Meeting took place with over seventy people working in live art, performance and inter-disciplinary practice at Toynbee Hall, London. From this New Work Network was born.
NWN was about connecting artists, curators, academics and producers together and advocating for these practices nationally. Early on, a website was developed. This was before Facebook and other social media tools were established, before many artists had their own websites so NWN’s site was a way to get your work out there and connect to other practitioners. The website was a huge achievement at that time.
Myself and Jason E Bowman were appointed as co-directors of NWN in September 2010, just before Arts Council England (ACE) announced that Regularly Funded Organisations would have to apply for National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) status.
Unfortunately we were unsuccessful which was disappointing, but not wholly unexpected. It had always been difficult to justify and evaluate the benefits of a network as the impact is not always immediately visible or tangible.
We needed to shift the perception of what NWN did – making it more front facing through projects such as Adhocracy – a weekend-long, mini-festival celebrating DIY cultures and collective action in London last August. We refocused NWN’s mission statement and business plan. We began to look at how we could fund raise from other sources, including Grants for the Arts (G4A), Arts Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Trusts and Foundations – from both within and outside the arts to become sustainable in the long-term. This was always going to be difficult. During this time Jason E Bowman was offered further work abroad and resigned from NWN.
Part of the strategy was to work with major organisations. I put together a project called ‘Add and Multiply’ – which was partly an extension of the Mixing It Up series of films, developed in partnership with Artquest, as well as some aspects from ‘Adhocracy’. Add and Multiply was about working across the regions, developing the infrastructure across artforms and redefining the role of NWN as a national organisation. We developed collaborations across six regions – Artquest, Tate Britain, FACT, Arnolfini, Tyneside Cinema, Wunderbar Festival, Dance 4 and The Junction – as well as artist-led groups within those regions.
A G4A application was submitted twice – both times being unsuccessful because of competition on the day. In the current climate, a large proportion of arts funding appears to be going to major institutions or organisations which are about production, audience numbers and bigger names, however, a healthy arts ecology needs a diversity of activity. We felt that if ACE wasn’t supporting us, despite our attempts to work in partnership with organisations across the country and across different platforms then it really was going to be too difficult to sustain ourselves. Also we were running out of time and money. The decision was made to close the organisation but to close with a series of events and activity.
The closure will leave a huge gap, especially for practitioners who work within these experimental artforms. However, there are other organisations that practitioners can look to for support – Live Art development Agency Artsadmin a-n Axis Artquest. NWN has achieved a great deal over the last fifteen years – the Networked Bodies project from 2002-05 for instance which enabled members to decide and shape commissions through online forum and debate. And of course the artists it has supported and careers it has had an input into. The sense of belonging that artists have in the network – a real sense of community that spans all ages and career levels.
The last two years have been very busy. NWN has been taking the lead and working with older and mid-career artists alongside emerging artists, finding ways to connect the two generations. We launched a series of six ‘Mixing It Up’ films with Artquest. We programmed ‘Acts of Legacy’ as part of Late at Tate Britain, a bi-monthly programme of talks, film, music and performance, which drew an audience of over 2,000 people. It was a great evening and fantastic to see Tate Britain taken over by NWN artists. It could’ve been the beginning of something new (which had been intended with ‘Add & Multiply’) rather than the end – it felt really exciting, timely and relevant! We were looking to the past, from the perspective of the present in a way that could inform the future.
NWN Wake will be our closing event for members and friends this Friday. There will be music, drinks, remembrance and a new cocktail – instructions of how to make the cocktail are being filmed by Richard Dedominici and will be sent to our 1,500 members and available online. We wanted to make it more of a networking event – remembering the past but also thinking about what is next, about connecting people together. And it’s about getting back to our roots – the event is taking place at Stoke Newington International Airport, an artist-run space in London.
On Saturday we are presenting Song Books by John Cage, a ticketed event with Arts Admin at Toynbee Studios. This reflects our recent strategy of working across art forms – in this case bringing together the visual arts and experimental music – and across generations with ex members of the Scratch Orchestra working alongside younger composers and musicians.
Looking to the future, we recently convened a meeting with a group of twelve artists to discuss whether the network could continue without the organisation. The artists decided that the network was already there and that through a Facebook group, email, wordpress blog and other existing and free tools such as Twitter and YouTube, they’d like it to continue. It’s really exciting and who knows where it will go or what it will become!
I’m sure that the members will take it to a completely new level and continue pushing boundaries. The way arts funding currently is, I fear that we are in danger of forcing artists down a particular road which is about being entrepreneurial and making money, and not about the politics, the practice and pushing against things. It’s really important that there is diversity within art forms and practice, and that we learn from the past to influence the future. A lot has changed in the last fifteen years, but there is still a need for this kind of network that allows connections to be made and projects to evolve, or not.
The final film in the Mixing It Up series featuring artists Katharine Meynell and Aaron Williamson has just been published.
NWN Wake is a members only event at STK – Stoke Newington International Airport,London, 19 October.
Song Books by John Cage takes place at Toynbee Studios,London, 20 October, 8-9pm, Tickets £6 advance / £7 on door.
