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Artists in empty shops
Dan Thompson from The Revolutionary Arts Group reveals how artists are once again making use of empty spaces as a means to kick-start both the cultural and economic well being of town centres, and suggests seven steps to enable this area of practice to flourish.
Artists and arts organisations have been drawn to empty spaces for a long time, often for nothing more meaningful than the chance to pay cheap rent. It could be argued that the whole movement to cheaper spaces started in 1915, when the Bloomsbury set moved from the city to cheap farmhouses in Sussex. However, they had moral aims, too, and were also moving to farm the land and as a consequence avoided World War I conscription. So a more realistic starting point for the empty shops movement is found in 1964, the year that London's empty engine shed the Roundhouse was taken over by theatre company Centre 42. It hosted exhibitions and happenings, iconic concerts and underground theatre. This re-use of a large, industrial space started something. More recently, a derelict power station became Tate Modern; a redundant warehouse was transformed to house Baltic. But smaller groups of artists have always been interested in taking over vacant spaces to run low-cost projects. Many studios and workspaces are based in empty spaces: Phoenix Brighton in an old brewery office, Cardiff's Chapter Arts in a converted school and so on. City Racing was a co-operative art gallery run by Matt Hale,...
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