Stair/Slide/Space is a group of artists and friends working alongside each other and in recent times we’ve been consistently questioning our structure, our aims, our responsibilities to our locality and where to put our energy.

At the beginning of it all, Stair/Slide/Space was a naturally occurring glue-like substance that came from an interest in each other’s practice and evolved to be a loose game- working responsively to each other and to our space. We all enjoyed the conversations that sprang up naturally in our small, shared basement studio. What we put out to an audience only considered two simple questions: how do we show people what we are up to down here? How does what we are doing anyway relate to the everyday?

When the studio evaporated we were left wondering what came next, how could we carry on with what was so exciting without our pin on the map? The question became not only “how could we justify our actions to others now we were looking for a cheap place to make work above ground?” but also “what do we need to do to contribute to Portsmouth and where do our responsibilities lie?” In order to be deemed worthy of cheap floor-space in a city like Portsmouth we had to enter into a different way of thinking, how solid do our promises and contributions to those around us have to be?

From the perspective of the property owners and the community, if we want to use space for cheap I is only fair that what we do has value in other ways (and value that others can see/feel/understand, value that is solidly guaranteed, not just promised). On top of this comes the practical concern, if we are making promises then delivery needs to be sustainable and enjoyable. Stair/Slide/Space is made up entirely of time-poor artists with conflicting schedules which makes this very tricky. So how do others work out that balance, find spaces that will let them be artists or work with artists without too much compromise and without bankrupting themselves?

Our learning happened semi-chronologically, beginning with a trip to a city that is very ‘space-rich.’ Birmingham is home to what felt like vast districts of warehouses and we met with various groups all inhabiting disused buildings. We were lucky enough to be welcomed warmly by everyone we met with and we are incredibly grateful for the time given to us.

In many ways there is a recurring formula between a lot of the spaces that we visited:  an incredible amount of hard work met with circumstances having somehow come together at the right place and at the right time that equals a space in which they can operate, often largely on their own terms and on incredible and ambitious work. This freedom gave artists the opportunity to change and mould their studio or gallery into what worked for them, as was the case with Lombard Method- a space that can be collaborative and supportive of emerging practices Now predominantlyacting as studios, Lombard Method has a history of funded and successful exhibitions and events held on site.

Just like with our first tiny space, (it was a friendly barber-shop that let us use their storage room) similar things happened for many of the people we met with- be it a friendly face at the council who supported them to find a building, or a developer that had gone bust and thought it was worth supporting someone to use the space or perhaps most incredibly, the arts council recognising a city needed more supported arts provision as was the case with East Side Projects. Sharing tea and cake with Ruth Claxton and Anna Santomauro, we spoke about how the incredible breadth of experience behind the artists initiating the project enabled it to happen and how their circumstances meant that they could push artists ideas closer into civic decision-making, a clear indication that they are being listened to.

Whilst a space did provide the springboard for so much to happen in terms of Birmingham’s artist-led scene, there was also an incredible amount of time, talent and expertise behind this movement. In cities such as Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester where there are strong traditions of the artist-led there are inevitably more people who firmly understand and are putting out hands to help new projects off the ground, as made clear by the work of spaces such as Grand Union who are always willing to give us advice and guidance wherever they can and who have worked in partnership with universities and other organisations to provide platforms and foot-holds for graduates.

Whilst having a ‘pin-on-the-map’ space would give us something to share and grow upon, we can’t escape the amount of responsibility this gives an individual or group. Each space we visited is incredibly visible on a local, national and international scale and has to tend to the relationship with each audience this brings along. As was the case with Café Ort whose programme is focused on the local communities voices, balancing a dialogue between artists and the local community so each party has an equal share of the platform. You are accountable to your audience as soon as you have a space and you need to be prepared to work with them on whatever scale you choose. Yes the artist-led can shut up shop if they need to but during opening hours, there needs to be an awareness of who is looking in.That’s isn’t to say that programming needs to be compromised or flinching of disapproving gaze, far from it, but there is a necessity in having the time to justify and stand by whatever is publicly facing, which again is time and resources that need to be factored in to the make up of the artist-led space.

We drove back to Portsmouth desperately wanting a space but knowing that it wasn’t practical for us as individuals or as a collective to take on such a gigantic task and in  the most densely populated cit in England and Wales outside of London. It might take five, ten or twenty years to work and wait for circumstances to be in our favour, perhaps this is cyclical and at some point there would be a space we could jemmy into. We knew that we couldn’t  sit and wait for that moment to arise and instead needed to focus on finding another way to operate. The overwhelming message to not give up and to not get stuck in a bog of what-ifs was ringing in our ears.

We embarked on trip two with an aim to gain some contrast, this time to not only visit groups that base themselves around their studio and gallery workspace, but to also add a nomadic artist-led group into the mix. We’d begun to function on a peripatetic basis by this point, working on the streets of Portsmouth, rooms offered to us on a short term basis, but also within galleries in the wider context of Hampshire. The question now was more  ‘if we don’t become a project space with shared studios, what do we become? What is our formula for working?’ Some of us relished the idea of continuing on in our form-less state as this gave us the opportunity to mould ourselves and achieve a myriad of different things, others found the wide open plains that this created caused them a bit of motion-sickness (it takes a particular type of stomach to be able to roam so freely and so quickly).

Our first stop was to meet Dan and Gino at Two Queens in Leicester, a city which doesn’t have as rich a tradition of artist-led spaces as some of the other cities we planned to visit. Two Queens provide the most exciting contemporary art in Leicester, studios for emerging artist and creates a beacon of artist-led activity. A lot of their energy is spent creating wider networks to pull artists from around the Midlands together. In doing so they have been able to create new conversations and the critical mass effect, a brilliant way to ensure the success of this space..

We then jumped back in the car and drove on to Sheffield to meet Poly-technic for a walk and a chat in a couple of really brilliant pubs.

Poly-technic are formed of Kate Genever and Steve Pool. Together they work as an artist, they are nomadic, critical and collaborative and work on a project by project basis. They helped tease out what some of our questions were and gave us the confidence to not seek validation from pre-existing models we were constantly referencing, but to seek out our own way of working. We found some very valuable critical friends who pointed out that finding the right fit takes time but that if we’d hit a road block we should each write a sentence of what we wanted Stair/Slide/Space to be and then go from there.

The last leg of our second trip took us up to Liverpool where we met with Ellie Barrett and some of the other artists who call Royal Standard home.  The welcome was incredible, the atmosphere and openness of the community and the vast opportunities or even potential opportunities were incredible. The standard of practice was incredibly high, we could tell the level of critical discourse was elevating and maintaining enthusiasm and energy. The amount of space they had was eye-watering, three different spaces for exhibiting work and what felt like corridor after corridor of studios. This comes from the rolling-leadership of the space, a board of six directors that are changing constantly means huge opportunities are given to new voices. Later in the pub it was discussed that the freedom of our circumstances could be liberating, and can often be what is missing from a pre-formed organisation.

We drove home feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities and confused by all the overlapping questions we still needed to answer for ourselves.

For the final leg of our research we decided to visit Field Notes in Penzance to look at a group that functions without a space and who work on a site-specific project-by-project basis as it was similar to how we were interested in functioning. Rosie and Cat work as curators, and whilst they have individual practices as artists there is no tangible blurring between these two things. We met them at the Exchange, an organisation that was hosting the current iteration of their project, ‘The Clubhouse.’ We discussed the prospects of connecting with other artists, inviting other perspectives into our conversations and widening the gaze to look at working across Hampshire rather than keeping our lenses focused on the city of Portsmouth. Field Notes had worked tirelessly to bring challenging and concept led contemporary art to this part of the country, and we admired their engagement with a varying audience whilst ensuring the support of emerging artists throughout each project. We left our chat with them feeling inspired by their combination of determination and some really brilliant ideas.

Having driven all those miles and had so many incredible conversations we are taking advice from everyone we met but we still don’t know what we want to be. We aren’t the same as any one organisation we came across, as we suspected, there wasn’t a model we felt we could replicate but there were ways of looking at things and working with others that we hold as important reference points. We are still forming who we are and feel that we can intuitively experiment with which hat fits for each project we undertake.

We might not know what we want to be but we are closer to knowing what we want to be next.


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