You searched for access - a-n The Artists Information Company

Angharad Pearce Jones reports on the relationship between Welsh artists and musicians, and the creation of Capsule, a new visual arts venture that celebrates this creative crossover.

Over the course of four years, artists, curators and writers were invited to select blogs from the a-n site. Their choices highlights the range and depth of practice discussed on a-n’s artists’ blogging platform at that time.

Artist S Mark Gubb talks to Magazine Coordinator Chris Brown as he prepares the last ever issue of a-n Magazine.

We’re proud of what a-n Magazine has achieved over its thirty-two years. On the occasion of the last print edition we invited many of our collaborators and contributors to help us celebrate and mark this moment by giving us a ‘few words’ – a short testimonial of what a-n means to them. Here, they reflect on our significant role for artists and on the value of a-n Magazine, publications or initiatives.

A round-up of projects that explore approaches to making and siting art beyond conventional white cube spaces – from travelling fairgrounds and riverboat processions to site-responsive installations and public sculpture.

A-n Magazine May 1998: Increasingly, interdisciplinary or collaborative working processes are being used by artists, both as a means of extending their knowledge and personal experience and to create partnerships in which artists move beyond the close confines of the art world and can more readily address social, political and environmental concerns, we asked six artists, for whom collaborative working is a driving force, to describe their approaches and concerns and to provide some analysis of the issues an questions which have arisen.

Jack Hutchinson gets to grips with the latest digital networking tool and asks: how and why should artists be using it?

Flow is a tidemill, a floating building on the River Tyne that generates its own power using a tidal water wheel and houses a range of musical machinery that responds to the river. It is one of the twelve Artists taking the lead’ commissions to celebrate the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. ~Flow is the brainchild of the artist group Owl Project and producer Ed Carter: To bring their fantastical idea to life required the skills and expertise of a diverse range of professionals, including Nicky Kirk, a chartered architect; Amble Boat Company; and David Willcox, a waterwheel designer. Here David, Ed and Owl Project talk about their experience.

Artists Sally Lemsford and Elizabeth Murton reflect on AIR’s first annual members forum, OpenAIR: Effecting Change. Interview by Jack Hutchinson.

Profiling two education programmes that provide a variety of entry points to artistic practice and encourage audience participation via tours, symposia, courses and workshops as well as performances and events.

In April 2010 six young people from North Glasgow were given the unique opportunity to explore life in a completely different way and to interpret what they saw using photography within contemporary art.

Last month’s announcement that June would be the final copy of a-n Magazine in print has generated some questions which we’re responding to here for the benefit of all readers.

The social media revolution has had a significant impact on the ways artists work. Here we focus on a selection of projects that artists have developed through online collaboration, sourced via our Twitter and Facebook followings.

Access to professional development is vital to artists’ careers, so here’s something we think will help.

Torsten Lauschmann, byt, projection, oak boards, various objects, dimensions variable, 3″ (loop), 2011. Photo: Ruth Clark. Courtesy: Mary Mary, Glasgow; Dundee Contemporary Arts.

From subsidised studio and accommodation to one-on-one mentoring sessions, here we spotlight a selection of residencies that provide support to artists across the UK and beyond.

OpenAIR, the first annual members’forum of AIR: Artists Interaction and Representation, offers a unique platform for artists’ dialogue and debate, empowered and enabled through speakers drawn from very different disciplines and fields of work, all committed to campaigning for effective change.

An abridged version of Dany Louise’s follow-up report on small visual arts organisations cut by Arts Council England, six months after her ‘Ladders for development’ enquiry. She asks: how have these organisations fared and what do their futures hold? Read the full version of this report with updates on all surveyed organisations: www.a-n.co.uk/realising_the_value

Motion Disabled is a digital exploration of the bodies of people who are physically different.

Charlotte Frost reports from the international conference of ISEA (Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts) in Istanbul.

A survey of commissioning projects and public art consultancies around the UK.

Based on interviews with curators Sarah Brown and Laurence Sillars, Lara Eggleton uncovers the nature of their relationships with exhibiting artists and the processes they use in curating two high profile exhibitions with cash prizes and media attention attached.

This month sees the culmination of a two-year project at Siobhan Davies Dance, one of the country’s most distinctive dance companies. Choreographer Davies has paired dance artists with visual and applied artists to bring their creative practices together and create new works ranging from performance to film and installation. The commissioned dance artists are Henry Montes, Sarah Warsop, Gill Clarke and Deborah Saxon who are partnered respectively with Marcus Coates, Tracey Rowledge and Lucy Skaer. Henry Montes and Deborah Saxon have also made a piece together with Bruce Sharp. Here, three of the visual artists relate their experiences.

Is there enough funding going to individual artists and are the application processes user-friendly? These were questions a-n set out to answer in the fourth issue of what was then Artists Newsletter in 1980. Now, thirty one years later, we asked Dany Louise to do this research again, examining the current state of play for grants to individual artists as offered by Arts Council England, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Arts Council of Wales and Creative Scotland – including comparators of volumes of artists applying and success rates – and to ascertain whether a “fair share” has been getting into the hands of artists to develop their practice.