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Art Licks is a London-based platform that supports artist-led activity and grassroots visual culture in the capital. This profile includes a video recorded at a-n’s Assembly Thamesmead event in October 2019, in which Director Holly Willats introduces the organisation she founded in 2010.

Jo Hodges and Robbie Coleman’s collaborative and multi-disciplinary practice questions our relationships with environment and landscape. Sally Davies talks to the Dumfries and Galloway-based artists about working in, and interpreting, rural contexts.

Peak is an arts organisation based in the Black Mountains in Wales that works with artists and communities to respond to the rural environment. Peak’s Creative Director Rebecca Spooner speaks to Rosemary Shirley about the organisation’s contemporary arts remit for making and showing art in rural places.

Artist Morag Colquhoun, whose practice includes sculpture, photography, installation, performance, video, textiles and curatorial practice, discusses the benefits and pitfalls of working in a rural context.

London-based artist Liz Atkin creates work both in response to and as way of coping with compulsive skin picking. Alistair Gentry finds out more about her art practice, and the advocacy and education work she undertakes to help others understand and deal with this and other body-focused repetitive behaviour conditions.

Since the early 1970s, Bobby Baker has been producing art that documents and subverts her experiences of everyday life, drawing on motherhood, domestic labour, and mental illness and recovery. Speaking to Lydia Ashman, Baker reflects on the challenges she faced as a woman and an artist, her successes and why she’s ‘proudest of keeping going’.

The Bethlem Gallery in Bromley provides a professional platform for artists who have experienced mental health difficulties. Alistair Gentry speaks to the gallery’s director Beth Elliot about the organisation and how it fosters a supportive artist-focussed environment.

Hospital Rooms is an arts and mental health charity that believes in the enduring power of the arts to instill value, dignity and wellbeing in people. Alistair Gentry speaks to Curator Niamh White about how the project enables access to art and culture for people using secure and locked mental health services.

In 2017, New Contemporaries, an annual exhibition of emerging artists from UK art schools, opened up its application to include artists from alternative learning programmes. Director Kirsty Ogg discusses this decision, the changing climate for emerging artists in the UK, and what artists really need to develop and challenge their practice. Interview by Michaela Nettell.

Underpinning is the project of Aberdeen-based artist Kirsty Russell. This profile includes a video interview, recorded at Assembly Aberdeen, in which Russell introduces her practice, which often involves ‘creating spaces where there’s room for other people and ideas.’

D2 is a DIY event space in Aberdeen with a focus on experimental music, performance and immersive club experiences. This profile includes a video interview recorded at Assembly Aberdeen with D2 member Jack Ryan, who highlights the importance of building relationships and sharing skills.

Gaada Projects works in venues across Shetland, offering platforms and support to local communities. This profile includes a video interview, recorded at Assembly Aberdeen, with Gaada’s co-directors Daniel Clark and Amy Gear, who outline the challenges and opportunities of setting up an artist-led initiative in a remote, rural location.

Founded in 2010 by a group of London-based artists, AltMFA is a free, nomadic, alternative art school whose fluid content and structure morphs around the needs of its members. Lydia Ashman speaks to co-founder Louise Ashcroft about the project and why radical inclusivity and a little bit of anarchism are essential to its existence.

Market Gallery has been part of Glasgow’s artist-led ecology since 2000. The gallery is led by a volunteer committee and operates from a shop unit in the working-class neighbourhood of Dennistoun, where it presents a varied programme of exhibitions, events and residencies. Lydia Ashman talks to artist and committee member Catalina Barroso-Luque about how the gallery is responding to a reduction of resources through its programme and structure.

Low Profile is a collaboration between Plymouth-based artists Rachel Dobbs and Hannah Jones. This profile includes two videos, recorded at Assembly Cardiff, in which Dobbs and Jones discuss how living in Plymouth has shaped their attitudes as artists and cemented their commitment to making things happen in their city.

In 2017, Wysing Arts Centre restructured its residency programme to be more responsive to artists’ situations and to support a more diverse pool of practices. Drawing on a conversation that took place between Wysing’s director Donna Lynas and resident artist Tessa Norton at the ‘Pivotal Moments’ conference, Lydia Ashman explores how and why the programme has changed.

Visual Arts in Rural Communities hosts residencies in the remote hill-farming area of Tarset in Northumberland. In August 2018, the organisation piloted its first residency for a disabled artist. Lydia Ashman speaks to Project Director Janet Ross and artist, curator and disability advocate Aidan Moesby about the development of the pilot and its impact on the organisation’s programme.

Based in Wakefield, visual arts development agency The Art House continually explores ways to work with artists who face barriers to their practice. Its residency programme supports artists at different stages of their career and is shaped around individuals’ needs. Lydia Ashman speaks to Programme Producer Simon Boase and artist Rosanne Robertson about the tailored support the organisation provides to artists.

ecologies of care was initiated by artist Ria Hartley in 2018. The project comprises a growing toolkit of resources designed to support artists who have access requirements to express their needs. Hartley speaks to Lydia Ashman about the toolkit and why artists’ health and wellbeing should be a sector-wide priority. This resource is available in text format and also as a video format sound recording.

In 2015, Scottish artist Paul McDevitt set up Farbvision, a project space in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district that presents solo exhibitions and is also home to the INFINITE GREYSCALE record label. He talks to Dan Thompson about his reasons for relocating from the UK, and the artistic freedom and financial reality of life in his adopted home.

Founded by a group of artists in south west London as a studio space in 1994, Studio Voltaire currently operates under a multiplicity of different guises. Art researchers Doggerland reflect on the organisation’s hybrid structure, and speak to its head of development and communications Niamh Conneely about the many different modes Studio Voltaire employs to support artists’ careers.

A psychogeographic opening up of the city through an aural tour of artist-led venues and other listening points of historical and cultural interest.

Artist Paul Evans discusses how his work became aligned to the research undertaken within universities and how his socially engaged practice has enabled academics and the public to better understand the nature of university research. Based on an interview by artist Steve Pool.

After joining Degrees unedited in March 2013 Jasper Weinstein Sheffield has showed us there’s much more to his conceptual approach than a blade of grass. He tells us more as prelude to degree shows at Northumbria University.

Lauren Healey talks to Northern Art Prize 2011 winner Leo Fitzmaurice about objectness, appropriation and his time-intensive research process.