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Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2021
Artist-Led
Studios THREE ARTIST-LED STUDIO GROUPS SHARE INSIGHTS INTO CURRENT ACTIVITIES. Contributions from: Annie Lynott, General Manager at The Complex; Courtney Sharos and Niamh Porter, co-directors of spacecraft artists’ studios; and Rob Hilken, trustee of Vault Artist Studios.
VAULT POP, pop up shop, Portview Trade Centre, Newtownards Road, Belfast; photograph courtesy Vault Artist Studios
Vault Artist Studios, Belfast IN EARLY 2019 Vault Artist Studios undertook a consul-
tation exercise with a local branding specialist (Paul Kelly, Form Native), to understand what makes the organisation tick. The studio had grown rapidly from a relatively small original group of 25 artists, who took over a disused Ulster Bank building in East Belfast for a year. When they landed the opportunity to take over a vacant college building, they expanded to over 100 artists and were left wondering if they could sustain the essence of what had made the community thrive during the first two years. The Vaulters, as members are affectionately known, began a series of informal conversations called ‘WTF is Vault Anyway?’ This was followed by a more focused series of workshops, aimed at developing a manifesto for the community. They identified three fundamental principles that make Vault different to other organisations: members cover a diverse range of creative disciplines; their independence allows them to organise around individual needs and invest in each other;
and their collective attitude gives them the energy to affect the change that matters to studio members. The first of these principles, diversity, is obvious to audiences who attend events at Vault. Membership includes visual artists (53%), performing artists (18%), musicians (16%) and a smaller number of filmmakers, writers, event organisers, curators, composers, chefs and community artists. Visitors might well encounter circus performers rehearsing in the theatre, harp music drifting through the corridors or the smell of fermented foods tantalising your taste buds. Artists are constantly learning from each other, in order to expand their growing public profiles and professional reputations. Members also exchange and sound out creative ideas, which can lead to collaborative projects and initiatives, many of which are cross-disciplinary. A core manifestation of the second principle, independence, is that Vault do not seek any public funding towards running costs. Like most artist studio groups in Northern Ireland, Vault maintains a highly precarious existence. The building is occupied for free on a one-month rolling lease called a ‘Tenancy at Will’ agreement. The group generate enough earned income from studio rents (some of the lowest in Ireland) and room rentals to cover ongoing core costs. Vault run a self-funded public event programme and have recently begun to focus on initiatives that will help members grow their own incomes.
Being independent does not mean that they exist in isolation. Studio members understand that building partnerships and relationships with public bodies is critical to maintaining their independence. The trustees place a strategic emphasis on maintaining regular communications with Belfast City Council, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, East Side Partnership, Arts & Business NI and their landlords. This is now paying dividends, as others now advocate on their behalf. These relationships became critical to the survival of Vault in 2020. COVID-19 had a severe impact, with the studio losing nearly all of their income during the first lockdown. Cash reserves were drained to cover staff, heating, water and insurance bills. Artists could not pay their rent and they were unable to generate income from external room bookings. Being self-funded was suddenly a threat to the group’s existence. Vault were eventually able to access emergency funding from the Department for Communities and from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Their entrepreneurial management model allowed them to remain open until this emergency funding was secured. The final principle is the one that members feel strongest about: their close-knit community and overwhelming desire to do things differently. Vault believe that the system is broken and that they can demonstrate a new kind of model, but are currently grappling with an ideological challenge: how should the contributions that individual members make to
