Bido Lito June 2021 Issue 114

STATE OF THE
STUDIOS, STATE
OF THE CITY
A new report suggests that without support many of Liverpool’s artist studios are at risk of
disappearing. El Gray looks at the implication this could have on city-wide culture.
There is a certain disposition that defines coastal
towns, a familiarity with collision and change.
Liverpool’s coastal identity is paralleled in its
culture; a pulsing and varied ecosystem of artists
and musicians, poets and creators exist among otherwise
normality, clashing against each other and producing a
swirling, bubbling creativity. However, a recent report
from Art in Liverpool reveals one component of the city’s
creative ecosystem is slowly dying.
In the early months of the new decade, as the
pandemic intensified, arts organisations across Liverpool
found themselves “watching the world fall apart around
us”. In this context, Patrick Kirk-Smith, director of Art in
Liverpool, and arts PR consultant Laura Brown undertook
a report into the state of artist studios across the Liverpool
City Region.
Liverpool is home to 35 artist studios, providing
workspaces, studios, exhibition space and storage to over
500 artists. These studios form an integral part of the
artistic community and the wider communities they exist
within. However, the ‘State of the Studios’ report, produced
in collaboration with a collection of Liverpool’s artist studios,
reveals the entropy they’re facing: without immediate
support, 31 of Liverpool’s 35 studios face extinction.
A combination of unaffordable rents, demand for
development and insecurity in building provision has
gradually marginalised artist studios, forcing them out of
city centre spaces. The ‘Livelihood of Visual Artist’ (2019)
report by Arts Council England indicates that, on average,
artists earn £16,150 each year, ensuring studio rent
cannot be in parallel with other industries. In a competitive
property market, this leaves studios extremely vulnerable
to rising property prices and landlords seeking to gain
from more profitable ventures in attractive city centre
locations. The pandemic has revealed and exacerbated
32
these existing vulnerabilities, decimating studio funding
and creating chasms where cracks once existed. Studios,
therefore, inhabit a precarious existence, forced to move
further out of the city or close entirely, hollowing out the
city’s creative culture.
This is a familiar story among creative organisations in
Liverpool. A story of regeneration, exploitation, profit and
marginalisation. In its intricacies, the story reveals truths
about the role of cultural regeneration in Liverpool and the
particular values which define the use of urban space in
the city. It also presents an alternative utopian future. This
is the story of Liverpool’s artist studios. “It feels as though
Liverpool does not understand what they’ve lost,” says
Tony Knox of Road Studios.
Often, the role of artist studios appears mysterious
and ambiguous, defined by an existence seemingly both
inside and outside of conventional society. This obscurity
partly results from the fact that “it’s very difficult to define
what a studio does”, as Patrick Kirk-Smith indicates.
Liverpool’s studios encompass a vast array of art forms:
pottery, graffiti, sculpture, textiles and visual arts more
generally. “No one studio does the same thing. Most
studios have a specialism, and they support artists within
that specialism… there isn’t one definition.”
Despite this variation, artist studios are united as
vital components of the city’s arts scene. They operate as
creative laboratories, offering artists a dedicated space
to experiment and develop their craft. Critically, studios
enable networking and creative collaboration between
artists, providing a stimulating environment “surrounded
by people who can’t help themselves but make stuff”, as
Max Mallender, artist lead at The Royal Standard, explains.
Studios also offer a vital transitionary space for graduate
artists to receive mentoring and support. In this way,
artist studios provide the foundations for the city’s art
scene, operating as the “bloodline to the rest of the sector”
as Faye Hamblett-Jones, artistic director at The Royal
Standard, explains.
The forced closure or relocation of artist studios severs
this vital limb of the artistic community. In a previous
article for Bido Lito!, Charly Reed persuasively outlined the
case for small music venues in the city, highlighting their
importance for the wider music scene. Perhaps due to
the dominancy of Liverpool’s musical identity, or the more
insular, quieter nature of artist studios, their importance
is often underappreciated. However, the two spaces
perform a similar function in Liverpool’s diverse cultural
infrastructure – offering a dedicated space for embryonic
talent to grow. “Every time there has been a studio within
Liverpool’s city centre, they have been systematically
moved to the outskirts,” Tony Knox indicates. Without this
cultural infrastructure, “where do [we] expect talent to
grow?”
Knox’s question encapsulates the necessity of
affordable, accessible and secure studio spaces. Without
investment and consolidated support, the talent will end
up going and they won’t look back. “They won’t say, ‘That
was a great city’, they’ll say, ‘You done fuck all for me’,”
Knox warns. Liverpool risks suffocating the grassroots
artistic community and the evolution of the city’s arts
scene, creating a façade of culture with no underlying
structure. Artificial flowers with dead soil.
This story of underappreciation and perpetual
marginalisation reflects an underlying flaw in Liverpool’s
cultural landscape. Artists and artist studios are perceived
primarily as a mechanism for cultural regeneration,
rather than for their inherent non-commercial value. In
Liverpool’s current cultural landscape, this flaw manifests
itself in the dominance of property developers. “At the
moment, property developers dictate the art scene, and