It is always nice to meet like-minded people, and for freelancers there is nothing better than finding a kindred spirit to run joint projects with. Thus I recently joined forced with curator and mentor Gita Joshi who runs a successful podcast of interviews with art professionals at The Curator’s Salon. 

​As consultants working with artists, both Gita and I spend a lot of time visiting art fairs, exhibitions and artists’ studios.
 
In a sense we are the extended eyes and ears of the artists each of us advises and mentors and always have the artists’ interests at heart, especially when we hear disappointment at the lack of visitors to the ever increasing number of artist fairs, themed pop-ups and similar larger scale group exhibitions.
 
We would generally advise artists to research events before signing up, and even a stand at one of the large and well-established art fairs does not guarantee a steady flow of visitors to your individual stand. It is the respective organiser’s job to provide a platform and to promote the event overall, but there is a lot artists can - and should - do to draw attention to their particular presentation.
 
With this in mind we put our heads together and came up with the idea of an online course for artists planning to exhibit at fairs. We have devised a programme that covers everything artists need to know to be #artfairready and will run this over a course of four weeks, starting on Monday 16 March.
 
We have set up a private Facebook Group to act as our virtual classroom. Here we will post bite-sized chunks of video tutorials on topics ranging from ‘How to write an artist statement’ to ‘Planning your social media campaign’ and an ‘Art fair survival kit’ to free up time to concentrate on the actual artwork.
 
Sessions are complemented by exercises, templates, checklists and cheat sheets, and we will be actively monitoring the group for comments and questions for the duration of the course – scheduled to end just before Easter. The idea is to provide an allround package that is comprehensive and easy to follow.
 
Since we started planning the #artfairready programme, news of fairs being cancelled or postponed in response to the Coronavirus pandemic have started hitting our inboxes. And while we don’t have any answers to immediate issues like compensation for those directly affected, the course provides valuable knowledge for when things have returned to normal.
 
The general mood has changed a lot in the course of this week and it seems likely that many of us will decide to apply some level of social distancing in the coming weeks. We will all probably spend even more time on social media, so why not learn something while you’re there and join our course. Gita and I look forward to e-meeting you!
 
For further info and booking details click here 

While the majority of my work takes place in the background and the most visible part are the press releases I issue in support of exhibitions and events, my blog posts are few and far between. I do, however, make the occasional contribution to WIA, a blog focusing on issues that affect female professionals in the art world.

​Here are the some recent examples:

With news spreading at a shocking rate of artists being evicted from their studios across London, a panel discussion about the future of artists’ studios in London was well timed and very well attended. 
 
The event was presented by Frieze Academy and hosted by creative landlords Second Home as part of a series on art and architecture curated by writer and architect Edwin Heathcote whose 2015 essay in Apollo Magazine provides a good introduction to the dynamics of gentrification and short-sighted redevelopment. 
 
Bold Tendencies and its failed bid for the Peckham multi-storey car park it had helped make ‘iconic’ was one of the examples cited in the article.  Its founder Hannah Barry was one of the panellists.  She was joined by David Adam, a globalisation expert who provides advice to cities and major organisations, and Candida Gertler, who runs public-private initiatives for safeguarding affordable and sustainable work spaces for creatives.
 
The overall tenor of the discussion was rather corporate as opposed to from an individual artist’s point of view.  Examples of untapped potentials for the appropriation of existing spaces seem limited to empty garages and car parks which are predominantly owned by local councils. TfL and the NHS are other major landowners of underused spaces.
 
The conversation soon moved on to new-builds and how to best work with developers.  In order to stand a chance of a proportion of developments to be made available to artists, the relevant decision makers need to be influenced at an early planning stage.  Developers deal with huge costs and need to be persuaded that a sense of space, homeliness, sexiness - and community – can only be achieved with a truly mixed offer on ground floor level that goes beyond branches of Tesco and Metro Bank. 

New York and Berlin were stated as international success stories.  Both cities recognise artists as agents of neighbourhood stability and vitality – as opposed to the more commonly held perception of artists as agents of gentrification.  The latter is particularly true in London where artists have been replacing light industry before in turn being replaced by luxury flats, while local governments lack the funds or vision to oversee complex infrastructures and the Mayor of London’s remit appears limited to transport. 

A major factor contributing to this major difference between London and other global cities is its patchwork of individually governed “villages” and gated communities in contrast to an urban planning model of zoning that includes dedicated creative industry zones.  As a result London’s commuter towns are now screaming out for culture while there is a real danger of people deserting the city.  As a general rule area plans with the direction for development are fixed for approximately 15 years and there is currently no nationwide approach for aggregating opportunities. 
 
London’s population is rapidly increasing beyond its M25 boundaries and is joining other mega regions like New York’s tri-state area or China.  The significance of the sector is still underestimated here even though the UK’s creative industries contribute £84.1 billion to the country’s GDP of which more than £5m are attributed to music, performing and visual arts.  According to a recent report  the capital generates 22% of UK GDP, this is likely to be even higher when looking at the creative industries.

While it is difficult to quantify the contribution of artistic activity to a development’s success, the positive effect on people’s wellbeing is undisputed.  Organisation like David Adam’s Global Cities and Candida Gertler’s Studiomakers make the case for the inclusion of artist studios and galleries at reduced rents.  Artists are positioned as model tenants who hardly ever default on rent and who come with a universe of friends, peers and collectors who give new developments a certain flair.
 
Good management agents were stated as key to successful public-private partnerships.  Clerkenwell Studios, the Harringay Warehouse District and the Yard in Hackney Wick were given as examples of successful negotiations with developers that resulted in mixed economies of people paying market rates and those on subsidised rates.  A further example included successful negotiations with a Canadian developer who bought the street opposite Goldsmith’s and will integrate an annual street festival and a curated programme in a cafe.

I was probably not the only audience member leaving Second Home slightly deflated that evening.  Very little reference was made to individual artists, especially those not yet established enough to even make it onto the radar of the few specialist management agents.  Or the fact that the number of subsidised studios falls dramatically short of the artists made homeless by large-scale developments.

Sadly the picture is just as bleak when looking at exhibition spaces.  While there are a number of entrepreneurial approaches to hosting pop-up events in commercial environments or the remaining opportunities for meanwhile spaces (i.e. those earmarked for development but not yet under construction), small galleries in particular are suffering in view of the steep increase in business rates (up to 45% in some London boroughs), alongside independent shops and grassroot music venues.

And as I was writing up my notes, I received an email from Re-Title that this independent information resource and promotional tool for emerging contemporary art was no longer sustainable due to the competitive nature of the digital market place and the dominance of big players like Google or Facebook; thus in a way mirroring the money-driven dynamics of the real estate market.

This post has now been sitting on my computer for several days as I hesitate to publish such dystopian observations without ending on a more optimistic note.  While urban planners may not have factored in creative spaces on their blueprints, art has a habit of prospering even under the most adverse conditions and will search out opportunities away from the mainstream.  So perhaps this is a salute to artists as agents of resilience and hope.

More than a year has passed since my last entry about hypercycling and slow media – this is an example of slow blogging!  Another edition of FutureFest has also just closed its doors for another year.  And amongst many fast-paced panel discussions and technology-led presentations a couple of speakers stood out with their tributes to walking.
 
Will Self opened the event with an uncharacteristically cheerful plea for more playfulness and recounted his experience of walking to and from airports and the effect it has on the perception of time and space.  The next day Brian Eno walked to Tobacco Dock from his home in Notting Hill, taking only a small sample of his Oblique Strategies cards and some loose pages of paper with him - the pioneers of electronic music keeps his presentations strictly analogue!
 
At the other end of the scale were Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky who treated the audience to a guided tour of his iPad, taking in the history of songwriting, sound research and music technology; Soh Yeong Roh who introduced a whole range of companion robots from drinking buddies for lonely singles to swearing grannies for polite introverts; not to mention live microchipping of human volunteers.
 
FutureFest is a two-day conference at the intersection of research, creativity and innovation.  Launched three years ago by Nesta (formerly the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts, now an independent charity), the 2016 edition had four overriding themes: Work, Love, Thrive and Play.  But just like the boundaries between work and fun become increasingly blurred did most contributions tick more than one box.  FutureFest itself is both a serious conference and a festival, attracting a predominantly professional crowd despite taking up an entire weekend.
 
One overriding theme was the significance of playful risk taking, starting with the lack of public space for children to roam in urban environments and the absence of fun in schools, through to the need for creativity in all departments and the importance of learning from bad ideas, no room for serendipity in recruitment and selection processes based on metrics.
 
While last year included contributions from Spain’s Podemos and Iceland’s Pirate Party and a video call with Edward Snowden, this year’s political contributions seemed the weakest link in a post-Brexit and pre-Trump limboland.  The general consensus across all strands was that you can’t predict the future, you have to invent it - by breaking down existing structures from the grassroots up.
 
From a personal growth perspective Bill Burnett and Dave Evans gave practical advice on putting design principles at the core of creating a more satisfying life plan:

1. What are the best parts of the life you already have?
2. What would you do if what you do now didn’t exist?
3. If money was no object and they wouldn’t laugh at you, what would you do?

Then create prototype scenarios to test your ideas and satisfy your curiosity before adjusting your career path.
 
Overall, FutureFest is positioned more at the heart of creative industries than at the wider intersection of science and culture, hence the concentration on technology and design-based disciplines.  Yet it was the artists who made the robots come alive, put the fun into AR and reminded us of life beyond STEM.  These and other examples also highlighted the relevance of interrelation between art and science across all aspects of modern life from healthcare and nutrition, education and entertainment, to urban planning and life after death.
 
And now on to something completely different, with just a fortnight to go until Frieze London opens its gates again, the fair’s Talks programme has just been announced.  Themed “Borderlands” artists will share their take on the current political climate, refugee crisis and an increasingly divided society.  We could do a lot worse than looking at art to make sense of the world.