By David Cook
Today sees the formal completion of a £3.5 million warehouse regeneration programme in Glasgow which will earn £69 million for Scotland’s economy. In immediate terms it is good news because the South Block building will become a hub for Scottish artists and the creative industries, bringing money and 200 jobs to the Merchant City.
But as the chief executive officer of Wasps Artists’ Studios, the social enterprise behind the project, I believe the revival of this formerly decayed Edwardian textile warehouse points to something more.
Right now our country, and the entire Western world, faces immense challenges in the search for routes to growth through a frozen economic landscape. Public spending cuts, a troubled banking sector, rising unemployment and falling consumer confidence have turned the traditional paths to prosperity into something more like a booby-trapped assault course. South Block offers the glimpse of a way forward.
The South Block regeneration involves an innovative model where social enterprise acts as a catalyst, enabling Scotland’s successful creative industries to boost the arts. We have created 25 superb and flexible offices for these creative companies – for example those from the hi-tech digital field. The surplus from their rents will allow 65 studio spaces to be rented to visual artists, and crafts makers, at half the market rate.
This approach is significant for several reasons. It gives vital support to exceptionally talented people whose work often only earns a modest income – even though it is frequently cherished and enjoyed in galleries and homes all over the UK and beyond. It also transforms Wasps, taking us from being 85 per cent to, as near as damn it, fully self-funding.
The financial part is critical. Wasps has 19 buildings, from Kirkcudbright to Shetland, which provide affordable space for 650 artists and 22 arts organisations. Being able to do this day-to-day work under our own steam means we will no longer be fighting for a share of the shrinking revenue funding available from government, local authorities and other bodies. More fundamentally, it uses money generated by the private sector to help Scottish artists build their own careers.
Despite the well-known difficulties of the commercial property sector, we are experiencing tremendous interest in the offices set aside for creative companies. In fact, we will soon be able to reveal the names of the first creative industry tenants. The subsidised studios have already been snapped up – we have a two-year waiting list.
The creative industries, arts and media are enormously important to the Scottish economy. If nurtured, they can keep filling more of the gap left by the decline of the manufacturing and trading economy which sent areas such as Glasgow's Merchant City into a nosedive. What is especially important is their potential to cross-fertilise. For example, there are huge possibilities from having visual artists working cheek by jowl with digital enterprise.
An economic impact survey by Scottish Enterprise showed that the South Block is likely to generate close to £70 million over the next 20 years. By adding another colourful element to the Merchant City, it helps with the revival of an economically challenged area. More than that, it helps generate a specific and highly marketable reputation for Scotland.
Wasps is pioneering a model that allows all this to happen on an ultimately self-sufficient basis – one we believe will be picked up by many other organisations elsewhere in the UK and Europe. I use the word “ultimately” because projects of this kind will normally need capital funding to get them underway. South Block attracted fantastic financial backing from the public sector and from ethical banking.
In a time of austerity, our public sector backers were able to demonstrate a clear material gain from an initial investment of taxpayers’ money. And the economic activity taking place at South Block will also generate taxes for other public projects.
Some artists with space at South Block are already attracting a great deal of attention. They include Adam Kennedy (see below), winner of the Aspect Prize, the UK’s largest independently-funded arts award. Success like this helps consolidate Scotland’s position as a cultural hothouse – underlined in recent days when Glasgow’s Martin Boyce won the Turner Prize.
While few of the artists renting space from us will ever earn life-changing sums of money, all are professionals trying to create sustainable careers or successful businesses. Perhaps more importantly, the art that pours out of South Block will have an impact on all of us, adding to the quality of our lives. Some will delight, some will challenge. One piece might strengthen our sense of place in the world, another might question our most ingrained assumptions. It will all make a difference.
● For further information, go to South Block.
Adam Kennedy is a young Glasgow-based contemporary artist who is already achieving great success. At only 23, and just 18 months after graduating from Edinburgh College of Art, he won the 2010–11 Aspect Prize, the UK’s largest independently-funded arts award. Around 170 artists competed for the prize, which was open to painters living and working in Scotland, or Scottish painters working elsewhere. Awards chairman and painter Charles Jamieson described Kennedy’s work as having a "singular strength". Kennedy won the £15,000 award for a series of atmospheric paintings of great shipyards on the Clyde and huge sea vessels left to rust under threatening skies. His work reflects a fascination with Clydeside and its industrial heritage and a lifelong interest in transport. Indeed the artist, who grew up next to the Clyde, recently discovered that one of his ancestors designed the engine shop at the Fairfield shipyard in Govan in the late 19th century. Developed from sketchbook drawings and old photos, Kennedy’s paintings combine oil, acrylic and watercolour to form textures suggestive of aged metal and heavy Glasgow skies. “They are not meant to represent a visually accurate portrayal of any particular ocean liner," he says, "but use a collage of mediums to communicate more abstractly the atmosphere of being in the presence of these great structures and the nostalgia you would feel coming across faded images of these washed up objects, and the sense of loss of a once great industry and tradition.” Adam Kennedy has just moved into South Block – taking the studio next to the one occupied by his older brother Paul. He is continuing to explore the theme of transport in his work, but now plans to look further afield, developing research he has done on the aircraft graveyards of Arizona.
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