20 January 2015
Background
This interdisciplinary study’s overall objective was to enhance understanding of how organizational and creative practices influence arts performance. ‘Performance’ is seen as including artistic quality and other organizational aims such as financial return, expanding audiences and participation in the arts. This interdisciplinary approach includes management theory and practice. This research project focused on a study of the creative, educational and organizational practices of artists at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, a leading independent UK arts organization based in Edinburgh. Structured around an organic network of independent artists, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop rents out space to individual artists as well as running particular educational programmes, exhibitions and offering residencies. Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop also initiates and collaborates on projects which involve people directly in arts activities within their own environment or which relate to an issue of local concern. The organization has established many creative partnerships with arts organizations and education institutions to support the development of their own and their partners’ programmes and to identify opportunities for sharing resources, information and skills. The Workshop aims to move beyond conventional organizational structures and art traditions in order to create an environment that is a catalyst for “the creative act” in its many forms, for example sculpture (in its many material forms) and screen printing. This study explored these different practices with an innovative study of the artists, current educational audiences at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop.
The research explored the realities of managing in the creative industries from different stakeholder perspectives, for example artists, board members, gallery owners, affiliated academics, teachers and school pupils. Managing is conceived as a series of activities with the aim of producing a performance in organizational and artistic terms. In the creative industries this often entails working across organizational boundaries, incorporating the efforts of diverse professionals and facilitating creative practice. Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop was chosen as the site for this research because it typifies the complex and fluid setting found within the creative industries, and it represents an increasingly important (and growing) mode of organizing in the creative industries.
The study had the following broad research objectives:
- To explore the work practices of artists at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop
- To investigate the organizational practices at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop
- To explore attitudes towards and the nature of relationships with Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop amongst artists and primary school teachers, identifying both shared and differentiating issues.
- To investigate attitudes towards Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop’s education programme
Sample
In order to meet the above objectives the following qualitative approach was employed:
Artists
I conducted interviews with 6 artists at different stages of their working lives, and who have been working within Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop for different periods of time.
Educators
I conducted 2 in-depth interviews with Teachers who are directly involved in the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop’s School’s educational programme.
Findings
Artists
All of the artists had a higher education in terms of developing their artistic skills, primarily at the Edinburgh College of Art and the Glasgow School of Art. Interestingly most of the artists did not initially apply to study sculpture for their degrees, it was mainly painting. Artists switched their main artistic speciality to sculpture once they had an opportunity to experience it in their first two years of study. In these years they got to ‘try’ sculpture as a part of their course, and decided to pursue it primarily as a 3 dimensional art form and an art form, which allowed them to experiment with a range of different materials.
“I went to art college as a mature student…there was no way I could hack it as a painter…I got the opportunity to try sculpture for the first time …I felt I could express myself in three dimensions much more happily than in two”
Indeed, for the artists the attraction of pursuing sculpture at college and as a vocation was the opportunity to experiment with different concepts and materials, something which the space and facilities within the workshop allowed them to do.
- “It was almost interesting to me messing about with all different materials”.
- “I got in at Edinburgh…you did a bit of everything for a few months…then you got to decide… I thought I think to work with all different materials…sculpture was always more interesting to me”
- “That was the first opportunity I got to mess about with materials because at high school you are just given rubbish paint and still life…college…that is when I got to start really messing about with bits of wood, bits of chicken wire, papier mache …making a mess and so it was more of the freedom with sculpture”
There were different inspirations for their work for example family, animal skeletons and sculls, art exhibitions, junk, architecture and even eggs. The artists’ work patterns within the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop were also varied, dependent on whether the artist pursued and promoted their art full time or whether they had a part time job in order to enable them to pursue their art and supplement their artistic income.
- “I mostly work here like five or six days per week…almost like a job from 9-6 kind of thing…I know most people can’t do that because they have to do paid work elsewhere”
- “I am terribly erratic …sometimes I will be here working very intensely and then I my not down here for a wee while …there is no kind of pattern, which suits me”
Process and progression
The artists talked about their work being as apart of their identity and also being about the shapes and composition of different materials.
- “A lot of my work is about identity and about my own identity, and recently I have been doing a lot of work around that using my family tree as a starting point”
- “My work is just composition of shapes and materials….if I think if this shape works for me I just go down to the workshop and invent something that responds to this…I am able to change materials and sizes all of that”
In terms of progression of their careers the artists explored different materials in order to develop their sculpture practice, in addition to developing their work and profile through residencies for example in Belgium, New York and Norway. The artists also exhibited their work within various different venues for example The Society of Scottish Exhibition and Visual Arts Scotland. Commissions for work had mixed responses, in so far as artists felt that they typically dictated how they created their work and restricted their freedom of expression.
- “Occasionally (I get commissions)…it is not my favourite way to work because when you are commissioned you have to do what the other person wants you to do instead of what I want to do”
- “I certainly don’t go out looking for commissions”
- “If you try to make work you think people want to buy it doesn’t work, so you just do what you want to do”
Commerciality and Funding
This is also reflected in the way that the artists felt about the commerciality of their work.
- “No (I don’t sell my work)…not that I am against the idea but it is not obvious to me, especially in Edinburgh and especially if you are doing the sculpturing, yes it is not obvious”
- “I don’t set out to be (commercial) because my work appears to be very personal and it comes from a very personal and it comes from a very personal starting point”
Funding from external bodies such as Creative Scotland and the Edinburgh Visual Arts Fund were an important source of financing creating, residencies abroad and exhibitions. Funding opportunities were promoted through the workshop newsletter and the funding bodies’ websites. The internet was also useful for the artists promoting their work which was done primarily through social media. Social media was perceived as a flexible medium for selling and promotion, as opposed to developing relationships with and selling at art fairs through galleries, which were perceived as restricting in terms of what work should be developed and where work could be sold.
- “I have never been in an art fair…I have just been on the internet and my Facebook is probably where I get most people contacting me …that is the only reason I can make a living from the things that I make…”
Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop
The artists found the facilities available to them within the workshop very good, and a key advantage of working within the space. In particular the tools and equipment available to them, which allowed them to create, while their studios allowed them to experiment with different concepts. On another practical level the reception area within the workshop was seen as a useful resource in terms of receiving and sending materials and sold work. In addition the workshop’s network of artistic peers came together as a community which was important to develop ideas: “whether that is a community of thought or community of practice … I cannot express how important that was for me”. In this sense the artists suggested that the workshop should be more accessible to the wider artistic community and public to allow them to view the work, artist practices and spaces. However accessing the workshop and the work within it will be more accessible as it has recently opened a café to the public.
In general the artists felt that the new building was a great improvement on the old building which was felt as: “freezing in winter, damp and absolutely boiling in summer and so this (new building) is comparative luxury”. However the new building was considered as “…brighter, lighter, it is more cerebral.”
Teacher
“I don’t know about other schools but we are open to any new experiences…any kind of worthwhile experiences that we can give our children and we think that they can benefit from and all of those met the skills that are required in the arts curriculum”
The teachers interviewed found their relationship with the workshop beneficial both to them and their students. They felt that the children benefitted from learning within the workshop in a number of different ways, for example:
- Learning outside of the school environment
- Learning from ‘real life’ artists
- Having the time to develop work, giving students an in-depth knowledge of the artistic process
- A learning process for teachers as well as pupils; this learning is then taken into the classroom
The students also learned different skills taught by artists and had different experiences, particularly in terms working outside of the school environment, preparing for the end of term exhibition where the children’s work is exhibited to the public in the workshop, and also learning to self evaluate work:
- “I think first and foremost the knowledge that the people we worked with had far more artistic knowledge than I have or could have …and the fact that they were able to spend a lot of time doing the same project and having a bit of longevity in the project”
- “[The lesson] deliberately built in some teamwork…to show the children that everyone needs to be apart of a team and we all need to work together to create something…so she was very responsive to what the class needed”
- “The last week is usually a kind of evaluative thing…again that is part of our curriculum is to get our children to evaluate their work…what they could have done better, what they are proud…so again taking time to do that…you find in school that art is often a rushed thing”
- (Exhibition) “the children got a lot out of seeing their work displayed…in an exhibition space and it is displayed really professionally…it was advertised …they were very proud at the fact that the public could go in and see their work”
Conclusions
The teachers felt that working with the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop benefited their students primarily because it allowed them to spend an extended length of time on projects with experienced artists outside of the school environment. As a consequence pupils were motivated to pursue art, and it gave them a depth of understanding of different artists and artistic processes, which they could not get from teachers working within a limited period of class time. In addition pupils learned how to evaluate their own work, and to consider art and the creative industries as a career options. The pupils also had the opportunity to work with different materials, work within a different environment outside of school and exhibit their work to their parents and public. For the pupils and teachers working with the workshop was a mutual learning process, with the teachers also learning skills from the artists, which then they took into the classroom. As a consequence of these benefits the teachers felt that the workshop should receive more funding so that more schools and pupils within Edinburgh can experience the workshop facilities and the benefits for teacher and student learning.
For the artists the opportunity to work with different materials and the required equipment in addition to having the space to experiment were the main advantages of working within the workshop. In addition to working within a community of fellow artists was considered beneficial to developing to sharing and developing ideas. Commerciality in terms of selling of their work was not a priority for any of the artists; rather their work was about expressing themselves and developing work for its own sake rather than meeting a need. Similarly commissions were not a priority for the artists; again because of the perceived restrictive nature of working to particular requirements from external bodies. For the artists creating work was about self-expression and experimentation, which the workshop enabled. This fluidity was also reflected in the artists’ different forms of working routines and different career patterns. For example some focused on applying for funding for residencies to pursue their work, others used social media to promote their work, which meant that they could pursue their work full time, although “promotion of work does not come naturally”, whereas others had part time “proper” jobs.