A hostile environment for artists?

Our work at Metroland Cultures preserves and celebrates Brent’s history of resistance and self-organising, which has always come from a place of care and survival in a hostile environment. 

Brent’s 2024 reality reveals deep-rooted deprivation, with 23.3% earning below the Living Wage, the highest level in London, along with the highest level of unemployment, peaking at 6.7% in Q3 2023.     

Running an arts organisation in London in 2024 isn't easy. Running one in a place like Brent is even harder. While Arts Council investment has increased, it primarily benefits relocated National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) or those shifting activities into Brent, overlooking cohesive grassroots cultural development. 

Despite NPOs' well-intentioned efforts, their unfamiliarity with the borough often leads to repetitive conversations with community members, emphasising a disconnect.

The consequences? 

Brent is a hostile environment for artists. Funding flows to NPOs grappling with Brent's dynamics and politics, exploiting local artistic talent without adequate compensation. Consequently, artists either exit the scene or transition to other industries or move out of the borough or London. 

Those funded often tailor their practices to secure funded contracts, inadvertently contributing to gentrification, political agendas or monopolising community discussions. Despite the creative industries being London’s fastest growing sector, voices from diverse, working-class backgrounds, essential for genuine change, remain marginalised. 

Adam Farah, visual artist based in Metroland’s studio building says: “The classism of the art industries works to casually homogenise the economic realities of the artists, making them feel ashamed and inadequate if they cannot afford to keep up on their own.”

Studio space remains a major hurdle for Brent's artists and while the borough boasts three studio buildings, affordability remains a barrier for underrepresented and working-class artists. Efforts by the Creative Land Trust, working groups and the Mayor of London fall short, leaving visual artists priced out of their own community. 

A huge gulf

These schemes work on a model where artists build their commercial practice up to pay rent. The work and initiatives we support at Metroland build up a community resource that shares, preserves, documents and holds practices of resistance and care within our community. 

Right now that is coming from artists that collaborate with communities on social change. This isn’t a commercial practice that will necessarily birth rent, however it might create new approaches to healing with a women’s refuge centre or create a cinema supporting voices of unheard communities or build a structure for a food bank. 

As arts administrators we have a responsibility to understand this type of practice and respond to it with the infrastructures we build and provide. Adam Farah-Saad says: “Community is not a project for me that begins and ends with a commission. The complexity of my communities is often invisible to those artworld professionals who might narrowly define what it may constitute, how it is practised and what its creative manifestations should look like.” 

It feels as if, in Brent, we are staring down into the abyss of arts funding wanting to fund arts and social change. But the infrastructure to support a commercial practice and the gulf between those things is huge. 

A vibrant cultural asset for Brent

For us at Metroland, the solution isn’t affordable space. it is free Space. I think this is the only way we are going to smash the barriers of class in London and disempower the art market which simply isn’t where we see change. We see money there and not change. I want to invest in artists that change the society that we live in, not in practices that make totems for the rich.

In a strategic partnership with Brent Council from 2018-2020, Phil Porter, Strategic Director for Community and Wellbeing, and Metroland devised a vision for Brent's cultural landscape. Recognising the challenges of arts funding, we pioneered an ‘arts in policy' approach, integrating culture as a cornerstone of community development. 

We looked to discover where community strategy could be delivered through an arts approach. During this period, an opportunity arose to repurpose a security contract on an empty building in Kilburn, initially budgeted for a 12k/month. Through collaboration, Metroland took on the security for the space at 10k/month, thus launching Metroland Studios and making a saving for the housing budget under the security.

This partnership enabled a 800 sqm cultural hub and now provides free studios for 24 local artists, a gallery, and hosts community organisations like Kilburn Street Kitchen, K2K Radio and Other Cinemas, rent-free. Thus, transforming a security expense into a vibrant cultural asset for Brent.

An infrastructure fit for purpose

Fast forward to 2024 and we are still here in Kilburn. Metroland Studios has supported 42 artists with free studio spaces and engaged over 500 artists and young people through its various programmes, the initiative is now a vibrant artistic ecosystem. 

Like many other places we are now in a struggle to keep the building. It is part of a redevelopment and, with council budgets squeezed, we are fighting for financial support which is likely to be cut but currently allows us to run the building and provide free studio space. Without it we will be forced to leave but we are hopeful for the future.

This case study is a call to think about the infrastructure we are building to nurture artists and an ask to ensure it is fit for purpose. It is a plea not to homogenise artists when we talk about studios. I want us to think about the artists we are supporting and what they do. We must understand their practice and respond with studio models that support that. 

One model is to support artists to get on a ladder to the market, but another should be to look at the value of artistic practice beyond commercialisation and ensure practice is properly nurtured and supported as a contribution, that in the long term, could make a huge difference. 

Brent council has been bold and innovative with Metroland Studios and has shown it is possible within existing resources. We hope others will follow. 

Lois Stonock is Director of Metroland Cultures.
 metrolandcultures.com/
@loisstonock | @MetrolandC