Artsadmin is 30 years old and having nursed some of our most iconic artists into their careers is as innovative as ever. Simon Tait talks to its directors.
Artsadmin stands for everything in the arts zeitgeist right now, in January 2010: innovation, boundary crossing, excellence, hands-on support for artists. It was all in McMaster, it’s all in the Arts Council’s strategy for the next ten years.
Yet they are the disciplines that lie at the core of the organisation that has just celebrated its 30th birthday and has the same two-handed directorship that has guided it for 25 years, with one of them a founder.
In 1979 Judith Knight was the general manager of Oval House that was then, with the ICA, one of two London venues offering space to avant-garde performance, and Seonaid Stewart was theatre co-ordinator at the Oval. Both had an enthusiasm for inter-disciplinary performance.
“People kept asking us if we’d do individual projects” Knight says. “We didn’t want to do that, but we said ‘Why not try and put together an office?’ There was no business plan, but they discovered an instant need for what they were offering as producers, which was sharing and connection to give creative people the space and seclusion to make work. “But we were very careful who we worked with, the artistic policy was very important”.
It was a time when funding was scarce but ambition was high, when LIFT, Dance Umbrella and Serious were also starting, and Artsadmin have always worked with them. Their first clients were Hesitate and Demonstrate, which quickly developed a reputation in Europe, and Mike Figgis, both still associated with Artsadmin though Figgis now has a successful film career; and then The People Show, Pip Simmons Theatre Group and Forkbeard Fantasy, Bobby Baker and Graeme Miller among many.
After five years Stewart moved back to her native Scotland to work, and Gill Lloyd, moved over from The People Show to become co-director of Artsadmin. For her, too, this was not a business affair, it was an affair of the heart. “How awful it would be if, as a producer, you found yourself having to work with an artist or company you didn’t like but who could afford to pay more than someone you did?”
Artsadmin are producers, but much more. They facilitate the development and presentation of new work, but also offer artist development, mentoring and advisory service and bursary schemes.
For their first 15 years they were peripatetic, a team of four sitting above a McDonalds in Clerkenwell at a time when rents there were low. “We both had small children then so we installed a crèche. And we both had pets (Ollie, a senior black Labrador, still follows Lloyd about) and when a German magazine came to write about us, the piece seemed to be all about kids and dogs” Knight recalls.
What they needed, though, was premises of their own where they could offer rehearsal and performance space, and perhaps office facilities.
They discovered Toynbee Studios. These had been built by Toynbee Hall, the social change charity in Whitechapel set up in the 1870s that had built extra space in the 1930s for education projects. Latterly it was used by the Inner London Education Authority, with a theatre on the ground floor (the old Curtain) and a football pitch, believe it or not, on the roof, but when the ILEA was abolished in the early eighties the studios fell empty. Artsadmin were eventually approved by the charity and moved into what was then a three-storey block next to Toynbee Hall itself in 1994.
“It changed everything for us” says Lloyd. “We’d always toured nationally doing new work and we’re really proud of what we did between ’79 and ‘94, but the advisory service, the education thing, the bursary scheme were possible because suddenly things opened out. We could offer space to people, and somehow when you’ve got bricks and mortar the world takes you a bit more seriously. It’s a real solid base, literally, an identity the building reflected very much. In the 60s would have been an arts lab.”
Ambition grew, and when the chance to buy the lease on Toynbee Studios they put in for lottery money – they had been Arts Council clients since the mid-80s. But the chance of ownership was a catalyst for more improvement, and in 2007 the studios were launched after a £6.5m refurbishment, £2.5m having come from the lottery.
“We were lucky” says Lloyd. “We fitted all the criteria of the time - shared space, multi-use, and we got through the door before it started to close on London projects”.
Most of the refurbishment was invisible structural improvement to make a 70-year-old building fit for 21st century use, but the open roof has become the fourth storey, a sprung floor studio habitually used by the likes of DV8 and the Michael Clark Dance Company. On the third floor are rehearsal spaces and studios, on the second offices - Artichoke, Arts Catalyst, Crying out Loud, Curious and DV8 among them. There are 18 offices in all, all arts related, and more studios in the basement with the performance artist Frank B has his lair.
There are few art forms that aren’t entertained at Toynbee. The Curtain was 480 seats, but when the stage was extended in the mid-90s for a piece Mike Lee was making for the Barbican the seating was reduced to 280, and so it remains as a valuable rehearsal resource for theatre, film and television as well as for schools’ use. The oak-panelled courtroom, the first juvenile court in London, remains as an ideal recording studio and music venue.
But on the ground floor is one of the first installations Knight and Lloyd made when they arrived, the café, which they run themselves. “The whole thing needs a hub, it’s where residents here get together, and now that it’s more visible from the street (a street wall has been replaced by railings) it’s a popular local meeting place” Knight says.
Artsadmin, now with a staff of 24 whose ACE annual grant as an RFO accounts for half the turnover, continues doing the work it always had, plus some. They have to raise funds for artists’ projects; there 12 to 13 permanent artists in any year, each doing one or two projects “which could be a tiny site specific thing round the back or a tour to China” Lloyd says.
Education has been increasingly important element, and Artsadmin now has an education co-ordinator, Sam Trotman, who runs an annual summer school – last year’s theme was environmental sustainability. She has also created a youth board of artists aged between 18 and 25 who independently advise on programming.
“What has happened in the last 30 years is that the barriers between art forms that the funding authorities could seen have mostly disappeared” says Knight, “thought some of the press and media still find it difficult not to put things into boxes.”
To mark the 30th anniversary, the Toynbee residents were asked to create an image in the building, and the likes of Bobby Baker, Lloyd Newson, Mike Figgis, Franko B and Curious have all complied to make a unique memorial.
Artsadmin will continue to examine issues through what they do at Toynbee and who they work with, and Lloyd and Knight hope to be able to establish an annual festival there to address themes. Climate change will continue to figure large, and Artsadmin has been working with the British Council to find ways of reducing the carbon footprint for touring companies.
“This is going to be a difficult year for the arts in many ways, but what we want to make sure of is that in the search for young talent we don’t forget older artists” says Judith Knight. “Because, say, Bobby Baker is in her 50s doesn’t mean she is any less creative or in need of support, and I hope the Arts Council take that fight on. We certainly have.”
