Prioritizing Transparency & Care in Art Residencies
In light of recent criticism surrounding the five-year artist residency at Acme’s Fire Station Studios in London, we wanted to take a look at transparency, accountability, and standards of care in art organizations and residency programs, as well as some of the alternative structures for arts organizing that are being explored.
Image: Acme Fire Station
You might already be familiar with the issues surrounding Acme’s Fire Station Studios live/work residency in London – which has been accused by resident artists of being “unfit for purpose” – as reported by The Art Newspaper at the end of last year.
Acme, which was established by artists in 1972, describes itself as a charity that supports artists with affordable studios and a program of residencies and professional development opportunities. It is a well-established organization and the biggest program of its kind in London. Its Fire Station Residency was established in 1997 to offer five-year live/work residencies to mid-career artists, by providing stable, low-rent accommodation and a professional development and support program. But in late 2021, current residents – Tamsin Clark, Charlie Duck, Sarah Duffy, Matthew Humphreys, Evan Ifekoya, Marianne Keating, Paul Maheke, Benito Mayor Vallejo, Zadie Xa – published an open letter, alleging that their time in residency has been consumed by constant noise pollution and access issues resulting from a neighboring construction site. This, along with general maintenance issues, they say, has had a negative impact on their quality of life and interfered with their ability to work – the opposite of the program’s alleged aims. The residents at Fire Station also emphasize that they were never warned in advance about the construction taking place.
The disturbances haven’t been the only problem: according to the artists, their concerns have not been met by Acme with empathy or a willingness to reach a meaningful resolution. According to The Art Newspaper, ‘Acme has responded to their concerns over the past 16 months with “hostility, disdain and a lack of empathy”, rather than with “compassion and with a commitment to honesty and openness”, as stated in Acme’s missions and values.’
For the artists at Fire Station and others, an art residency can be a means of survival. They are intended to be environments that foster career development and exchange, and provide time and space – not only in a physical sense – as well as opportunities for experimentation. Though fees and financial support can certainly play a big role, it is also about having the infrastructure and working conditions to support and nurture artists – what may be categorized as a combination of “hard” and “soft” infrastructure. How might we think about transparency and care as part of the necessary “soft infrastructure” of art residencies?
The Art Newspaper: Artists complain about construction work outside ACME's Fire Station studios in East London
Transparency as necessary criteria
The National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) in Australia provides a code of practice with a section on residencies, detailing that “all residencies should be conducted on the basis of a written document clearly outlining the terms and conditions of the residency including the expectations of the host and the participant.” It may seem obvious, but clear communication prior to the start of a program (as well as during) is essential, and a contract, of course, is a necessary foundation to start from.
In The Impact of Art Residencies, researched and published by the Lithuanian Council for Culture (LCC) in 2020, transparency is further highlighted as a necessary criteria to be met by residencies, with the recommendation, “the first and foremost condition to ensure quality services for incoming residents is clear communication and agreement on expectations.” Transparency, in fact, is among the criteria LCC suggests is necessary “for a residency to be considered as an art residency.”
Lithuanian Council for Culture (LCC): The Impact of Art Residencies
The LCC also details what transparency means for art residencies: including “whether it is clear to artists what conditions will be provided during their residencies”, and “what services one can expect”, as well as details regarding selection and application processes.
And as the online platform Fully Funded Residencies points out in an interview for Locomotion magazine, financial and organizational transparency can also play a key role in preventing the exploitation of both participating artists and the art workers who run independent residencies. It’s a point that also serves to highlight the interconnected relationship between transparency and care in art residencies.
Fulfilling a duty of care
What does ‘care’ mean for artist residencies?
The physical live/work space is not the only crucial element for artists’ development and support during a residency like Acme. There is a responsibility of art organizations, including residencies, to show care – this should be considered part of providing an environment in which artists can thrive.
As the artists at Fire Station told The Art Newspaper: “It’s not just about compensation, it’s about how we have been treated. We see this across the art world, that institutions don’t treat people with dignity or respect.”
In A Primer and Introduction to the Five Pillars of a Healthy Residency, published by Artist Communities Alliance (AAC) in 2020, AAC details the five pillars on which its residency self-assessment tool is based. The pillars include identity, program design, operations, resource development, and finally, stewardship. Under stewardship, the necessity of an organization to “actively demonstrate care” for all in its community is underscored, “in order to have climates where artists and staff can thrive.“ It is elaborated that care in this context can take many forms, including ”thank you's; periods of rest and reflection; transparency and access to information; consistency in policy, process, and practice; and the fair and just treatment of people.” Among other factors, AAC’s description of what care means for residency programs illuminates that transparency itself is an act of care. In other words, care is also about aligning actions and intent.
As the title of the Fire Station artists' open letter, “Dear Slumlords of the Art World”, suggests, the artists have been placed in such a situation because they were already in a vulnerable and precarious position – something they had to demonstrate in order to apply for the residency. Their dependency on an organization, which, they say, fails to demonstrate care, serves to put them in a position of perhaps even greater vulnerability – counter to a residency program’s purpose.
Rethinking codes of practice
There are a number of initiatives and groups that have been working to (re)assess the role and responsibilities of residency programs, build on the discourse around them, and think about alternative approaches and structures.
For example, the collectively written guide, “How not to exclude artist parents”, has been created by artists to provide institutions and residencies with a set of practical steps they can take to be more inclusive and welcoming to artists with childcare responsibilities. The guide also offers an introductory suggestion to “treat the artist as a whole person.” In a similar way, “A White Institution’s Guide for Welcoming Artists of Color* and Their Audiences”, by Fannie Sosa is made available to institutions for a fee – on a sliding scale – to ultimately better their equity practices by considering infrastructure, demonstrating care, and being open and willing to meet the needs of those they invite.
Established in 2014, Rethinking Residencies – a working group of 16 art residencies based in New York – focuses on sharing knowledge and cultivating critical thinking in the residency field. In 2021, the group held a symposium in part aiming to “cultivate new thinking about the history, institutional structures, and conditions of visual art residencies.” The conversations included topics such as “Representation, Accountability and Solidarity in Institutions and the Artists they Serve”, seeking to consider the roles of host and guest and their dynamics towards producing an environment that is supportive of artists.
Obsidian Coast is an art organization and residency focused on “unhurried thought”, which initiated the project Hypericum: A Code of Practice in 2020 – bringing together a working group of arts workers and small-scale organizations to produce an open source code of practice that places “care, generosity and solidarity in the crux of all arts organizing”. Among other areas, the code “may address safer space guidelines, accessibility, formation and maintenance of ethical working relationships, counter strategies for dealing with master suppression techniques, or proposals for support structures to enforce collectivity within an increasingly precarious professional field.”
And another initiative is RESHAPE, a research and development project in which arts organizations come together to create innovative organizational models. One of the network’s recent proposals, titled “Governance of the Possible”, examines possible fair governance models and alternative structures for the European arts ecosystem. The proposal takes a “bottom-up” approach, co-written by artists and art workers, with a focus on care and multiplicity. In it, RESHAPE members propose a new paradigm “that builds on a culture of co-responsibility and collective survival of the living, the free and of justice.”
In a personal statement posted on her Instagram account, current Fire Station resident Marianne Keating speaks about Acme’s disregard and lack of empathy for the artists its existence relies on, suggesting, “Especially for an organization excited to celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, does it instead signify how far removed they have become from their original ethos?”
It’s a sentiment that also seems to highlight the necessity of continually reconsidering and reevaluating existing structures, how they are being implemented, their impact and effectiveness. Though individual programs may differ, it’s also something arts organizations can come together to do – to continually evolve practices and conditions, and co-create a system in which to hold one another accountable.
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