Leg up for start-ups
For graduates thinking of setting up on their own: help is at hand! Veronica Simpson reports on inspirational spaces and organisations assisting those with an independent career in mind.
Words by Veronica Simpson
'The worst thing about having to leave [college] and enter the real world, apart from the crippling debt and self-doubt, is that all of a sudden you don't have access to any facilities.
The CAD suites, ceramic studios, woodwork equipment and print studios all just disappear overnight.' This lament from arts blogger James Cartwright ('it'snicethat.com') rings true for most of the thousands of graduates emerging from the UK's many art and design courses.
Yes, there are the lucky few that get snapped up by innovative brands and forward-thinking retailers, but most young would-be designers and artists typically give up hope of running their own studio from the off. Instead, they sign up to work in a vaguely relevant industry doing something other than what they really want to do in order to pay their rent; a dedicated minority might support themselves with part-time waitering in restaurants/bars/galleries, while developing their craft and skills in their spare time.
For those clinging to their right to design and make, come what may, the biggest problem has always been space, with access to the relevant equipment coming close second. And in London -- the city with more art and design colleges than almost any on the planet -- the quest for affordable space just keeps getting tougher.
But, while the whole of the UK has seen a burgeoning of maker-spaces -- places where young designers can rent a desk or workbench, and experiment with CNC milling machines, or borrow the expertise of on-hand mentors and advisors -- for as little as £10 a day, in London they are currently springing up like mushrooms in a forest.
There are some 89 maker-space set-ups in the capital right now, according to Workshop East's co-founder Nancy Peskett. She was commissioned to carry out a survey early this year for the Greater London Authority (GLA) in order to assess the scale and style of London's maker-spaces. And what she found was pretty heartening: the spaces on offer are incredibly diverse, with a wide range of shared equipment and specialisms, and a variety of funding set-ups. Although 30 of these 89 offer day rates or workshops for the general public, most are for professionals only.
A current tenant of the Blackhorse Workshop in Walthamstow is Charles Letherby Lighting Design
Hub Workshop in Peckham is of the latter kind. Opened in February, it was the brainchild of chartered surveyor Drew Munden. Still working part-time as a surveyor (at the time of writing), he has no formal design training, but has always loved hands-on making, so he sank £25,000 of his own money into refurbishing and then equipping an efficient and compact workspace at Peckham's Copeland industrial estate. Here he rents out a handful of desks to designers/makers on a membership basis, while being kept extremely busy at his 3D printer, laser cutter and CNC milling machine fabricating models, stands and furniture for many neighbouring designers, artists and architects who have studios and co-working spaces in the Copeland Estate's once dilapidated Victorian warehouses and garages.
Munden wants his Hub Workshop to be the kind of place that nurtures innovative start-ups. He was inspired by a visit to the Tech Shops of San Francisco: open-plan studio spaces where young software and product designers and coders congregate to incubate and hopefully launch their own multi-million-dollar inventions. Munden -- who expects his investment to be recouped within the first year and is now looking to expand -- is very clear that his workshop is not for dabblers. But, other new maker-spaces have appeared in Peckham in just the past few months that welcome both professionals and amateurs, including an open-access kiln workshop for budding potters and ceramicists plus an open-access etching studio.
Blackhorse Workshop in Walthamstow is a leading light in this particular public-facing, maker-space market, and was singled out for praise by blogger Cartwright for its facilities and generous programme of community workshops and events. Opened in February 2014, this pioneering maker-space was the brainchild of current Turner Prize nominee, the architecture collective Assemble. Welcoming everyone 'from dabblers to professionals', it can accommodate people wishing to hire a bench for the day or lease a studio for a year (see Case Study).
Instrument makers, sculptors, furniture makers, lighting and wallpaper designers, are among the current users. 'We have a fantastic mix of people,' says Harriet Warden, Blackhorse's creative director. 'From what I've witnessed during the past year, there is such a demand for this type of facility. It's great to be able to support people to even begin to make a start.'
It's this open-access element of today's maker-spaces that marks a shift from the traditional artist/designer studio. Making is increasingly being seen as a tool for empowering local communities, offering skills and occupation while helping to consolidate social cohesion in often deprived neighbourhoods. Certainly, this was the inspiration behind public art agency Create London's financial and professional support for Blackhorse Workshop. It would like to see this model replicated and expanded.
Create London's current project takes the Blackhorse ethos a step further. Says director Hadrian Garrard: 'We are taking over the Carnegie Library building in Manor Park. Library services moved out three or four years ago to a smaller, cheaper building. We have taken on a seven-year lease from Newham Council and we want to return it to public access. We are working with architects Nicholas Lobo Brennan and Astrid Smitham to design a way for the building to have a very porous relationship with the local community.
We are creating a library of artists and makers rather than a library full of books, returning the building back to its original function, offering self-education and empowerment.'
Even with generous grants, this scheme is presumably only affordable because Create is taking a short-term lease on a building whose future is as yet uncertain. Exploiting the 'interim use' planning clause for existing buildings earmarked for development/demolition has long provided makers with cheap premises. The aforementioned Workshop East, a group of 11 East London-based makers, got lucky when they met Assemble, which proposed that a making space for them could be accommodated within the Sugarhouse Studios workspace it had set up in a previously disused light industrial park near the Olympic Park in Stratford. The deal benefits both parties, with a reciprocal exchange of skills, jobs and tools. But, what will they do when the lease runs out next year?
Sculptures in bee resin are produced by Marlene Huissoud at the Blackhorse Workshop
The insecurity of Workshop East and Assemble's situation is almost the norm in London, according to Peskett's research. She offers some crumbs of comfort in that many budding designers need to move on to bigger premises anyway after about three years, once their client and project portfolio is built sufficiently. But the current GLA plans to remove all light-industrial space (for housing) by 2060 does not bode well. Yet, it's not all about space. As, crucial at any stage of a design career, are training and mentoring, marketing and publicity.
One of the longest standing schemes for supporting emerging talent, New Designers in Business, has been celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. New Designers has played host to some of the most promising designers across the spectrum in the early part of their careers -- among them Thomas Heatherwick, Bethan Gray, Alex Monroe, Joe Ferry, DeadGood, Max Lamb and Sebastian Cox.
The process of selection for New Designers is an important part of the show's role, as it involves mentoring and advising students about how best to present their work in order to secure interest. Getting designers ready for the realities of commercial work is still a subject woefully absent from most design-course curricula, with a few notable exceptions. One is Jordanstone College of Art and Design (part of the University of Dundee), which launched a Design in Action knowledge exchange hub in 2013, putting start-up businesses in touch with start-up designers. It is now linked with five other Scottish art schools -- Abertay, Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrew's and Gray's.
The Design Council has also recently become much more involved in helping young designers to take those first steps in business, with a whole range of supportive schemes including mentoring and funding, events and networking opportunities. A Design Summit in May offered designers advice on how to crowdfund new projects, for example. It has also launched the Ones to Watch scheme, tipping off the wider world as to the rising design stars of the future. The Design Council has also been providing funding and mentoring to young design companies through schemes such as the Knee High Design Challenge, which ran throughout 2013-14.
Funded by Guy's and St Thomas' Charity, along with the London Boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth, this programme encouraged budding designers to come up with ideas for improving the quality of life for young families (with children under five). The shortlisted designers' output ranged from a travelling one-woman 'opera' about the ordinary travails of being a parent to a portable 'pop-up park' scheme that encouraged parent/child interaction through play.
They were put through an intensive mentoring and development programme, with funds provided at each stage to help them develop their ideas.
The scheme is still going, according to Ella Britton, programme lead on the Design Council's Design Challenge, with six of the original 10 receiving mentoring and support and three having been given further financial support by Guy's and St Thomas' Charity. Says Britton: 'This support is being complemented by an 18-month evaluation being delivered by the New Economic Foundation... We are trying to do more work that looks at innovative practice in a public health context, [particularly] in communities where there is a role for people to develop their own thoughts and ideas about raising public health.'
And then there are spaces that provide all of the above (space, access to facilities, mentoring and collaborative opportunity) in one package. One of a kind is the pioneering multidisciplinary Pervasive Media Studio, based behind the iconic Watershed Arts Centre in Bristol. Starting life as a collaborative hub for creatives interested in digital experimentation, it now has access to a far greater pool of talent (and, thankfully, funding) thanks to setting up strong links with the two universities in Bristol. Now, IT and robotics professors and PhD students rub shoulders with games designers (both physical and digital), neurogastronomists (investigating the effect of smell and sight on taste), musical inventors (the cute and portable mobile speaker, Minirig, was invented here) and interaction designers, among others. What the Watershed has that no other designer studio (or university) offers is also access to the general public, thanks to its bar, foyer, performance space and cinema. A recent four day event, Being There, saw some experiments with prototype robotics interacting for the first time with the public in the Watershed's spaces.
The more recently launched Makerversity at Somerset House in London has similarities: the founders reclaimed 3,000 sq m of basement below the 300-year-old former palace and turned it into studio space for 60 maker businesses. As members, makers have access to fully equipped workshops, though the emphasis of the studios based there is on establishing their practice as commercial studios rather than research and collaboration.
So, though the times are tough, there is cause for optimism: there is help out there, if you know how to access it. And, no matter what the odds, the design world appears to have one huge fundamental advantage -- a collaborative, 'can-do' attitude that permeates right through the sector. There are myriad stories of an outpouring of assistance and support in setting up workshop space. Peskett says: 'When we were looking around trying to put together a business plan, people gave us so much of their time and insight.'
Combine this with the power of social media to perform a whole range of once inaccessibly laborious and time-consuming functions, from finding space, partners or funders to launching themselves on to the wider world, then you can't help but believe that, for future designers, where there's a will there'll be a way. Good luck to the class of 2015!
