Bar Lane Studios is a brand new instantly accessible and exciting space for artists and creatives in the city of York. Currently, Bar Lane is housing a unique Salvador Dali exhibition in its gallery which features original signed prints by the world-renowned creative force, before the whole building opens next week to take in a number of local artists (including Nathan Chenery of the York-based art promoters Revolving Gallery and John Squire of iconic band The Stone Roses) along with selected interns from York St John’s University.
The project is the first of its kind in the UK as a not-for-profit social enterprise housed in a 7,000 sq ft space. The idea has been developed by York-based illustrator Ben Clowes who is a former Fine Art teacher at York College and Northumbria University with an aim to support the region’s creative talent. “Our mission is to get everyone together as one big community to support the arts.
“We’ve got a lot of people involved and investors from Aviva and the NHS – the biggest challenge when we got started was finding people to help fund the project and then getting them to work together, but because we had done our research and knew that there was a desire for this kind of space in York, everybody agreed that it was a solid idea and so, we did well when we had to pitch it to people.”
Bar Lane has been met with positive support locally with funding coming from the aforementioned York St John University, Science City York and the York Council. YSJ will also be sponsoring five of its graduates in July and providing them with free space at the studio along with a year’s bursary to support the artists’ growth and business development.
Ben says that it is imperative that creative industries are nurtured at a local and regional level: “The UK has the highest percentage of people working in the creative industries in the whole of Europe and there’s no reason why York shouldn’t be a centre for creativity in England.”
As an artist who moved from York down south (to study at Cambridge School of Illustration and Design) before returning home to teach, Ben acknowledges that there is a pre-conception within local graduates that one has to move to a city like London or Manchester to get jobs in creative industries. He continues: “People don’t have to leave York to find jobs and we are now trying to fill that gap in opportunities within the region.
“There are some great people that we’ll have in once we get started who are trying to help us support graduates including Blink Media – they will be helping graduates we take in to nurture their skills in multimedia and the arts.”
As project leader Ben explains that while there were some stressful points leading up to the gallery’s opening, his passion and the level of support he has recieved from the local community has kept him inspired throughout the process. “It’s not been easy to set-up, because it’s all well and good having creativity but you need to have business experience as well.” He adds: “The creative people of York are so dedicated to the arts and that’s inspiring.”
Continuing the positive discussion, Ben reflects on the future and how he’d like Bar Lane Studios to develop. He says: “I want to create something that will help local people in the creative sector get noticed whatever 
their chosen profession – in the future we will be expanding into other forms of media depending on what’s required s0, if anyone’s got any ideas on how we can move forward, get in touch.”
The space is one of the largest arts-orientated ones in Yorkshire with 22 studios for artists, a print worksop, an Apple Mac suite, the gallery (to showcase work by both local and national artists) and a cafe too! There will also be various courses, workshops, networking events and seminars which will be open to the community – Pulse York have already signed on to teach both beginner and advanced workshops (with a special digital youth class on Saturday mornings for 13 to 17-year-olds) in using Mac software for photo-editing and drawing.
Other artistic support will be offered in the form of workshops and courses in screen printing, relief printing and etching – there will also be an afternoon print workshop in July held by local artist Piers Browne. The print room will be open to monthly and annual subscriptions for artists wishing to take advantage of the facilities.
Courses and workshops from life drawing, painting for beginners (and an advanced painting course to be held by one of the country’s up-and-coming painters Nathan Walsh), to photography and jewellery design will be held throughout the year with costs ranging from £7.50 to £11 per session.
Each space is available for hire on a monthly basis (the idea is that artists can come and use the facilities for the period and then stay on if they like). There are five individual studios ranging from 100 sq ft to 215 sq ft available, alongside 10 partitioned “hot space” studios. Ben comments: “The way it will work is that an artist can pay £10 to store their work in our gallery for one month and then, if they sell it, they can pay another £10 admin fee – the emphasis is on supporting local artists to get their work exposed to a wide audience.
For the artists in residence, Bar Lane will act as a “home away from home” and they will have access to washroom and kitchen facilities. Ben emphasises how important it is for everyone to get the most out of the space: “The people that come into the studios can start off in one of the smaller ‘hot spaces’ and then there’s room for them to progress into one of the individual ones as they develop,” he says. “We want people to feel comfortable here so that they can thrive in a professional environment.”
For more information you can now find Bar Lane Studios on Twitter and Facebook.
See you on the 25th when the gallery will be showcasing original Matisse lithographs from 1954! We will also be launching the arts cafe and opening up the studio space to introduce our new residents. It’s going to be fantastic! Following that there’s going to be a summer open exhibition (see the poster above and a full resolution version click here), that will focus exclusively on local artists.
Kind regards and keep in touch.
