#40 Partner spotlight: Associate Studio Programme
50 opportunities for 50 years
The Associate Studio Programme provides low-cost professional studio space for 25 BA Fine Art graduates of University of the Arts London, for two years, with a self-directed programme of studio visits by artists, curators, writers and peers. The ASP was developed in 2013 as a collaboration between Acme and Double agents, a research project based in the Art Programme at Central Saint Martins.
Double agents was formed in 2002 by Graham Ellard and Anne Tallentire to create and support a ‘two-traffic’ between the art school, its’ students, and the worlds of professional practice.
Acme developed a partnership with Double agents in 2010 which led to an AHRC funded research project focusing on the form, function and future of the Artists’ Studio. The two-year project fed into the activities of both partners – one of the concrete outcomes was the design and provision of ‘transitional’ studio spaces for recent graduates during the crucial first few years after college. For CSM this has been an important part to its continuing research into the role, definition and form of the studio both in college and after graduation.
“The Associate Studio Programme is a space which allows me to grow as an artist by having the freedom to explore my ideas in a suitable studio setting and carry on the practice which I established during my degree. The studio visits and shared working environment with likeminded people help to give me a platform to begin my career.”
Isabel Kang, Associate Studio Programme
“In the ten years since it was created over 100 graduates have participated. For all of them graduating from a BA Fine Art course was an abrupt and disorientating shift. The ASP doesn’t make that shift easy, but it does make it less difficult by providing a studio community of peers with whom to collectively negotiate the challenges of an independent practice. The ASP forms part of CSM’s recognition of the need to play a part in supporting the prospects of Fine Art graduates in the city that attracted them to study there – in the case of London, a city increasingly hostile as an environment in which to find affordable studio space. CSM’s collaboration with Acme made possible something urgently needed, but that neither could have accomplished alone.”
Graham Ellard, Professor of Fine Art, CSM and Director of the ASP.