Grafters Collective: end-of-residency exhibition and open studios at Billet Road

From October 2025 to April 2026, Grafters Collective have been in residence at Acme’s Billet Road Studios.

Founded by artist Jennifer Jones in 2024, Grafters Collective is a network of artists from working-class backgrounds. During their residency, the collective used the space as a site for conversation, skill-sharing, workshops, artist visits, and collective working, exploring what it means to sustain an artistic practice within the realities of contemporary working-class life.

Their final exhibition, Time, Well Spent, presented an archive of the residency itself - foregrounding process, exchange, and community-building as outcomes in their own right.

These images document the exhibition alongside excerpts from the collective’s reflections on the residency, where they consider the value of shared space, peer support, and the challenges of balancing creative practice with work, care, and financial pressures.

Thank you to Grafters Collective for their generosity, insight, and contribution to Billet Road over the past six months!