By Harrie Dearing. First published on harriedearingart.com.
Bold Raw Untrained Talent: a new habitat for outsider art in Swindon.
For the past few years I’ve been chasing the same thing: a studio space of my own. Not a corner of a spare room, not a borrowed table, a proper space to make work in. I’ve applied, asked, and knocked on doors more times than I can count, and almost every time the answer has come back the same way: funding. Studio space costs money, and the kind of funding that gets outsider artists like me through the door has been thin on the ground. So when an opportunity landed that didn’t just offer me a studio, but let me build something bigger for the whole outsider art community in Swindon, I wasn’t going to let it pass me by.
I’m beyond excited to announce that I am co-founding Studio Brut, a new outsider artist studio in Swindon, alongside fellow outsider artist Steve Light, known to most of you as SLART.
Swindon Culture Collective
This opportunity came from Swindon Culture Collective (SCC), a not-for-profit network supporting Swindon’s arts and cultural sector. SCC grew out of the old Magic Swindon network and now coordinates a wide community of local creatives, cultural organisations, and businesses, all working towards the same goal: making Swindon a town where culture can genuinely thrive. They’re backed by Arts Council England’s Place Partnership programme, with match funding from Swindon Borough Council, and their work spans everything from transforming unloved buildings into creative spaces to building skills pathways for local artists.
SCC approached me about becoming a resident artist in their space at Arclite House, Century Rd, Peatmoor, Swindon SN5 5YN. A building brought into creative use through Hypha Studios, an organisation that finds empty properties and turns them into low-cost studios and creative space for artists, all in partnership with SCC locally. It’s exactly the kind of access point that’s been missing for outsider artists in this town, and I jumped at the chance.
A residency felt like ‘the first piece of the puzzle’. I’ve worked alongside SLART on multiple exhibitions over the years, and every time, the same thought has stuck with me: together, we’re a powerhouse. Our Art often shares a philosophy, yet distinctly holds its own voice & artistic style. We work very well as a team, and have both faced the same obstacles in the local art infrastructure. So I invited SLART to team up once again , and together we asked SCC if we could go further and found something more ambitious in Arclite. That’s how Studio Brut was born, a professional artist studio built specifically for outsider artists, founded in partnership with Swindon Culture Collective and housed at Arclite.
What Studio Brut is about
Studio Brut exists to challenge the Swindon art scene and break down the access barriers that outsider artists face every day. The barriers I’ve been running into myself for years. SLART and I will be resident artists in the space, and we’re building a residency programme to open the doors to other outsider artists across Swindon too.
Alongside the studio space itself, we’ve got a full programme of activity planned to empower the outsider art community here:
- Exhibition opportunities, proper platforms for outsider artists to show their work
- Skill-share laboratories, sessions built around sharing knowledge and technique, artist to artist
- A micro residency programme, opening up studio access to other outsider artists in Swindon
This is just the start. We’re excited to see where it can grow !
Follow along
We’re launching this summer, and there’s a lot still to share between now and then. Follow studiobrut.art on Instagram on Instagram to keep up with everything as it happens, studio progress, event announcements, and details on how to apply for a micro residency once the programme opens up.
If you’re an outsider artist in Swindon and this sounds like something you want to be part of, or you’d just like to know more, get in touch. We’re creating a studio mailing list to keep you in the loop.
This has been a long time coming. Time to shake up the system.