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WALTHAMSTOW: Anger at eviction of artists from studios

12:06pm Wednesday 28th April 2010 in Waltham Forest News By Carl Brown

WALTHAMSTOW: Anger at eviction of artists from studios WALTHAMSTOW: Anger at eviction of artists from studios

A GROUP of 16 artists will be evicted from a gallery in a shock move that will leave the borough without any council-run exhibition space.

The Changing Room Gallery, in Lloyd Park, Forest Road, Walthamstow, is being extensively refurbished as part of the multi-million pound redevelopment of the park funded by lottery cash.

The refurbishment will begin this summer but the Changing Room Studios Association (CRSA) believed it would not have to vacate the studios, adjacent to the main gallery, during the work.

They have now been told that their tenancies will only be renewed for six months, instead of a year, and by the end of September they will have to move out.

CRSA also says it has been told for the first time that the running of the gallery and studios will transfer to Waltham Forest College after the Lloyd Park redevelopment.

David Sullivan, a prize-winning painter and former student of the Royal College of Art, is a member of the CRSA and is angry at the council’s move, saying the artists were stakeholders, contributing to the development plans for the park and new gallery.

He said: “At no time was there any suggestion that we would have to vacate the studios for the duration of the build, nor that our tenancies would cease.

“This is also the first official communication to us regarding Waltham Forest College’s future involvement with the new hub complex, despite previous attempts at clarification.”

Mr Sullivan said the council has put artists “bottom of their list of priorities.”

He added: “As one of just five Olympic boroughs, the council should be investing in and celebrating the thriving arts and creative scene here in East London but instead they’re evicting 16 professional, local artists from one of the few studio spaces in the borough.”

Alke Schmidt shares a studio with fellow artist Zarah Hussain.

The 45-year-old, whose paintings depict political issues including climate change and the global recession, said: “This has come as a complete surprise, we are still hoping there will be some kind of agreement and we won’t be evicted.

“There is a scarcity of exhibition space in the borough as it is.”

A council spokesman admitted the decision to evict the artists was a ‘recent one.’

He said: “Unfortunately it is not safe for the artists to remain in the studios while extensive rebuilding and renovation work takes place nearby.”

Comments(19)

April Showers says...
1:56pm Wed 28 Apr 10

Whatever the underlying rights and wrongs of this issue might be (which I am sure are complex) it seems that, once again, the council has gone in in hobnailed boots in its usual crass manner and upset everyone unnecessarily. One might have thought that lessons had been learned from the William Morris Gallery/Vestry House Museum PR fiasco but apparently not. Only a few weeks ago we saw the dispiriting pictures of the vandalised interior of the former Waltham Forest Theatre and now this. Elected members may well pay the price for this but the officer class also have something to answer for. Will heads roll? Will anyone fall on their sword? A few disciplinary hearings or even dismissals might work wonders 'pour encourager les autres'!

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KWyatt-Lown says...
1:59pm Wed 28 Apr 10

Surely this move can’t be unexpected. This is Waltham Forest you’re working in. Managed by the most philistine bunch of individuals any creative community could be expected to contend with. At The Changing Rooms you’ve been living cheek by jowl next to the Lloyd Park Theatre site and so you cannot have been oblivious to the wanton neglect and lack of investment that helped seal the fate of the Borough’s one theatre space.

Just like the theatre, you now occupy development space at the hub of the grandiose plans for the Council’s (or their consultants) brave new future for Lloyd Park and creative endeavour has no place in that vision.

It’s worth noting that today the UK's creative industries make up 8% of GVA; greater than any other country.

In London alone they already generate over £21 billion each year and employ over half a million people. And if they sustain their current rate of growth they'll be bigger than the financial services industry by the time we host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012.Creative industries not only contribute towards the economy directly, they also have a powerful, indirect impact on the rest of the economy - by adding style, aesthetics and freshness to differentiate our products and services.

The creative industries also improves our quality of life and make the community more vibrant by stimulating awareness and demand for the arts, design and media products and services.

And the London Borough of Waltham Forest still haven’t got the message.

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md-j says...
2:58pm Wed 28 Apr 10

As one of the users of the Studios, I suspect that this out-of-the-blue decision, after two years of attending progress meetings which made no mention of it, may be related to a perceived lack of enthusiasm for the Lottery bid from people who actually use the park regularly.
Given the flaws in the scheme, this is hardly surprising. One meeting I attended flagged up a gigantic tender price for the outdoor drama platform, which on inspection was found to have been drawn the size of a bowling green ie, the largest stage in the country!Some design consultant couldn't read a ruler.
The whole scheme has been top-down from the outset, despite a large exercise in window-dressing: one bowling club - that's real, everyday users of the park- found themselves deleted from the scheme entirely at the outset, and were then shifted 200yds to the skateboard space, which itself has then to be shifted 50 yds, a massive concrete weight sunk in the boggiest part of the park. Only then did a ground survey find an enormous pipe just under the surface at this point. A new footpath was drawn on the plan, to cross ground which LBWF had just leased out for 99 years to the Lloyd Park Childrens' centre. The destruction of 100+ mature trees will erase the large blackbird colony from the park. A genuine Edwardian garden behind the WM Gallery will be replaced by an ersatz Victorian one-the kind of thing Morris founded the SPAB to oppose. This will need higher maintenance at a time when park keepers are being reduced. The Changing Room Gallery will be demolished, and rebuilt a few feet away. Not all the scheme is bad-the education space is a real gain- but a lot of the money is spent on mere reshuffling of existing amenities, some of which just lacked the steady maintenance they should have had. The huge expanse of Aveling Park will still be without rain shelter, or indeed loos on a long summer's evening when the cafe is closed.
My biggest fear is that the coming period of inflation will make the budget - fixed on two or three years ago - look stupid, and that the project will run out of money once the existing amenities have been destroyed but not yet replaced.
I hope I'm wrong.

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Techno2 says...
3:06pm Wed 28 Apr 10

Oh dear.

Still, the council has arranged the local economy so that a large number of our retail shops in the borough have been left empty, so maybe our vibrant artistic community can find alternative studio space in the High Street area

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Stow Cat says...
3:28pm Wed 28 Apr 10

The council has cynically failed to mention that the artists would be turfed out until after the lottery money was won. The loss of the vibrant artists' studios in their current form would be awful and I don't believe that it's appropriate for the college to run them.
Is it worth complaining to the lottery people? And what are Friends of Lloyd Park doing about the situation?

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April Showers says...
3:47pm Wed 28 Apr 10

I'm afraid this situation is all-too common, Stow Cat. 'Creatives' help to sustain a rundown area until such time as they have served their purpose of creating an 'urban buzz' and then the 'corporates' (public and private sector) move in and they are unceremoniously booted out. Following this, areas may well be left physically regenerated, but as a purely cosmetic exercise, and tend to look and feel soulless, sterile and bland. I hope this doesn't happen in Lloyd/Aveling Park but I fear the worst.

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Silent Majority 2009 says...
6:43pm Wed 28 Apr 10

For 5 years all the stakeholders in Lloyd Park, except the artists, have engaged with the council to plan the refurbishment of the park. Despite being invited on numerous occasions to join the project the artists have hidden away in their bunker and convinced themselves it had nothing to do with them. Despite all the problems created by this council if you really make an effort you can engage with the process and better understand why particular decisions are made.
True it has only recently become clear that the contractors will need the whole hub site cleared for Health and Safety reasons which is why the artists have been given a short lease. It is also true Waltham Forest College will take over running the new hub buildings in 2012, so why are the artists not getting in to a dialogue with their new landlord and finding out whether they will be able to return to the studios once the work is completed?

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Redfox says...
9:58pm Wed 28 Apr 10

Wouldn't you want to leave this site considering the disgusting unkempt, irresponsible and downright anti-social grafitti daubed on the exterior?
It's high time the council AND the Friends' of Lloyd Park utterly condemned it and bring to bear the full weight of the Law upon anybody who transgresses strict conditions of keeping the newbuild property clean and respectful.
If they don't, then the park doesn't deserve to have be awarded the grant.
Considering that the Friends' haven't even raised a simple wimper about the park plan culling over 100 mature trees within the site, there's not much chance they will exercise any conscience about the grafitti issue. Let them consider that history will record who was responsible - think on.

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md-j says...
10:06pm Wed 28 Apr 10

Silent Majority,
Artists have attended their share of these meetings, but it's difficult to get involved in something so intrinsically flawed. You speak as if it's the duty of the peasantry to pay tribute to the wisdom of their betters, but there's been very little wisdom on display. If it's only 'recently become clear' that the site must be emptied, that's all in character with a project that has proceeded from error to error, as I outlined above, as though no guiding intelligence had been asking the right questions from the outset. We had to point out that the proposed window layout in the new gallery would have made hanging a coherent exhibition impossible; we had to point out that removing the cafe alsoremoved the studio toilets, then point out that there was now space in the redundant corridor to fit new ones, and no need to remove a studio, as was proposed.
At every stage the so-called experts have had to be pointed out the bleedin' obvious by lay people: that's not consultation, it's more like having to teach fish to swim, and very highly paid fish at that.
I notice you haven't contradicted any of the points I made above.

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md-j says...
10:11pm Wed 28 Apr 10

redfox,
you may not realise that half the graffiti on the building were authorised by the Council, who were then amazed that freelancers got the idea that painting on walls was an OK thing to do, and carried on the 'good work'. I once saw a Community Payback team pressure-washing off the graffiti, then being baffled at having to stop halfway!

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JonnySpeed says...
10:59pm Wed 28 Apr 10

16 artists + professional people - doing this as their job. Buy a warehouse or rent some other space. Stop crying and do what every other professional does - or stop playing at art and get a proper job like everybody else. I am sick of creativity being given the excuse that it doesn't need to be self-funding. I love cycling - i'd love someone to pay me to go cycling every day. They don't so I go to work. This is the same. Art and design has a lot of value - so it needs to have commercial elements. Look at Ideo and see what can be done if you stop thinking of art and design as purely a social concern.

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Silent Majority 2009 says...
10:07am Thu 29 Apr 10

md-j
You are right that the council has made errors which is why it is important as many people as possible engage in the process. The culture of this council is "we know best" - they don't so if this Borough is to be improved they must listen to the residents, but equally the residents need to engage with the council. Of the 250,000 people inthe Borough how many have bothered to find out what the plans are for the refurbishment of the park!

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md-j says...
7:26pm Thu 29 Apr 10

'Of the 250,000 people inthe Borough how many have bothered to find out what the plans are for the refurbishment of the park!'

sadly, Silent Majority, many who have don't like what they see:and despite the many public
'consultation' events, very little has changed from the original plan in response. Serious, well-argued criticisms were brushed aside. The designers came in as if they had a blank sheet of paper, and knew all the answers in advance. I suppose if they respected the wisdom of crowds, they wouldn't be able to think of themselves as experts! A lot of what's in the park is miscellaneous, the collection of many years: you probably wouldn't put a theatre in a park, or even artists studios, if you had a blank open space. But these are hard-won amenities which have cost local people money and struggle, not lightly to be thrown away. Mr Robbins quite rightly said of the Pool and Track that it would be wrong to remove it without a replacement being ready: so where is the replacement for the Theatre,or Ross Wyld Hall, or St James St Library?
The people I talk to aren't apathetic, but they are certainly distrustful. This is why people are reluctant to engage.

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Walthamster says...
3:38pm Fri 30 Apr 10

MDJ, you are so right. We have seen the same thing many times over the past few years: the council spends a fortune on consultants, who know nothing about the area and care less. Local people put forward relevant ideas but are ignored. Money pours into a bottomless pit, we lose the amenities we already had and, usually, get nothing to replace them.

DON'T VOTE LABOUR OR LIB-DEM IN THE COUNCIL ELECTIONS! They have been running Waltham Forest for the past four years as a coalition, so they share the blame.

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April Showers says...
5:51pm Fri 30 Apr 10

While it's true, Walthamster, that the 'sitting tenants' at the Town hall can hardly campaign on their record, there are new candidates (I refer to those standing on a party ticket) some of whom seem to represent a refreshing change of attitude. That is why I don't write off the parties entirely. But there are also the independent candidates, amongst whose number (unless I miss my mark) I think we can count our fellow poster, md-j. Recent Lib/Lab administrations certainly do not seem to have grasped the concept of consultation in any meaningful sense, but rather pay lip-service to it by presenting a limited range of options, with limited scope for manoeuvre, to a limited group of hand-picked consultees (whose input is largely ignored) - and almost always with too tight a deadline. One is left wondering if there is much point to it all beyond tokenism and as a box ticking exercise.

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md-j says...
6:42pm Fri 30 Apr 10

Well spotted, April showers, and no secret: it's just this kind of make-believe consultation that angered me enough to get involved in the public arena.
Did you know, for example, that when a few years ago the Council had a huge voting exercise over which design we wanted for the new Central Library (pause for hollow laughter), they were already discussing detailed design for the one they'd already chosen? I learned this from a friend who was involved professionally, who couldn't tell me at the time.
Not consultation at all, but a costly fraud.
We have to change the culture whereby publicly-salaried officials -much more than the Councillors- think that they can lie in our faces and carry on with impunity.

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rubberneck says...
5:55pm Mon 3 May 10

Quite right too. Why should the taxpayers fund these squatters who produce all this garbage in the name of ****?

Since Frank Muir this Council has not produced hardly anyone famous and it is about time they did. We have Frank and Alfred Hitchcock.

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md-j says...
7:23pm Mon 3 May 10

Has an old friend returned, Mr Claridger?

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Seeing Sense says...
8:35am Tue 4 May 10

So these people are having to move out while building works take place - don't quite see how this is a 'story', seems like common sense to me!

Also, I can't help but agree with 'JonnySpeed' above - why do these people expect the taxpayer to subsidise what's effectively their hobby?

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