Paris research trip

59 Rivoli – an art gallery and former squat in Paris, subsequently legalised by the city in 2006. 

I’m so, so, so excited to have been awarded funding from Future Screens NI to continue my research into live/work spaces…. this time in Paris! Staying at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, I will spend a few weeks visiting a series of artist-led spaces and meeting artists. (I often write applications for artists to go on research trips, but have somehow never really applied for these things myself. I’ve also somehow never been to Paris before?!?!? So will make the most of my trip and visit a range of galleries, museums… and boulangeries).

The focus for my trip is three-fold:

• artist collectives, and the spaces that they have created for collective action, promoting active citizenship, catalysing urban transformation and cultivating new sets of values
• artists’ squats, which subsequently being formalised and now occupy a space between live/work and cultural institutions, referred to as ‘intermediary venues’ which attach great importance to the development of local projects, paying particular attention to public involvement in their artistic programmes (read more, in French, here)
• organisations who have transcended legislative limitations around the development of ‘brownfield’ sites. Brownfield sites are typically urban land in areas of weak economic growth – such as Belfast – that were once used for industry but now lie redundant. Where infrastructure such as drainage and electricity already exists, they can pose cost-effective and regenerative solutions. As Belfast City Council owns very few buildings but extensive brownfield sites, these offer further possibilities to develop space for artists here. 

My learning from this trip can propose alternative solutions, not only in how these organisations have adapted their sites and spaces, but how they have navigated legislation and to ascertain how it differs between France and Northern Ireland. 

The applications of this learning will not only be inherently adapted into my work with PS2 and other studios that I work with, but I will also produce a document which condenses the key points from each organisation and approach to disseminate more widely with each studio organisation – those who are in the Studio Forum in Belfast, and throughout NI, to enable studio organisations in other local authorities (with differing levels of building or land ownership) to consider what might be possible for them. 

Finally, where there are opportunities for exchange for NI artists in any of these organisations, I will take them. Where I identify artists whose work would resonate with NI audiences, I will invite them. Where there might be opportunities for me to work with these organisations in an independent capacity, I will explore them.

EXCITANT!