How Can I Stay? (I don’t want to not want to stay) aimed to support creative people in the South West who operate in rural contexts and face barriers due to a lack of cultural and public infrastructure, access needs, isolation and injustice.

How Can I Stay? is devised in response to our research with members of the VASW Steering Group: Erika Cann, Laura Hopes, Amanda Lynch, Rocca Holly-Nambi, Georgia Newman and Melanie Stidolph; and supported by VASW.

The project was supported with funding from Postcode Local Trust.

The programme which benefited over 700 people ran between June - November 2024 and included:

Online Seminars
Two online seminars exploring critical issues faced by those operating rurally:

• ISLANDNESS convened by Dr Laura Hopes and Georgia Newman explored the idea of islands and their social, cultural and geographical place in time. Case studies of arts organisations working on and between islands were presented to celebrate the cultural distinctiveness of these creative communities.
• Rurality and Inclusion convened by Amanda Lynch and Melanie Stidolph explor­ed rur­al gallery spaces from a dis­abled, chron­i­cal­ly ill and neu­ro­di­verse per­spec­tive; and how to to acti­vate pos­i­tive change. In the seminar case studies were shared giving alternatives to using gallery spaces and challenging public perceptions.

You can watch BSL signed and captioned recordings of the seminars (see below).

In person gathering events
Four ‘gathering events’ hosted by creative practitioners in their local area. Three of the events were selected through an open call process and one additional event was developed during the project through a new partnership with Creative Kernow.

• Flamm x VASW: Remote Working - Held in Bodmin, Cornwall and convened by Creative Kernow. A one-day event of pan­el dis­cus­sions and break­out activ­i­ties explor­ing the real­i­ties of work­ing as a cre­ative prac­ti­tion­er in rur­al places. Lead by artists from different career stages, creative producers, and community organisers shared challenges faced by rural creative practitioners and discussed innovative ways of working that result from our rurality.
• Rural Facets - Held in The New Forest, Online & in Chard, Somerset and convened by the artist Laura Eldret and More Than Ponies. A trio of artist gath­er­ings explor­ing rural­i­ties and artist prac­tices. Rural Facets forged new connections by creating a forum of support and celebrating contemporary rural relevancies, criticality and artistic practice. Alongside the gatherings a Rural Facets poster edition was created and distributed – mapping creative ruralities, as an act of advocacy for rural practice and provision, a raising of artist voices that often are isolated.
• How Can I Stay? Setting Up Freedoms - Held in Portland, Dorset and convened by the artist Erica Cann and Curator Alix Emery in partnership with bside festival. A day-long residency for creatives exploring how we can come together to increase creative freedoms? How can the temporary be a powerful tool for making creative connections across regional/global networks? Through a series of workshops creatives were invited to explore ways of making connections, ideas, art and new forms of liberation. The event began with a picnic lunch, followed by talks and activities to creatively problem solve and discuss barriers in the creative sector’s infrastructure.
• Studio KIND. x VASW: Connection, Community, Hope - Held in Barnstaple, Devon and convened by the artist Ruth Bateman in partnership with Studio KIND. This one-day event brought creatives together to share their thoughts, feelings, and hopes for a connected, nurturing community; asking 'how can we foster hope through connectivity?' The day included a number of discussions, workshops and mind-mapping exercises to think about ways we can support one another, be part of the conversation, share skills and resources, and create meaningful collaborative relationships.

You can read a series of commissioned reflective texts about each event (see below).

Commissioned Editorial
Commissioned Practice In Place features by creatives based in rural contexts (see links to features below). Practice In Place is an ongoing series of conversations with artists in the region. The series profiles artists with different lived experiences and varied approaches, to learn more about ‘how’ artists are artists in the places they live and work.

The visual arts sector is still in the process of managing the far-reaching impact of COVID-19, but we have already seen how the immediate economic effects of the pandemic have amplified prevailing structures of inequality and unsustainable working conditions. Alongside small organisations, freelancers and young people; Global Ethnic Majority, disabled and neurodivergent artworkers have been disproportionately affected. Due to embedded working practices that rely on precarious employment and low pay, the visual arts has a history of systematically favouring those with a higher socioeconomic status in accessing opportunities. At the same time, established organisations still need to address wider institutional policies and practices that allow the continuation of unfair treatment.

In 2021, Visual Arts South West invited artworkers in South West England to develop new best practice guidelines for our professional community. To address long-standing concerns, four Artworker Advisory Groups collectively developed new recommendations for best practice to increase equal access to the visual arts, and to foster more inclusive, fair and hospitable working cultures. The groups focused on experiences of Global Ethnic Majority, disabled and neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and young artworkers.

The Best Practice recommendations are a supportive framework for us as a region to bring tangible, long-term change to our sector by making our organisations’ governance, employment conditions, programming practices and professional development opportunities more inclusive, accessible and hospitable.

The recommendations cover:

• Organisational cultures
• Employment and pay
• Programming
• Professional development
• Application processes
• Developing connections

In collaboration with CVAN, The Reset series was a selection of webinars exploring the effects of COVID-19 and how the visual arts sector can safely recover from it, including presentations by Sarah Munro and Sally Shaw, Matthew Burrows, and Rachel Dobbs and Glen Stoker. Listen back a selection of the series below.

On 20th September 2019, we invited artists, curators, arts organisations and audiences to gather for a day of discussions and learning. This event (titled 'Future Proof') had the goal of identifying and addressing key challenges of our region while establishing collective survival strategies for the future in perpetually changing conditions.