Artists vs.vacant retail space 

The high street is in precipitous decline. The long fall in sales created by the growth of online shopping has been been accelerated by the recession. Can art play a part in halting the decline?

For those dependent on the high street for employment, these are hard times. The last few months have been devastating for the city and town centres. Figures from Experian suggest that one in six shops in the UK will be empty by the end of 2009. 

But to some the empty shops represent new opportunities. Taking advantage of the vacant spaces, artists are moving into town and city centres, creating what is potentially a new self-organised model of urban renewal. 

A few weeks ago in New York artists Athena Robles and Anna Stein moved into a shop on Nassau Street in Manhattan's Financial District to create an active installation called the Free Store. The name is a clue; everything in the shop is free. It's a living memorial to a moment of hippie idealism. Back in 1967 a collective of self-styled Diggers opened a similar Free Store on Manhattan's Lower East Side. 

That visitors are encouraged both to bring items and to take them away without money changing hands may be a not-so-subtle dig at the over-inflated values of the financial district surrounding it, but it's also a reminder of the practicalities of barter. 

“Alternative and generous systems such as bartering have long been used in times of financial hardship,” say artists Robles and Stein. “Artists, in particular, are familiar with having to be creative to make ends meet and have functioned on generous systems, especially artist-to-artist. Free Store aims to broaden this circle of trust and exchange by including the general public.”

Here in the UK, artists have been surreptitiously moving into empty shops too. In Durham, Carlo Viglianisi and Nick Malyan - an artist and an art fan with an MA in Cities, Culture and Regeneration - have formed a Community Interest Company to reopen a premises at 94c Gilesgate. Their premises Empty Shop now acts as a gallery and a free-use space: "The idea," Viglianisi recently told his local paper, "is to provide very accessible art space for artists, community groups and interested parties as well as running of exhibitions and events ourselves."

Empty Shop is being used for exhibitions and shows, and Viglianisi and Malyan are planning to use it as drop-in learning centre for art classes and digital skills training.

Meanwhile in Brent, a new not-for-profit organisation Wastedspace.org launched earlier this year, seeing new opportunities behind the empty windows. Their mission statement declares:

"Vacant shop fronts and commercial windows become a platform for young and emerging artists to showcase their work. By making use of discarded space, art is presented and appreciated by an entirely new public who would not normally experience works of this kind, and the traditional barriers between art and the audience begin to be broken."

Frederike Janssen, spokesperson for Wasted Space, says they are working on a show at a former shop in Wembley which will open in early summer 2009.  

Up until mid-2008 getting hold of a short lease on an empty property was not easy. But the collapse in commercial property values has changed all that. While artists are using the collapse in the high street as an opportunity to inhabit new spaces, local authorities and estate agents have other motives for wanting artists to move into the disused properties. 

Dan Thompson is part of the Worthing-based Revolutionary Arts Group who have been using vacant properties in this way for eight years. He's noticed a change in the last 12 months, since the credit crunch took hold. "It's become more obvious as we're hitting a real recession that there are more people around the country doing the same thing. We were stumbling across more and more groups all over the UK -from tiny villages to big inner city shopping centres."

Thompson and his colleages in Revolutionary Arts Group are collecting information on similar artist initiatives throughout the UK to create a central knowledge-base, so that local authorities, shopping-centre managers, estate agents and property-owners can gain confidence about letting artists use their properties on short leases. "We're trying to join the dots and put as many people in touch with each other as possible," says Thompson.

He identifies several reasons why artists, authorities and the property industry should consider collaborating:

• In the boom, as property values rose, owners were profiting on their investments even when they were empty, waiting the long-lease client. Now, with the collapse in the retail sector, values have plummeted. "Now they're facing a loss on their balance sheets because they've still got to pay the business rates but the value of their property is declining," says Thompson. "So they're keen now to get people in on short leases - at least to cover the business rate."
• If you're a not-for-profit company or a Community Interest Company, you are able to obtain relief from rates, so arts companies can survive in a space that currently no longer viable for a conventional retail company.
• With little hope of being able to rent out the properties again in the near future, landlords generally prefer to have some sort of tenant to maintain the property. Even artists. "Artists are pretty good with a paintbrush, they'll give it a lick of paint before they leave," says Thompson.
• Artists' initiatives in the high street act as business incubators. "In the best case scenario we've seen artists who start with running exhibitions in empty shops and after a few tries think, 'I'm going to do this commerically, now. This is my business'."
• Culturally, audiences who would never enter a white cube gallery find it much easier to visit a local shop they're already familiar with.  
• And finally - and most importantly - these initiatives can be a driver for regeneration. "Town centre managers and shopping centre managers are really keen on this. The only way you will make shopping centres and high streets succeed now is if you make them distinct and unique, make them have something that nobody else has. And of course the arts are fantastic for that." Data from Worthing suggests that a single artist-led project reopening a vacant shop, can measurably increase footfall in a town centre.

Interestingly, local authorities are already figuring out the benefits. Three weeks ago arts development officer for Thanet District council, Heather Sawney, launched the innovative Windows of Opportunity scheme in Margate, helping artists colonise empty properties in their local 1970s shopping centre. Thanet's council are not alone; the local council in the Gloucestershire town of Dursley have been running a similar scheme for a year now.

"Rather than letting lots of pound shops appear, we are encouraging people to start up businesses," Margate artist Emily Firmin told The Guardian. "We know recessions are awful but can be a good time for artists as creative ideas start appearing while otherwise redundant people are sitting at home fiddling and doing creative stuff."

Article by William Shaw. First posted Mar 17 09.

Photos of the Free Store, Nassau St, NY, by Robles and Stein 2009, taken by Dave Pinter for PSFK. Used with permission.

If you know of any similar initiatives, let us know via the comment form below, or by sending an email.