On 3rd July 2023 a seminar was hosted at Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, entitled Co-making Futures: How Do Universities and Cultural Organisations Create Equitable Cities? The event was organised by ArtSpaceCity, a research group based in the Centre for Postdigital Cultures at Coventry University, a group which hosts “projects that explore how publicly funded cultural institutions can contribute to the making of more democratic cities”.

The event took place in the context of the development of the former IKEA building as the so-called City Centre Cultural Gateway, in which Coventry University will “create a cultural hub” across two floors of the building, as part of which “the university’s state-of-the-art facilities will be open for public use” [Professor John Latham, Coventry University Vice-Chancellor]; and also in the context of the more recent announcement of the launch of Coventry Culture Works, a new partnership between University of Warwick, Coventry University and Coventry City Council, formed to oversee the delivery of the city’s ten-year cultural strategy.

The seminar featured contributions from six invited UK and international speakers, as the basis for a roundtable discussion directed towards Coventry’s future, with an emphasis on “small-scale, individual ways of working together, unlocking our own assets, and collaborating to make the best of our shared resources, given austerity and cuts in funding regimes.”

Preston

The first presentation comes from Julian Manley (University of Central Lancashire), entitled “The Preston Model: Growth without Growth”. The “Preston Model”, as it has been dubbed, is an economic development model centred in an ethos of “community wealth-building”. Manley details how, in the wake of the abandonment of the £700m Tithebarn regeneration project in 2011, Preston City Council commissioned a research report, “What is the potential for developing co-operation in Preston?” (drawing significantly from the example of Mondragon in the Basque Country), resulting in 8 key recommendations to be taken forward.

Manley describes how the central role of anchor institutions (large-scale businesses or employers operating locally) has been key to the success of the model, with these institutions buying into a progressive procurement model, in which organisations are encouraged to consider the wider values of procurement and how it can benefit local communities. In the context of the claims of major economic and social benefits of the UK City of Culture title for Coventry (West Midlands Mayor Andy Street claimed in 2020 that economic benefits were “likely to amount to £350 million in terms of direct economic impact”), this agenda of shared benefit feels particularly relevant to us in Coventry. There are currently 37 councils in the UK working towards similar co-operative models, says Manley, so there is a wealth of experience we can draw from.

Athens

Next up is curator Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, co-founder of Athens Biennale (which she co-directed from 2005-2016) and founding member of the Athens-based Laboratory for the Urban Commons. Xenia picks through some of the artistic projects she has facilitated across various curatorial platforms, and talks about some of the challenges presented in the Athens Biennale in responding to the fallout of the global financial crisis of 2008, which catalysed years of acute economic crisis in Greece. With the first edition of the Bienniale taking place in 2007, the subsequent editions explicitly sought to find responses to the economic crisis, the third edition entitled “Agora” (“What now?”). Honestly I struggled to follow the threads of the presentation as Kalpaktsoglou jumps between works, I feel I need more information to glean anything meaningful about the individual artworks. What I do pick up about Kalpaktsoglou’s ethos working with artists and institutions is later at the pub, as she shares the thought: “you mustn’t wait for permission, just do it – just do it otherwise nothing will ever change”.

BRISTOL

Bringing the first panel to a close is Simon Moreton, Associate Professor of Creative Economies at the University of West of England, where he leads the Creative Economies Lab. Moreton’s presentation begins with an overview of Bristol’s Pervasive Media Studio, an initiative launched in 2008, and run by multi-arts centre Watershed with support from Bristol’s two universities. Pervasive Media Studio houses 100 independent artists, creative companies, technologists and academics in an open-plan studio at Watershed, as well as supporting creative projects through commissions and resident fellowships. Moreton says the initiative operates through a core principle of “clustering together of people from different backgrounds and types of knowledge… underpinned by a concept of creative ecologies”.

Moreton goes on to outline three projects all involving the support of multiple partners in the South West: REACT, a four-year development project funded by Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and involving Watershed and five universities in the region (across the cities of Bristol, Bath, Exeter and Cardiff), which was designed to connect researchers with creative businesses; Creative Producers International, a global talent development programme led by Watershed, “exploring what creative producers from one locale can export and adapt to other cities internationally”; and Bristol and Bath R&D, a suite of support to businesses, artists and creative thinkers in the region, providing funding to experiment with new and emerging technologies (again funded by the AHRC).

Without wishing to criticise some of University of Warwick and Coventry University’s own existing initiatives (Coventry University’s Fab Lab is one commendable example on a smaller scale), Pervasive Media Studio and some of the other schemes outlined above demonstrate a vision for local and regional creative ecologies which we are perhaps not seeing in Coventry, even if the launch of Coventry Culture Works potentially indicates a move in the right direction. It’s also pleasing to see that schemes outlined by Moreton all make use of academic funding sources to serve wider creative ecologies beyond the universities. We have seen some recent examples in Coventry where the local universities and the city centre Business Improvement District have drawn down on Arts Council England funds to deliver Coventry Creates and The Show Windows projects, and it should be pointed out that this only serves to increase competition for the limited funds that are available to individual artists and small arts organisations.

MONTEVIDEO

In the next session Ana Laura López de la Torre talks to us from Uruguay, where she runs an atelier from within the department of Fine Art at the University of the Republic of Uruguay (Montevideo). The atelier, as López de la Torre describes it, operates through the radical framework of “extension”*, characterised by non-hierarchical teacher-student relations, “where everybody can learn and teach”. She gives us an outline of Art, Neighbourhood and Social Action, a workshop-based course run across two semesters in a collaborative neighbourhood context, where the classroom is set up in community-run and public spaces in the neighbourhood of Pueblo Victoria. The ethos of the course encompasses the key ideas of self-organisation and collaboration (mutual aid); the building of long-term relationships; negotiation of local needs or demands; and the skirting of legal frameworks, tech roles or bureaucracy (“it’s better to say sorry than to ask for permission”). Students on the course may be university-enrolled students, or residents of the neighbourhood – often artists or activists.

What is interesting here perhaps is that López de la Torre’s particular model of socially-engaged art practice here seems to avoid some of the discourse which often accompanies “placemaking” projects. This is not about art as a tool for regeneration, as Coventry Councillor Jim O’Boyle once brazenly put it in the lead-up to UK City of Culture, but rather the ethos is that of “usefulness”.

* “extensión” – the term doesn’t translate to an equivalent term in the English language.

Middlesborough

The last presentation of the day comes from Paul Alexander Stuart, researcher and curator in critical practice and social engagement. By way of introduction, Stuart talks about the MA Curating apprenticeship at Teesside University’s School of Art, hosted at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA). The scheme, a combined Masters degree and higher degree apprenticeship (HDA) for staff at galleries, museums and other arts or creative organisations, offers fully-funded places for students backed by their employers in the cultural sector. Although this is not the focal point of Stuart’s presentation, it feels worth detaining for a moment to ask the question: can we imagine similar training opportunities for cultural sector workers as part of the vision for Coventry’s arts ecology?

Stuart’s presentation attempts to reflect on the question, “how can intersections between universities, public and cultural organisations create equitable cities?” by reference to a number of projects at MIMA and beyond. Addressing the question of equitability, he points to The Silent University project, initially started in 2012 in collaboration with the Delfina Foundation and Tate. The Silent University is “a solidarity based knowledge exchange platform by displaced people and forced migrants”, in essence an education platform led by researchers, teachers and others, who are unable to use their work or academic skills due to a variety of reasons connected to their migration status in the UK. The project proposes alternative currencies and voluntary services to circumnavigate restrictions imposed by the asylum system. There are some resonances here with Ana Laura López de la Torre’s concept of “extension”, refusing hierarchical educational structures in favour of transversal ones. And whilst undoubtedly Tate benefits its image by sponsoring this kind of project, it is commendable that the institution committed to ongoing support (hosting a temporary resource area, events and a website), in ways that don’t undermine the non-hierarchical relations of the project.

And how about Coventry?

The seminar presentations lead into a brief round-table discussion, in which we are asked to address a series of questions, including: What supportive networks and environments can be created between universities, cultural organisations and publics? Who outside of the university can/can’t access resources, and how can the (Coventry) university share resources? What is the role of academics between the artist-cultural ecology of Coventry and the wider infrastructure in the city? And finally, what is needed to build trust between Coventry’s arts ecology and the university, and what is actionable in relation to the ex-IKEA building?

The roundtable discussion was frustratingly cut short for lack of time, though it should be said that a lot had been fitted into a half-day session. Perhaps the roundtable would have warranted a half-day to itself. That said, I left the event feeling encouraged that the questions posed to us by the ArtSpaceCity group overlap considerably with some of what we’ve been discussing within the F13 network over recent weeks. It’s easy to see the universities as monolithic and inaccessible – undoubtedly there is truth in this, as testified by the ongoing strikes of university staff across the UK – but there are individuals and pockets of actors within the university who genuinely care about being useful to their wider communities. I come away with the sense that of course there is a lot of work to be done, but we do have examples of more equitable relationships between institutions and their wider communities being formed: sometimes on small scales, sometimes as in the case of the Preston Model on a city-wide scale. What is clear is that it won’t just happen to us, we need to come up with the ideas and make the argument persuasive.

Duncan Whitley is a contemporary artist, working with moving-image production and spatial sound. He is part of the F13 ‘Five Years On’ working party.