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Midland Atelier: nurturing the creative capacity of Western Australia
Midland Atelier is one of FORMs biggest projects to date, and as the name Atelier hints, is a studio/workshop facility for artists and designers.
As an organisation FORM has evolved considerably since its name change from Craftwest in 2004, expanding its mandate from a singular focus on Western Australian craft and design to a more longitudinal, big picture focus on creativity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this shift has stirred some confusion within the cultural sector - and others - as to precisely what we do, how we do it and who we do it for.
FORM has four program areas and they all encompass the following in some form: Indigenous and non-Indigenous artistic development, research, cultural and creative advocacy, community engagement and industry development. Within these programs FORM has developed many large projects including Designing Futures, a post-tertiary mentor/cluster program enabling Western Australian designers to enhance their artistic and business skills; The Canning Stock Route Project, which sees FORM working with nine Indigenous art centres and 96 artists from remote desert areas of Western Australia to document and celebrate the history, art and cultures of Indigenous communities surrounding the Canning Stock Route; the Regional Development program, offering projects which define and celebrate the community and cultural identity of the Pilbara via creative workshops, exhibitions and professional development, and Midland Atelier, the topic of this article, which I will describe later.
I am not from Western Australia originally: before I came to work in the sector here, I rarely needed to think about what was affecting and influencing the conditions for creativity and quality cultural output. But in Western Australia things are slightly different. This is a state with an exciting history of creativity and artistic ingenuity. It is too simplistic to say this is all due to its geographic isolation, for the isolation is at once a for and against. Here, such isolation does breed an exploratory, adventurous mind; there is a sense of the maverick, of the unique. Yet even with the heightened connectivity the world enjoys through internet, email, instant messaging, faster airplanes et cetera, physically isolated places like this often retain a symbolic isolation. It is still several hours to fly between Western Australia and the eastern states, let alone internationally, and there is still a vast desert on one side of us and a seemingly ever-stretching ocean on the other. One can practically feel the separateness. So this isolation equation has more than one outcome: the seeds of ingenuity are there but they can be counterbalanced by feelings of isolation which make it hard to keep to the pulse of international ideas, movements, issues and even harder to maintain contemporary creative communities and dialogue.
So when I began working for FORM in Perth I too was confronted with this conundrum; doubly so as a creative professional working for creative practitioners. Thus when FORM took several steps back and assessed the sector with a broader perspective, some of the issues we found included: a lack of local markets and access-awareness to external markets for Western Australian creatives; limited opportunities for ongoing skill development and training; a lack of business and marketing knowledge; a disconnect between quality arts and cultural programming and community take-up/corporate sector investment; a lack of holistic government policy and investment into the sector; and limited connections to networks and opportunities interstate and overseas.
These are issues affecting many components of the cultural/creative sectors here, including craft and design. Essentially, when FORM became what it is today we never ceased representing and advocating for craft and design but extended our remit to tackle the bigger issues on the principle that a more encompassing and holistic approach means more substantial, longer-term change. To treat craft and design as an isolated and insulated entity would be odd; even odder would be to insist on addressing a problem anywhere but at its source. Bigger and better things can be achieved if one can posit craft, design - any creative area really - into a context which highlights its integral role in society and economy overall.
This is where Midland Atelier comes in. Midland Atelier is one of FORM's biggest projects to date, and as the name Atelier hints, is a studio/workshop facility for artists and designers. Multiple facilities in fact: FORM has been developing the Atelier for several years in partnership with the Midland Redevelopment Authority (MRA), and is refurbishing two buildings within the historical-industrial Midland Railway Workshops, on the outskirts of Perth.
The two buildings - the original Foundry and Pattern Store and Shop - are in the process of being renovated to accommodate studio spaces and equipment/facilities needed for a range of creative disciplines: wood and furniture design, glass, metal, jewellery and mixed-media. We anticipate the larger building of the two, the Foundry, to be ready by late 2010. This will also include conference, retail and gallery spaces.
The Pattern Shop has been operational for around a year already, with 10 local and interstate furniture designers working there as the site evolves and transforms around them. FORM has staff moving between its CBD office and the Pattern Shop regularly: to enter the site is something remarkable as one has to essentially walk through a construction site, complete with dozers and graders, men in hardhats and a sea of yellow sand, to get to the Pattern Shop, which is nestled in the heart of the Workshops.
It is literally a work in progress. While the Foundry will eventually be home to the glass, jewellery and metalsmithing studios, FORM is adding several jewellers' benches and equipment to the Pattern Shop in an effort to kick-start the collaborative, cross-disciplinary nature of Midland Atelier. At the end of May the first two jewellers, Bethamy Linton and Jessica Jubb, officially took up residence in the Pattern Shop. They will soon be followed by Helena Bogucki, Carrie McDowell, Alister Yiap and others. While jewellers, they also foray into other creative mediums, including fashion, object design and public art, as do the resident furniture designers who include Jon Goulder, Adam Cruikshank, Tim Whiteman and Malcolm Harris.
We see Midland Atelier as a small step in addressing some of the issues cited earlier. It is a large project, requiring substantial funding. The two buildings comprising the Atelier are large in themselves: The Foundry was originally home to the casting of everything from small parts for a train to entire frames (and during the Second World War, propellers) which gives some indication of its scale.
By building in the equipment and hard infrastructure required for specific creative disciplines, such as hot and cold glass working studios and wood-working machinery, we can begin to overcome one significant obstacle for Western Australian creatives, which is local, easy access to modern, large scale equipment.
By building in the equipment and hard infrastructure required for specific creative disciplines, such as hot and cold glass working studios and wood-working machinery, we can begin to overcome one significant obstacle for Western Australian creatives, which is local, easy access to modern, large scale equipment.
By constructing a business plan around the Atelier as a whole, including blueprints for commercial, architectural, public art and cultural strategy commissioning, alongside a targeted marketing package, we can assist local creatives to shape their practices as their livelihoods - meaning they have greater chance of 'living off' their chosen vocation, rather than having to look for a more financially viable day (or night) job.
These are small but ambitious steps. For FORM the risk of failure is very real - a creative studio enclave of this size and diversity, lead by a not for profit, has its challenges. Yet it is emblematic of FORM's 'big picture' approach. We want ample space and ample opportunities for our creatives, and we think Midland Atelier is one of the best ways of achieving this. We know, from Comparative Capitals, a FORM research project undertaken in 2008 with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, that Perth trains more creative graduates than any other capital city in Australia yet experiences a net loss of this demographic over east or overseas.1 Which would be fine if they were coming back regularly and contributing to the state's 'creative capital' through skills, networks and experiences. But most of them are not. With Midland Atelier we want to rebalance this stay or leave, black or white mentality to make it more elastic. We want our creatives to leave, to experience, to learn, but we want some of that gold dust to return, go back, return in a more cyclic way. So fundamentally we see Midland Atelier as a bridge linking creative people and places, and in a way this is what FORM is too.
Elisha Buttler is a curator, program manager and writer, based at FORM in Perth.
Footnotes
- M. Webster and K. Locke (eds), Comparative Capitals, FORM, Perth, 2008
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