Guild Campaigns and Research

Since the Guild programme began, it has partnered with national and international organisations to investigate and interrogate the artist-led sector. Our objective is to ensure a shared, research-based approach to lobbying, advocacy, and change-making to facilitate meaningful changes in the artist-led sector. 

Guild has commissioned two new collaborative partners to run campaigns across the next two years to progress this work with specific areas of focus. These collaborative partners will lead on structuring, researching and delivering campaigns around:

(1) Artists working unpaid in studio spaces.

(2) Higher Education provisions for Art Students and Graduates.

These campaigns sit alongside a collaborative research project undertaken by PHD candidate Benedetta D’Ettorre. She is supported through a scholarship as part of a collaborative doctoral partnership of East Street Arts and the University of Leeds School of Performance and Cultural Industries. Through shared supervision between the university and East Street Arts Artistic Director Karen Watson, our candidate Benedetta D’Ettorre will research the themes and aims of the Guild Programme.

Progress of campaigns and PhD research will be updated here throughout; East Street Arts will provide updates around crucial findings, recommendations, and opportunities to get involved through contributing to research, attending discussions or events. East Street Arts and Guild see hands-on and practical campaigning and research as integral to the survival of the artist-led sector in the UK and are excited to develop this artist-led campaign model to ensure that the new bodies of research created can underpin practical change-making in the sector.

Other things!