In Summer 2018, Site Gallery, together with project partners Yorkshire Artspace, S1 Artspace, Bloc Projects and Museums Sheffield, were awarded £375,000 by Freelands Foundation to run Platform – an artists development initiative, as part of The Freelands Artist Programme.
ABOUT
The Freelands Artist Programme was created to support and enhance collaboration between 80 emerging artists and four arts organisations, to build and strengthen professional arts practice outside of London. This new programme provides funding, totalling £1.5 million over a five-year period, to organisations in each of the four nations in the UK. Each institution was tasked with curating will curate a series of two-year programmes with five artists annually, allowing those artists to receive much needed support across both creative and professional development.
Artists are on the programme for a two year period and receive over £20,000 of investment, including a £10,000 bursary, production grants and travel budget. In year one of the programme, the residents work towards a cross-site, work-in-progress exhibition taking place in the summer months, which provides artists with professional installation shots and commissioned texts on their work; the second year is focused on the individual needs of each artist and addresses subsequent questions that arise from the show in year one. The cohort also has the opportunity to participate in a group trip.
Site Gallery provides support, access to networks, physical space and programme activity every month for our resident artists, alternating between studio visits, group crits and planned activity and discussion group sessions. To date these sessions have included a Summer School with S1 Artspace, an opportunity to delve into the collections at Museums Sheffield, a branding workshop with Elizabeth Graham and access to alternative funding workshops with the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. During the national lockdown periods, these sessions have continued online in an adapted programme of fortnightly group meetings and other online workshops. possible to run online.
In addition to the support of Site Gallery and our local institutional partners, the Freelands Foundation offers a parallel programme of support and opportunities. A curator, based at the Freelands Foundation, is dedicated to each cohort of artists and works with them to deliver an end-of-programme group exhibition at the Freelands space in Chalk Farm, London, and an accompanying publication. The foundation also curates a series of events and talks especially for artists on the programme, including a symposium that is hosted by a different city each year, the first of which took place in Sheffield in 2019.
ARTISTS
Please see below for a list of the three cohorts of five artists have been selected so far. Click the links for more information about each artist.
Cohort One – 2018 to 2020
Selection Panel: Sharna Jackson, Angelica Sule, Paul Morrison and Harold Offeh
Alison J Carr
Lucy Vann
Siân Williams
Yuen Fong Ling
Zoyander Street
Cohort Two – 2019 to 2021
Selection Panel: Sharna Jackson, Angelica Sule, Kerry Campbell, Chloe Brown and Sonya Dyer
Conor Rogers
James Clarkson
Joanna Whittle
Maud Haya-Baviera
Victoria Lucas
Cohort Three – 2021 to 2023
Please note that the programme timeline shifted due to Covid-19 disruption.
Selection Panel: Sharna Jackson, Angelica Sule, Robyn Haddon, Hester Reeve, Laura Wilson and Larry Achiampong
Anisa Nuh-Ali
Jan Hopkins
Lea Torp Nielsen
Rachael Colley
Seiko Kinoshita
Cohort Four – 2023 – 2025
Selection Panel: Angelica Sule, Peter Martin, Robyn Haddon, Sian Fan, Yuen Fong Ling and Harriet Cooper
