Artists renew society. There will always be artists, and new artists are everywhere. For three quarters of a century, New Contemporaries has supported emerging and early career artists with exhibitions, mentoring, residencies, public programming and opportunities to develop and share new work.

Based in the heart of central London and working across a national network of grassroots and artist-led organisations, we connect artists, audiences and institutions to present a wider picture of contemporary art across the UK. Through partnerships, commissions, affordable studios, workshops and public events, we create new opportunities for emerging artists to develop sustainable practices and reach new audiences.

Our work now includes a new national fellowship programme for artists and a festival of emerging art developed in collaboration with cities and towns across the UK. Together, these programmes support artists over longer periods of time while strengthening connections between local scenes, artist-led spaces and national institutions.

We believe the future of the arts depends on widening who gets to be an artist, who feels able to access the sector and who gets to shape its future. Our role is not simply to present emerging art, but to cultivate the conditions through which ambitious new practices can develop, circulate and endure.

New Contemporaries is a registered charity and an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. Our 2026 programme is funded by Arts Council England, Art Fund, our Emerging Artist Circle, the Fenton Arts Trust, Henry Moore Foundation, OMNI and TfA London.

New Contemporaries began in 1949 as Young Contemporaries, an annual exhibition established to present new work by emerging artists in the UK. From our early years, the exhibition became a key national platform, recognised for identifying artists who would go on to shape post war and contemporary British art.

Over the decades, our programme has included artists such as Ed Atkins, Monster Chetwynd, Phil Collins, Tacita Dean, Antony Gormley, Sophie von Hellermann, Mona Hatoum, David Hockney, John Hoyland, Isaac Julien, Anish Kapoor, Mark Lecky, Rachel Maclean, Haroon Mirza, Richard Mosse, Mike Nelson, Laure Prouvost, Paula Rego and Gillian Wearing, among many others. What connects these artists is not a shared style, but the moment at which they were supported, at a formative point before wider recognition.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the exhibition operated as an artist led initiative, organised and selected by students and artists themselves. In 1988, we re established as an independent organisation and registered charity, creating a more sustainable structure while retaining a commitment to artist led selection, strengthening our role between art education, professional practice and public institutions.

While formats and contexts continue to evolve, our purpose remains the same – to support artists at the point where new work, new thinking and new practices emerge.

New Contemporaries holds and manages its organisational archive from 1988 onwards. Earlier material relating to Young Contemporaries is held within the Arts Council England and ICA archives at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate Libraries.

We welcome contributions to our archive from alumni artists, selectors and audiences. If you have material you would like to share, including catalogues, images or press coverage, please contact info@newcontemporaries.org.uk.

Artists change us

Through new symbols, new philosophies, and new practices, artists renew society. Society needs them. No generation of artists feels or thinks like the generation before. And so New Contemporaries changes too. For 75 years we have been led by the approaches, needs and spirit of the latest generation of artists.

Access is a practice, not a permission 

We ask what it means to be an artist today, and who gets to decide. Who is visible, who is supported, who feels able to enter, stay and thrive. We understand access not as a set of rules, but as an ongoing responsibility that asks us to listen, adapt and change.

We are working towards a de-colonised, non-normative, non-heteronormative and non-ableist New Contemporaries. We build structures that can flex, respond and be re made, so that artists are not asked to conform to fixed systems, but are met where they are.

A body-of-work is nothing without kindness

We have a body-of-work that covers three quarters of a century. The relationships we have formed, ideas developed and structures we have built have only happened because we behave with respect and care. Insist on a background of kindness.

Everything can be reinvented

Never think it can’t all be dreamed up again. Never say ‘that’s how we do things here’.

Director
Kiera Blakey (Monday – Thursday)

Assistant Curator
Sophie Bownes (Monday – Thursday)

Communications Manager
Rosie Gibson (Freelance: Monday – Tuesday)

Senior Curator
Séamus McCormack (Monday – Thursday)

Deputy Director
Carmen Juliá – parental leave cover (Monday – Thursday)
Ella Snell – on parental leave

New Contemporaries is led by a voluntary Board of Trustees and is a registered charity

Hoda Ali
HR Consultant at Ibraaz and Head of Human Resources at The Elders

Alice Amati
Gallerist and Curator

Lewis Dalton Gilbert
Independent Curator and Creative Director of A Vibe Called Tech

Fouad Kanaan
Head of Exhibitions at the Art Mill Museum in Doha

Harold Offeh (Chair)
Artist

Romilly Stebbings
Director of Business Development at Frieze

info@newcontemporaries.org.uk

There are no current vacancies.