Elle Reynolds shares reflections from the A Vision with Artists workshops and thoughts on what makes an accessible and sustainable arts sector.
8 April 2025
Ambiguity, Ambition, Anxiety, Belonging, Between, Bold, Beautiful, Capable, Communing, Collaboration, Development, Diversity, Drive, Excess, Exploration, Experimental, Fluidity, Freedom, Frustration, Grace, Gratitude, Happiness, Hope…
Some words for the afternoon selected as an artist A to Z, artists Tracey and Valentino setting the parameters for the workshop afternoon and giving ourselves permission.
A Vision With Artists (AVWA) was a three-hour event supported by New Contemporaries and held on a Saturday afternoon, March 15, 2025, at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London, bringing together three artists and artist educators engaged in alternative models of support for artists.
Artist Ahmet Öğüt introduced conceptual frameworks of self-care, social practice and mutual aid, while artist Harun Morrison reimagined artistic spaces beyond the ICA gallery, exploring the possibilities for shared desires through an artist’s web of needs. Convening the day, was me, artist and educator Elle Reynolds, I facilitated collective networks, guiding participants to start and end the day and by working together in the studio in co-creating textual assemblages.
The event focused on forming and holding a space for dialogue, collaboration, and shared inquiry. Thus, offering a platform for the those participating in the New Contemporaries exhibition and any artists at different stages in their careers who wanted to come along, to engage in meaningful discussions about artistic practice, support systems, and sustainability. Central to the discussions were our collective interests in participation, collective structures, and alternative modes of working.
One of the tools I frequently use is PowerPoint, a long-established institutional tool that doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves for its functionality. I often print out PowerPoint slides and encourage workshop participants to pin the printed matter up in any order they choose, using them as provocations or playful visual mappings to instigate a discussion. I also repurpose these ‘slides’ in different contexts. I began using PowerPoint this way as a performative tool in 2017 as part of my PhD, transforming it from a passive information delivery medium, into something more interactive and engaging.
“Together, we participated in a practice of dreaming”
I brought materials such as vinyl letters, tape, rolls of fabric, feedback cards, string etc. to build a visual imaginary and set the stage for the AVWA studio. Participants transformed, exchanged, and add their own elements, collaboratively shaping the space. Together, we participated in a practice of dreaming; identifying key and recurring themes during the workshop and locating these within a writing, fabric assemblage. Four themes emerged and were centred for discussion at the end of the day:
One of the most significant aspects of the event was the opportunity to be in dialogue with a diverse group of artists, those directly connected to NC and those who happened upon the gathering. The open and intergenerational nature of the conversations underscored the importance of holding space for artists at all stages in their careers.
We moved beyond conventional institutional frameworks, meandering outside the white cube entrapment - to greener, airier settings of St James’s Park. Thinking in public, bringing discussions into alternative spaces that encouraged a slower, more considered engagement with one another in smaller groups. Is it that unusual for four artists to be sitting together on a park bench in the early spring sunshine, apparently the answer is yes.
I really like this picture with Harun discussing his Artist Web of Needs in the park. Despite the cold, it was a relaxing experience. I learned that two participants (German psychology students) had misunderstood the workshop and came expecting to make clay figures. I wish I had brought clay! After about 45 minutes, we naturally began to gather around a plane tree before deciding to return to the warmth and slightly less damp environment of the studio.
We returned to the ICA and discussed our individual mapping, the Pizza Model, and the interconnected web of the artist’s awareness and resources. Applying the Pizza Model helps visualise time and income streams, balancing artist’s time with personal energy and elasticity. How much time do you dedicate to an application, four weeks? or four hours? Writing for funding requires considering not just your work process but also the different markets you operate within, from commercial sales to community-based projects. These will determine the types of funding you apply for.
Resource and tool sharing are essential for overcoming a scarcity mindset. Supportive frameworks can include WhatsApp clusters for sharing opportunities, circulating roadside materials, (things that you see that are not relevant for you but may be useful for someone else). Of course, maintaining an online funding repository, or expanding access to group shows, all of which require ongoing care through collaboration and upkeep.
Co-created by Ahmet in collaboration with Burak Arıkan in 2019, the web platform Code of Acquisitions visualises ethical codes within the art world. By collecting data from artists, it maps out complex relationships that reveal art institutions’ ethical codes, policies, and their relation to actual practices. Ahmet invited the AVWA to form discussion pairs and to engage with one of the sociocultural codes presented in the mapping and consider how we might address/confront/grapple with these concepts.
Some of the terms included: C for Collective Consciousness, C for Collective Commitments or C for Crisis, D for Dismantling, and E for Exposing, (I think I added some of my own here in italics). One group explored Exposing and discussed how it could be used as a tool for change.
Exposing
How do we bring about systemic change? What is the tension between tools and language? In what ways can tools and language manifest power and hegemonic culture?
Finally, we came together to plan our group manifesto. The three hour event provided a much needed Saturday afternoon space of belonging and care, reinforcing the need for New Contemporaries and their iterative collective action for supporting and sustaining artistic communities.
“My art practice is led by a considering of space and spaces that we collectively and individually occupy.”
The spaces of not fitting in are paramount for me as someone who always seems to be just on the fringes, perhaps deliberately allowing others to place me here as I haven’t got the energy to resist. Space is examined through my long engagement with printmaking and sculpture and more recently performance and sound.A central element of my work involves holding space, creating environments where artists can gather, support one another, and co-create knowledge. These spaces are crucial, particularly as broader socio-political shifts threaten both the arts and art education.
My practice extends into participatory and performative writing, where I engage with site-based inquiries and spatial interventions, drawing on Jane Rendell’s concept of site-writing to position my work within evolving, lived contexts. This practice is rooted in the exploration of I-ness (the individual) and We-ness (the collective).I am particularly interested in the forces that shape notions of self, now even more pressing in a time of increasing algorithmic individualism and the adoption of curated identities. Initially drawing inspiration from Irit Rogoff’s reflections on we, I explore the tensions between fleeting communities and more sustained forms of collectivity. These elements are explored through making works based around deep research approaches and performative actions outside and within the institution. A current project includes an ongoing longitudinal narration of The Great Morass in Negril, Jamaica through the materials of sound and cyanotype print.
An accessible and sustainable arts sector requires a radical reimagining of participation, support structures, and transparency. True accessibility is not just about removing barriers, it is about actively reconfiguring systems to accommodate multiple ways of being, working, and engaging.
Through these approaches, we can enable an arts ecosystem that prioritises care, sustains critical discourse, and ensures that artists not only survive but work together to make our support systems for collective well-being, which will also allow us to rest.
Join the discussion and share your thoughts with us on social media if you have time using #NewContemporaries @New_Contemporaries.
