Art’s great squatting revolution

The Oubliette, a group of young artists squatting in two £30 million former Mayfair embassies, may have garnered the headlines, but across the country organisations such as the Empty Shops Network and Art in Empty Spaces are helping local individuals and groups to work with councils in converting less glamorous spaces to good use. There are also companies such as Camelot that act like an estate agent for people looking to live in an interesting empty building. The owners ensure that their properties are maintained, while tenants can pay as little as a tenth of the market rate to live in a prime space until it is either demolished or revamped.

David Ireland, the chief executive of the Empty Homes Agency, a pressure group that campaigns for change in the policies on empty buildings, says: “The worst thing that can happen is that a property is just left to fall apart. Properties are an asset, but when they are left to rot they are a liability and no good to anyone. We’re in a new situation here — the property market is not going to change in a year or two. If you allow all the high street shops or estates to go to pot by sending in the heavies to smash them up, you just have a bigger problem in the end. If you let a property get really run-down it’s not going to be viable to get the thing back into use. The current economic situation makes putting property needs and the empty property situation together a really sensible thing to do.”

Clara Vuletich, a textile designer who is part of a collective participating in the Brixton Village, agrees. “We have a vision of how we want to live and work and we’re going ahead and doing it. This can-do feeling is very inspiring and it makes you feel that you’re all in it together.”

Karley Sciortino, 23, is a journalist who writes for Dazed & Confused, Vice and The P.i.X

When I left halls of residence I didn’t have anywhere to live. This amazing, inspiring group of people I’d met offered me a place in their squat. It was in a factory and I lived in the stairwell because the landing was so huge. Eventually we got kicked out and found an old hostel, with ten bedrooms. There are 11 of us, so it was perfect. We thought we’d have it for only a couple of months, but we’ve been there for nearly two years now.

Obviously the fact that I don’t have to pay any rent is brilliant. In any creative industry you have to work for nothing, and rather than getting a job in a bar I could afford unpaid, full-time internships.

When I tell people I live in a squat I get a mixed reaction. People ask us if we have a toilet and stuff. The worst is the way we get treated by the neighbours. There are a few gay people in the house and the neighbours don’t like that. We’ve had people smashing windows and throwing knives into our garden and stealing bins. We live in the middle of a council estate; most of the abuse comes from kids. They are just bored, I think.

A lot of art squats have been in the papers recently and the impression is that it’s almost a middle-class aspiration. But just because you are middle class doesn’t mean that you have an endless stream of money or that you have parents who understand what you do. Everyone around me would rather spend their time doing something creative that they are passionate about than compromise with a crap part-time job. They want to make the creative part the most important thing.

I think that’s fuelled squatting for a long time, from the YBAs [Young British Artists] in East London to the Warren Street squat where Boy George and Leigh Bowery lived. Even Lord Byron lived in a squat, but he probably didn’t sleep on the stairwell.

James Balmforth, 29, is a sculptor. He lives in a squat in a South London suburb and is represented by Hannah Barry, who runs a gallery in a Peckham car park

Having a big space is important. Because I make large sculptures and could never afford a studio space big enough, reclaiming an empty space is the only way. I am also lucky to be represented by Hannah Barry — she got permission from Lambeth council to set up a sculpture park in an empty car park in Peckham, where I exhibit. Finding a gallerist with a big space who can afford to take on a young artist like me would have been impossible otherwise.

Such spaces need to be used and it means that Hannah can take risks and be experimental. Last year they opened a pop-up caf? there, designed by Paloma Gormley (Antony Gormley’s daughter). It received a lot of attention and was packed for the whole summer. Without Hannah, that would have just been an empty NCP.

The squat I live in is a two-bedroom flat; I’ve been there for three years now. I used to live in a five-storey former department store. One of the floors was a gym that had been used by Wolf from Gladiators; there were signed pictures of him everywhere. When we got our eviction notice, my flatmate and I looked for something more permanent and have wound up in quite a suburban area. The company that owns the flat hasn’t been in touch with us, but we pay our bills and aren’t taking anything from anyone. I feel strongly about not squatting in buildings owned by individuals; for one thing, a private landlord might not go down the proper route if they wanted you out.

My parents initially thought it was a phase. They’re open-minded, although when they visited my mum wouldn’t use the toilet. It’s not the cleanest of houses, but three boys live there and, given the circumstances, I think we manage quite well.

Squatting is an amazing thing that I really feel thankful for. There’s a sense that you need to appreciate things and do things that are worthwhile.

Clara Vuletich, 35, is part of the Bricolage Collective, who sell textiles in Brixton Village, a group of 20 shops given to local groups by the council

There are five of us in the collective. Because we design and make our own textiles it is very hard to show your own work unless you go down a traditional route of trade shows, which we didn’t want to do. We wanted to do something more interesting and cheaper. We work mainly to commission, so most of what we make is bespoke, but we have our prototypes and enough stuff to fill the shop. The shop is like a showroom for us, which is ideal because it allows us to show off our wares at their best. Being part of the Brixton Village has been brilliant in raising our profile — we need to get as much exposure as possible. I heard about it through a group of people who live in the transition town in Brixton; they are a grassroots community interested in social and environmental issues. They have a pop-up shop in one of the spaces here.

Last October we saw an advertisement for proposals by the Space Makers Agency; in November they announced the winners and we opened the shop last week. We would never have been able to do something like this if we’d had to lease a shop. Now we just pay the rates for the space.

There’s a real variety of people who visit and support us, from all sides of the social spectrum. We have just curated a series of workshops in the shop, one on quilting and patchwork and one on mending and darning. There’s a lot that can be done to reskill people in society, helping people to learn to be more resourceful. The reuse of empty buildings, which enables people who couldn’t otherwise afford to to get involved with communities at a grassroots level, is instrumental in that. I also think people really respond when they hear about creative people being enterprising and not sitting about waiting for the Arts Council to fund them.

Sally Reay, 42, runs Phoenix52 Community Arts Project, a group that has taken over an empty shop in a run-down area of Bristol

We’re a creative project for kids; it took us four months to negotiate with the council to get the space but they eventually gave us the keys and let us in. There are several similar projects in Bristol, Artspace Lifespace, for example, which is based in an old prison. We were looking for a space that was within our community, a particularly difficult regeneration area in Bristol. There are a lot of empty buildings on the high street but this is actually a block of eight shops underneath a block of flats.

We thought that it would be good to use a space where the people who live in the community already felt comfortable, instead of trying to make them go to a particular hall; that if we were right in the heart of the community, people would feel that it was accessible. We did start by squatting, but we’ve gone beyond that now. Our community arts officer has done a lot of work persuading the council to let groups like ours take over various spaces.

The deal is that developers have to pay business rates if the building is empty, but there is a clause whereby if you let art groups and not-for-profit groups into the building then the rates are dropped, so you can save a developer up to £50,000 a year. And, of course, we are making sure that the building is secure, stopping vandals getting in and setting fire to the place.

I think the credit crunch has been great. During the boom time when property prices were higher it might not have been possible for us to have done this, but it is now. We have the knowledge, the power and the experience to continue to liaise with developers — the head of the development company who owns the building that we are in came to one of our events and he said he would be a bit sad to turn it into flats because it was so vibrant and exciting.

Chris O’Connell, 46, is a playwright and the director of the shop front theatre, based in a former fish and chip outlet in Coventry

It’s handy being in a shop. People immediately know where we are. A family called Moore had been there for 100 years and when people ask where it is, we tell them it’s the old Fishey Moore shop.

The council gave us 18 months’ free rent and I can’t praise them enough. We’re a touring theatre company that specialises in new writing, and in 16 years we’ve never been able to afford our own space.

We are the first professional theatre company in a shopfront in the UK. We took over the space in November, but didn’t have to do too much to it. Removing the fat fryers gave us a lot of space and we’ve painted it black.

We launched in December with the Lamplight Readings, which was someone sitting down and reading aloud to the audience. All sorts came. We’ve earned our reputation doing quite edgy stuff, but with the readings we had families and OAPs. I think the local reaction has been a mixture of curiosity and positivity. I feel that everyone is willing it to work. Next up we have a writing project, and my new play, Breathe, will make its debut in March.

I’d had a play on in Chicago in a theatre in a shopfront. Chicago’s Steppenwolf [theatre company] pioneered theatre in disused spaces in the late 1970s, and I thought the idea would transfer to Coventry. I approached the council, which saw it as something happening at the right time and in the right place. It is good for the other traders — the area has been hit quite hard by the recession.

The council wanted us to open during the day, as well as the evening, so we are doing a lunchtime, bring-your-sandwiches programme. We are regionally funded project, but we have to generate money. The reaction so far has been really special. I think that it has made people consider the role that the arts play in rehabilitating city centres.

Yorgo Tloupas, 35, is the art director of Intersection magazine. He has lived in a Camelot property for two years

I got a taste of living in huge spaces for very little rent when I shared a warehouse above Barbican Tube station with two friends. We payed £200 a month in total; some strange deal with TfL, I think. After that I couldn’t go back to paying the extortionate prices that estate agents ask for dirty, shoebox-sized flats. I had heard of the Camelot scheme and thought it sounded interesting. I moved in to my first Camelot space in April 2007, in what was then the abandoned Chelsea College of Art and Design in Fulham. It was a financial decision in so far as I think rent is way too expensive in London, but I was also curious about the system. I find the randomness and unpredictability quite appealing. You never know what kind of property they’ll offer you, or where in London it will be. I earn a decent living; but being with Camelot just means that I don’t have to spend a fortune on rent.

When I tell people about Camelot, the general reaction is one of awe. You can see them suddenly realise their £900 a month for a damp, small room on the outskirts of London wasn’t such a good deal.

It suits a certain type of person — I would not want to impose it on children (not that I could: Camelot has a rule against kids). I can see myself doing this for a few more years, until the need for stability kicks in.