ON FIELDWORK
2.3 Population Boundaries and Sampling
2.3.1 How the Stats Were Won and Where It Gets Us
1The population for this study comprises artists; artists’ studio blocks, both “independent”, that is run and administered as a single and separate organisation, and “tied”—centrally adminis- tered by a larger organisation, in this case either SPACE or Acme; art dealers and galleries; in- dependent arts organisations which function in effect as consultancies; and local authorities, and each is considered in turn. Over seventy studio blocks have existed in the East End since 1968—not all survive—and during the course of this research, the author interviewed people who have been directly involved with fifty of them. A variety of sources was used in the compi- lation of this sample: those sources which were culled from census data have been covered in section 1.3; others are set out herein.
The archives of the Whitechapel Art Gallery go back to its foundation—for example the fascinating original and lengthy correspondence in which Canon Samuel Barnett engaged in his efforts to get the gallery (literally) off the ground is available to be read. So too are the more re- cent documents upon which this project relied for much its data: the catalogues for the Open Studios list all of the studios taking part, and list the participating artists from each studio, as well as giving contact details for the studio. Since the Open Studios were biannual events until 1998 (after which they were abandoned when the Arts Council withdrew funding) this formed the basis for a crude two-yearly “census” of artists in East London. Addresses were also given, so it was a simple task to decide which fell within the geographical study area, and which did not: the Open Studios event covers a wider area than this project. These covered the years from 1990 to 1998. A 1989 Open Studios event was covered in the Independent (Duffin, 1998).
Similar data for the early years of the Open Studios was gathered from a trawl of SPACE Studios’ archives, which had not been catalogued at the time of research. SPACE’s archives also had details of SPACE studio blocks from 1968 to the present day, and these also carried details of numbers of artists, landlords, original building use and so forth. Acme’s (1995) publi- cation Acme Studios for Artists gives a complete history of Acme, including numbers of artists, landlords, dates of opening (and closure) and original use of buildings. The London Art and Art- ists’ Guide also proved useful.
Non-documentary sources augmented those set out above. Contacts made through my in- volvement with ViA proved useful, and of course information about the history of studio blocks was gathered in the interviews. As ever in a project such as this, the final source of information relied on shoe leather, coffee shops, the occasional pub, and the evidence of one’s own eyes and ears: my own professional background, the restoration of historic buildings, also proved useful here, particularly in determining ages and uses of buildings. Although parts of the study area were already known to me, others were not, and naturally enough I visited all of the studio blocks, if only to see what they looked like, and their local context.
My belief is that the data set gathered is, on the whole, reliable and if not exhaustive, then certainly the best we have. Even so, the fluid nature of the artists’ agglomeration means that no data set can be perfect, and here I want to touch on ways in which this data set might fall short. First, and most important, is the issue of “dark matter” mentioned in section 1.3: subdi- vided studios, two or three person studios which keep themselves to themselves, or artists who work from home for example. Recall that I referred to these artists as “dark matter” because, like its astronomical namesake, its existence is generally accepted, but cannot be measured: es- timates, or rather guesses, varied from 300 to 7000. My own view, based on anecdotal evidence gathered in the course of research, is that for the period covered by the project at least, the lower figure is more likely than the higher. The second, lesser, issue is that not all artists participate in Open Studios events, but figures for artists in studios as listed in the Whitechapel Art Gallery catalogues were generally consistent from one event to the next, and this is of minor importance compared to the “dark matter”. The data set for studio types and ages is presented in Table 2.1 overleaf.
2.3.2 Artists
Each of the forty “independent” studio blocks is administered by a working artist. If each of the “independent” studio blocks is interviewed, it follows that not only has each of the blocks been interviewed in its capacity as an “arts organisation”, but each of the forty artists who serve as administrators for the studio block has also been interviewed. A similar approach was adopted by Galaskiewicz (1979) who, in his study of the exchange networks of a medium-sized town in the United States, chose to interview the highest ranking executive officers of his selected or- ganisations (Galaskiewicz, 1979:45).
The geographical area is itself finite, and so of course are the numbers of artists’ studios, arts organisations and other actors within this area. Although there are, as we saw in chapter one, 1400 artists in the East End at the very minimum, there were, at the end of 1998, roughly sixty studio blocks, of which approximately twenty are administered by either Acme or SPACE, leaving some forty “independent” studio blocks. SPACE and Acme are easy enough to pin down, and, like most of the “independent” studio blocks are artist-led—established and run by artists for artists.
St Katharine!s Dock "68–!71 1826 Warehouses Ravenscroft Studios !70–date mid 19th c. Furniture Factory Butlers Wharf Studios !71–!80 19th c. Warehouses 45/47 Tabernacle St. !71–!86 ??19th c.
Martello Street !71–date Clothing Factory
71 Stepney Green !71–date School
Barbican Arts Group !72–!88 Light industrial
Old St Patrick!s Sch., Buxton St. !72–date mid 19th c. School 124-130 Tabernacle St. !73–!79 ??19th c.
Acme Short Life Housing !73–!81 late 19th c. Housing
Beck Road early !70s on late 19th c. (Short-life) housing
New Crane Wharf !74–!84 19th c. Wharves
New Crane & Metro! Wharves !74–!86 19th c. Wharves Bombay Wharf !74–!90 late 19th c. Spice Warehouse Metropolitan Wharf !79–!89 19th c. Wharves/Warehouses Chisenhale Studios !80–date late 19th c. Veneer Factory
Belsham Street !81–!93
Milbourne Street !81–date
Bonner/Robinson Road !81–date mid 19th c. Brush Factory
Richmond House !82–date
Old Ford Studios !83–!85 late 19th c. Housing
Brittania Works !83–date
Orsman Road Studios !83–date 1920s Players Cigarette Factory
Winkley St. !84–!93
Fawe Street Studios !84–date Early 20th c. Canned Pet Food factory Cable Street Studios !84–date mid 19th c. Sweet Factory
Vyner Street Studios !85–!92
Victor House !85–date
Carpenters Road !85–date 1930s Yardley Cosmetics Factory Hanbury Street Studios !85–date 19th c. Weavers! Houses?
Delfina Studios !87–date Clothing factory
New Hoxton Workshops !87–date 19th c. light-industrial Pixley Street Studios !88–!97 early 20th c. light industrial
MT Studios !88–date
Deborah House !88–date
Chilton Street !89–!90 19th c. light industrial
Maryland Studios !89–date Clothing factory
B.A.G. Hertford Rd. !89–date ?? Early 1950s Light industrial
Balls Pond Studios !89–!98 1989 Purpose-built ceramics studios Rufus Street Studios !89–date ??19th c. warehouses
Cooperage Studios !91–!92 Limehouse Arts Foundation !91–date
Southgate Studios !91–date 1920s/30s light industrial Teesdale Street Studios !91–date
Copperfield Road !92–!94 1920s Warehouse (Regents Canal)
Bombay Wharf !92–!96 19th c. Spice Warehouse
Spitalfields Studios !92–!98 late 19th/1920s/50s Fruit & Veg market Eastway Baths !92–date ? late 19th c. Public Baths
Copperfield Road !92–date 1920s Warehouse (Regents Canal) Red Door Studios !92–date 19th c. police st!n (& sewing machine factory) Columbia Road (Ezra St) !93–!94 19th c. light industrial
Brick Lane Studios !93–date 18th/19th/20th c. Truman!s Brewery Commercial Road Studios !94–date 1920s Garment Trade Premises Standpoint Studios !94–date Early 20th c. Printworks
Westland Place Studios !94–date late 19th c. wharves/warehouses Wharf Studios !94–date mid/late 19th c. Print works
Oxford House !95–date
Panchayat !95–date
Turquoise Arts Group !95–date
Eastway Laundry !96–date ? late 19th c. Public Laundry
Sara Lane Court !96–date
Birdcage Studios !96–date 19th c. ?? Housing
Bow Arts Trust !96–date late 19th/early 20th motorcycle workshops
City Studios !96–date 1920s warehouses
Florence Trust !96–date 1866 Church
Underwood Arts !96–date 1920s warehouses
2.3.3 Art Galleries
With three exceptions, all of the art galleries based in the East End at the end of 1997 were in- terviewed. The Whitechapel Art Gallery, one of three publicly funded galleries in the area, stands out from the others by dint of its size, its age, and the fact that until 1998, when the Lon- don Arts board withdrew funding, the Whitechapel acted as a focus for the East End artists’ ag- glomeration through its organisation of the biannual Open Studios.
The director, Catherine Lampert, was interviewed, since as director she is best placed to offer an accurate overview of the Gallery’s position in the East End. This reflects Galas- keiwicz’s (1979) approach to interviewing executive officers in corporate organisations.
The three which were not interviewed all declined on the grounds of “lack of time”, and their histories and the parts they played in the development of the East End arts scene have been constructed from written material, supplied in some instances by the galleries themselves, and most often from magazine and newspaper articles. As with all histories which rely on journalis- tic sources, they should be treated with some circumspection, although where these galleries have been quoted in articles, and that quote is relevant to the history, it has been reproduced to lend an element of continuity to the narrative.
2.3.4 Local Authorities
Although establishing which local authorities cover a particular geographical area is not diffi- cult, finding out who to interview is. One can start by telephoning the “arts department” and asking to speak to the person in charge, but the nature of a local authority’s involvement in the arts is such as to require input from several different departments. A public art project involving a local school may for example involve the local authority’s departments of art, planning and education. If the project were near a boundary with another borough, then departments from both local authorities may become involved.
A sampling technique loosely based on snowball sampling (see ch.8, s.8.3.2) was there- fore adopted, whereby the interviewee in the arts department (the stage one sample) was asked to name other significant actors. This generated a stage two sample. The stage three sample, generated in the same way, tended to comprise actors in the samples for stages one and two, bringing the sampling process full circle. Confirmation of the relevant actors within the local authorities was quite frequently provided by other interviewees who, unsolicited, offered names of the people within their local authorities whom they believed to be important actors.
As is noted in section 8.3.2, the snowball technique was eventually abandoned as a rigor- ous sampling technique, except as a means of tracing potential interviewees.