Help keep the Newtown Artist Run Centre (NewARC) open for a year

Assemblage opened the Newtown Artist Run Centre and Studios (NewARC), in Johannesburg in April 2012. The NewARC offers studio spaces and support facilities for visual artists and creatives.

In addition to providing studio spaces for artists, Assemblage also offers peer mentoring group sessions, workshops and professional practice training at the NewARC.  The space is a place for artists to network, collaborate and innovate. Assemblage is also in conversation with various international institutions and programmes with the aim of starting an artist residency programme to encourage international exchange.

The NewARC studios are for any visual artist or creative person in need of a studio.  This may include young, unknown, emerging and established artists.

The NewARC studios are also available to curators, writers, international residency artists and other arts professionals – especially those who are seeking an artistic community to work within.

The results of a survey carried out by Assemblage in 2011 were that a very high percentage of artists require studio spaces in Johannesburg, as well as a centre offering support for their art making practice and careers.

We felt that by opening a space of this nature we would be benefiting the Johannesburg art community and market.  We hope to encourage the artists within our studios to pursue art making as a full time career thereby also creating employment.

We hope that a space of this nature would also be used by the broader Johannesburg visual arts community, especially for peer mentoring sessions and workshops. The space will be accessible to the general public through regular art events including exhibitions, open studio events and art talks.

And, so far, we are see a huge amount of interest in the space with a growing community of artists using the space on a daily basis.

The NewARC is managed by  non-profit organisation, Assemblage and at this stage has no funding.  We are seeking funding to support and establish the space.  While rent that studio artists pay will allow us to continue using the space it is only just covering the rent owed to the owner of the bulding.  In order for us to establish this as a space that offers more to the wider visual arts community and in order to make it accessible to more artists we are in need of funding.

If you choose to contribute your contributions will go towards the initial start up and running of the NewARC for its first year.  Contributions will help us to guarantee occupation of the space for at least a year, allowing us the opportunity to develop, market and establish the space.  We will use funds raised to:

• - subsidise our rent
• - repay loans taken to open the space
• - buy equipment needed to make the space more usable for artists, such as, lockers, a printing press, tables, chairs
• - books for the library
• - computers to allow us to set up an internet point
• - a printer
• - cutlery and crockery for the kitchen
• - improved lighting to be used for workshops and exhibitions
• - a projector for use at peer mentoring, workshops and exhibitions
• - to pay website developers
• - to have some awesome signage designed and made(we don’t want people to get lost trying to find us)
• - to pay for part-time administrative staff - at this stage the NewARC is run by volunteers which is not sustainable in the long run.
  

Make a difference to the Johannesburg visual arts community and contribute to this amazing project.  Help to Make Art Happen!