Background

Based in the English Lake District National Park, Grizedale Arts has over the last decade acquired a significant reputation for pioneering new approaches to artistic production and exhibition. In contrast to traditional institutions and, indeed, to its own history in the UK land art movement, GA has neither studios nor exhibition space, but rather provides artists with the opportunity to realise projects using the social, cultural and economic networks of the area and beyond.

Artists-in-residence

Each year, circa 6 research and development grants are awarded to artists and creative practitioners, to develop ideas for projects in relation to the extraordinary environment of the Lake District. There is no fixed period for each residency, the preference being for artists to establish a longterm relationship with GA whilst they continue with their normal practice.

How we work

The GA programme actively engages with the complexities of the rural situation. Rather than aiming to create a finished art product we place an emphasis on process and the dissemination of ideas to a wider audience.

We work alongside the local community to develop and realise the work with artists, and consequently the projects often challenge the artists as much as the local (participatory) audience. The activities are often fed into a major annual project or event that allows public access to the Grizedale process, introduces artists’ thinking into everyday life and sites active contemporary arts alongside the culture of the rural environment. 

Past projects

Key projects have included Roadshow, an on the road programme of live work, Let’s Get Married -  two weddings in the Grizedale Forest and Romantic Detachment, a live exhibition project for PS1/MoMA which spanned the Lake District, North America, Derby, Cardiff and Ghana. 

2005 saw GA working a number of events for its own locality, which addresses issues of tourism, regeneration and the rural economy. The main event was be the return of the Coniston Water Festival, in which the organisation worked with the village of Coniston to bring back and reinvent a local Victorian water festival in a contemporary form.

The programme of activity develops organically and is perpetual, so that each years’ programme leads into and informs the next.

The new HQ at Lawson Park

The organisation recently underwent a new phase in its development, involving moving its central operation to a new headquarters building at Lawson Park, a traditional Lakeland hill farm overlooking the Crake Valley and the Coniston Fells. The farm dates back to the 14th century and was once owned and experimentally farmed by John Ruskin.

From this new site, GA is a model for a new kind of art institution, which works beyond the established structures of the art world and aims to rework the idea of culture against the backdrop of emerging issues. From its new site the organisation will reposition itself as a national centre for the development of the arts, working with its local context to address global cultural change.

The Lake District is an area with an exceptionally complex and dense cultural history. Encompassing the Industrial Revolution, Romanticism, Modernism and international tourism, the last 300 years have witnessed an ongoing struggle between the urban and the rural, the contemporary and the traditional.

The context of the Lake District

The picturesque landscape of Cumbria is often cited as the primary feature of the region; however it is the sociological circumstances and attitudes to the landscape that distinguish it. Of particular importance is the way in which numerous ideologies are projected onto this countryside, and this has produced a multiplicity of micro cultures: Farmers, conservationists, tourists, extreme-sports enthusiasts all compete for a stake in the land.
Furthermore - as a manifestation of the wider trend towards globalisation - there has been a rapid increase in pressure on the land and the way it is used. As such, the Lake District represents a microcosm of the wider world and presents itself as an ideal laboratory situation to test out new approaches to culture and its impact on society and its environment.

One of the failings of the old Grizedale sculpture trail (established in 1977) was that it did not address its vital context and itself became one of the silo cultures that populate the region. Furthermore, since the heyday of the environmental art movement, there has been a paradigm shift in the social and cultural situation and specifically concepts concerning the natural environment. Modernity and communication have dissolved the clear distinctions between the urban and rural, along with all the other boundaries and now ecology and global ethics dominate the political agenda.

In this ‘post-urban’ scenario, the Lake District has become a key focal point for all these contemporary issues. The outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2001-2 exposed the reality of a global market place and the Lake District’s overdependence on the tourist economy. Additionally, the changes in the Common Agricultural Policy, due for completion in 2012, will radically alter the nature of farming, which has already seen a huge shift away from production to land management, conservation and cultural development. This has raised huge questions over the role of farming and has subsequently prioritised the role of culture within the rural environment.
The visual arts are witnessing significant changes too, shifting away from studio and gallery based practice, which were centred on urban models of production, to a flexible, dialogical form of practice which exists outside the gallery environment and which, on one level or another, converses in an international social space.

Within this context, Lawson Park is a hub of all GA activities, being flexible, multidisciplinary and light on its feet. In opposition to the traditional museum or institution building, the aim is to work in multiple locations, to be part of a network of ideas and activity, connecting local and global conditions, in a responsive and appropriate way.
In addition to offices, artists’ accommodation, research and small-scale conference facilities, the new scheme includes an area of around 15 acres for experimental farming and alternative land use. This land acts as demonstrator for ideas, as a means of dialogue with the surrounding landscape.

Other sites: Parkamoor Farm

GA has also recently finished the renovation of Parkamoor, the sister farm to Lawson Park, which lies in a considerably more remote position two kilometres along the ridge. It has no mains services and is only accessible by foot.

Parkamoor is occupied periodically by invited groups and individuals who benefit from its isolation. Planning and conservation requirements prohibit any development of the site. Consequently it exists simply as a rural vision, an isolated farmhouse in an exceptionally picturesque setting; the vehicle for any number of projected fantasies of what rural life might be.

Working in partnership with its owners, the National Trust, Parkamoor serves as a small scale facility for experiment and discussion, artists’ retreat, project space, conference centre, experimental holiday home, model for eco-living or simply overflow accommodation for Grizedale’s residency and events programme.

Our ambition

In moving its operations out of the confines of the forest to Lawson Park, GA now occupies a dynamic position in the social and political geography of the area, physically and conceptually at the meeting point of all the major user groups and ideologies which control the landscape: Forestry Commission, National Trust, National Park Authority, Brantwoood, farmers, tourists, special interest groups, businesses and educational institutions.

Using this unique position, we will be able to play a leading role in developing arts practice in the 21st century context.

Lawson Park is a historic Cumbrian hill farm, which was established in 1338 by Furness Abbey to supply wool as part of the abbey’s production chain. Since its decline as a working sheep farm in the early 20th century it has been used for a variety of purposes including a holiday home and a hostel.

Grizedale Arts have been using the farm since 2000 for hosting artists and projects, but has now developed the whole site as the new headquarters for the organisation. The refurbishment of the farm was carried out by Sutherland/Hussey Architects. The new buildings provide residential accommodation and research facilities for artists, curators and Grizedale guests, along with small scale conference facilities, warden’s accommodation and site office.

In addition, an area of approximately 15 acres of surrounding farmland is being developed as a site for experimental land use and art projects in collaboration with artists, curators, invited groups and local stakeholders. The land is organised into three themed zones:

Pleasure: Wildflower meadow and gardens, etc.

Production: Kitchen Garden (fruit and vegetables), Forest (mushrooms, shoots etc), the 'Paddies' an area of reclaimed fellside sculpted by Japanese farmers to optimise shelter and drainage on sloped land.

Experiment: Farming collaborations, test planting and cultivation, artists projects, community projects, landscaping and land use experiment, business development etc.

Artists are invited to work on projects, the principle aim being to generate and disseminate new ideas and approaches to how the land may be used, developing a constructive role for art and artists in a time of immense cultural change, both locally and internationally.