Wasps Artist Studios
Background
Wasps Artists' Studios has a 32 year track record of providing affordable workspaces for visual artists and arts organisations. Now one of the UK's largest studio providers, it supports the careers of 675 visual artists each year at 18 sites in towns and cities across Scotland.
Wasps exists to support artists but the impact of the work is much wider as through redeveloping run down, often historic buildings, they help to regenerate communities and attract jobs to cities and towns across Scotland.
This is true of the latest project - the £6.5m redevelopment of a Grade A listed former fishmarket, The Briggait (www.thebriggait.org.uk), which lay empty and derelict for years in Glasgow's Merchant City. It is now home to 50 artists and arts organisations and growing!
Wasps exists to support artists but the impact of the work is much wider as through redeveloping run down, often historic buildings, they help to regenerate communities and attract jobs to cities and towns across Scotland.
This is true of the latest project - the £6.5m redevelopment of a Grade A listed former fishmarket, The Briggait (www.thebriggait.org.uk), which lay empty and derelict for years in Glasgow's Merchant City. It is now home to 50 artists and arts organisations and growing!
How SIS helped
The Scottish Investment Fund's award - a mixture of strategic investment, loan and risk capital - will help to expand Wasps network of buildings across Scotland in the next 3 years, supporting hundreds more artists while becoming a 100% self-financing charity in the process.
