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Show transcript
My name's Adrian Pritchard. I'm the studio coordinator for market house studios here in Fleetwood.
It's managed by Wyre Council, and it's kept affordable, so then people couldn't, well, some artists who don't generally earn a lot of money, can afford a studio here. We're at full capacity at the moment, we've got about nine artists.
We also have a gallery space and a community space, which we can rent out to individuals who aren't necessarily studio artists, as well. And a studio as well is in the market, we've just got a new artist moved in and he's a photographer. It's an accessible studio, so it's wheelchair accessible. We didn't want people to be left out.
My role here is really to oversee the payments, the paperwork and all that is all tight and legal and also look in to-towards doing projects and assisting the artists sometimes, occasionally. And we sometimes do courses for the artists and some bits of training. Mainly so that's my main role here.
It's very much integrated into the market. I mean, part of when the council got the coastal communities grant funding, what they wanted was more interaction with the local community.
So they want artists to connect with people in the market and have shows or, you know, have a mix, between the two. So there is some kind of dialogue or interaction between the two.
We've been doing workshops in the market itself. So we've been doing young people's workshops in there when, you know, when there's an opportunity. And that's been quite good, because that can bring in a whole new people to the market, younger people. So when we do do festivals or events, then yeah, we, we are normally around doing something
I think it's good because the local community could get involved or see what's happening and you know, they ask questions, they're interested. They put forward ideas and you know, that that can come to some sort of fruition, some positive fruition. It can generate more people to visit the market from outside of Fleetwood, it might bring reasons for people to come here. And so we want to expand on that really.
We, you know, ideally we'd like to have more things going on, more facilities and have people coming here to see art, not just in the studios or in the market, but Fleetwood in general, bouncing off other things going on and around the town, so it becomes more of a- an arty place. We can turn this Peninsula town into an art place then that would benefit the local economies.
What I'm hoping to do is get some grant money, so we can actually have a curatorial program of exhibitions. And then we can invite artists from different places to come in and show there. And obviously that won't cost them anything and we can bring people in from outside then as well as still open it up for local use and also support local artists and create local artists' works too.
