A London-based group calling itself The Oubliette is advocating turning unused commercial and industrial property over to arts groups as a way of advancing the arts economy.
The group, which grabbed headlines in 2009 for its controversial practice of moving into unoccupied space without the permission of the owners, is now planning a program in which it woos property owners to lend their unused space to artists.
"There's an abundance of empty property in London right now, when the demand for creative space is at an all-time high," Dan Simon, founder of The Oubliette, said in an interview with CBC's Q cultural affairs show on Tuesday.
"Now what we're doing is we're occupying locations in central London to raise awareness of our art-house model and it turned out to be a fantastic success."
Simon says The Oubliette, a French term meaning dungeon, is a "middleman" between emerging artists and the mainstream economy.His goal is to get unused commercial units or factories and turn them over to independent artists rent-free as a platform to create new work.
The group got a lot of publicity last year when it was evicted from a building in the Waterloo district of London. Simon regards that experiment as a success
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
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