Supporting Emerging Creatives

Learning - Visibility - Growth

Heritage places can be places to begin

Sustainable Conservation Trust uses underused heritage places as spaces for creative development, learning and experimentation.

Alongside our work to bring historic buildings back into active use, we support emerging artists, makers and young creatives by providing access to workspace, equipment, practical skills, mentoring, professional networks and opportunities to develop and share their work.

Many of these things can be difficult to access at the beginning of a creative career. By opening up the places, skills and networks around us, we aim to remove some of those barriers and create routes from curiosity and volunteering into greater confidence, creative practice and paid opportunities.

Our approach is simple: rather than asking people to fit into a predetermined programme, we try to understand what they want to develop and identify what SCT, our spaces and our wider network can offer to help them progress.

Learning that creates more opportunities

A recent example began with Phoebe, who joined SCT through the Brave Island Heritage Work Experience Programme.

We started by asking about her own interests and ambitions. Phoebe told us that she would eventually like to explore taxidermy and develop her creative practice. We identified 3D modelling and digital fabrication as useful transferable skills that could support those ambitions while also introducing her to architectural and creative technologies.

SCT invested in a 3D printer and invited Xandar, a long-standing SCT volunteer with relevant digital skills, to teach her.
This created two opportunities rather than one. Phoebe gained access to equipment, one-to-one learning and a new creative skill, while Xandar progressed from volunteering with SCT into paid work as a tutor.

The equipment and knowledge remain within SCT, allowing these skills to be shared with other artists, young people and creative practitioners in the future.

It is a small example of the kind of creative ecosystem we want to build: people learning from one another, developing confidence and skills, and creating opportunities for the next person.

Heritage Building

Alleyways of Gosport

Heritage Building

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Artists in heritage places

SCT regularly brings artists and creative practitioners into direct contact with historic buildings, collections, materials and communities.

Our projects have included artist residencies, exhibitions, public art, creative workshops and interdisciplinary collaborations. Through projects such as Alleyways of Gosport, artists have worked alongside communities and other practitioners to explore local stories and create work in public spaces.

Our work at Portsmouth Historic Quarter has also enabled artists and makers to develop work within an extraordinary historic environment, while our wider projects connect creative practitioners with architects, heritage specialists, craftspeople, organisations and audiences they might not otherwise encounter.

We see these relationships as two-way. Artists bring new ways of seeing and interpreting historic places, while heritage places provide artists with material, stories, spaces and opportunities from which new work can grow.

Old Pay office

Play Office

Students @ Play Office

Old Pay office

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Space to experiment

Our base at the Old Pay Office in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard allows us to test a different use for heritage buildings.

Alongside SCT’s conservation and heritage activities, the building provides space for artists, makers, students and creative practitioners to work, meet, experiment and exchange knowledge.

Through collaborations including PLAY OFFICE, we have supported creative development through mentoring, studio and project space, access to equipment and technology, opportunities to test new work and connections between practitioners from different disciplines.

We are particularly interested in the value of space at the early stages of creative development. Sometimes what an emerging practitioner needs is not another formal course, but somewhere to try something, access equipment, meet somebody with a different skill and be given permission to experiment.

StrongIsland Exhibition

Exhibition

StrongIsland Exhibition

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From making to public visibility

Developing creative practice also requires opportunities for work to be seen.

SCT creates routes for artists and makers to test ideas publicly through exhibitions, installations, workshops and events, from local community settings to professional cultural platforms.

Our recent research and exhibition activity has explored how architects, artists and makers can work together with heritage sites to develop new creative work rooted in the materials and stories of a place.

This growing methodology connects conservation, contemporary creative practice and making, while creating new relationships between heritage organisations and the creative practitioners around them.

What We Can Offer

Mentoring and peer-to-peer learning

Practical and creative skills development

Access to equipment and digital fabrication

Opportunities to collaborate and experiment

Workspace and access to underused heritage places

Opportunities to exhibit, present or share work publicly

Connections with artists, makers, architects and heritage professionals

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We are particularly interested in creating opportunities for people who may face barriers to entering or progressing within the cultural and creative industries, and in finding practical ways of making spaces, skills, equipment and professional networks more accessible.

SCT is a creative network focused on transforming heritage spaces into vibrant places for learning and community growth, rather than operating as a conventional arts institution.

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