Making Plans at Bank Street Arts

Making Plans was a collaborative one-week residency at the former arts complex Bank Street Arts in Sheffield in 2016, and involved moving studio into a temporary exhibition space. Taking as our cue a number of New Materialist discourses, we proposed a work that would examine the studio as a co-productive environment—one that not only involves a collaborative relationship between human individuals, but that also takes account of the ‘matter’ of the creative space.

As amateur dressmakers, we explored the relationship between knowledge and craft producing both work garments - a work apron - and makeshift instructions that draw attention to the complex assemblages of supports, tools, references and discussions that come together in the act of making.

Being amateurs was important, in that we approached the production of work without a comprehensive experience of strategies that might be used to solve practical problems. It created the need for ‘work-arounds’, improvisations and alternative approaches that involve different ways of structuring the making environment. These, in turn, raise questions concerning the way the materials of the studio also shape the directions and choices we took.