The buzz of angry Wasps as Scotland's artists fight their art

Very few of us haven’t known someone who had rented one of the Wasps studios in Glasgow. Even if you’d never visited any of their buildings, you’d have heard of them and knew roughly what they were all about: providing artists young and old, from all backgrounds, with the means and spaces to make art for the rest of us. It has played a crucial role in forming Scotland’s cultural footprint.

It’s clear though, that something has gone badly wrong in this happy arrangement. The artists had mustered under the banner of Save Our Studios, a campaign seeking answers and changes from the Wasps board of trustees which they claim have become detached from the founding principles of the Trust. One of the campaign leaders said to me: “The board have been operating like a corporate property empire, expanding their portfolio often at the expense of the artists.”

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Many of those marching on Monday are not exactly cut from the traditional cloth of fiery activists. You know that something has gone aglay when none of them want to have their names mentioned for fear of reprisals by the management.

Yesterday, the Wasps Chair, Karen Anderson had revealed to The Herald that Scotland was ion “the cliff-edge of a cultural recession”. She cited massive energy price hikes in forcing them to increase their tenants’ rents and to impose a temporary electricity and gas surcharge upon them. These are measures that almost every third sector organisation has had to deploy to mitigate the effects of the cost of living crisis and, on the face of it, seem unavoidable.

The artists claim that the corporate nature of Wasps has made such measures more punitive than they needed to be.

In a letter to the board which they say hasn’t been properly answered they say: “We understand that everyone, including Wasps, have had to deal with increased energy costs, however, our rental agreements clearly state that ‘gas and electricity standing charges and consumption costs for normal use’ is included in our rents, and we weren't given any opportunity to discuss the matter and look at other possible solutions.”

Wasps Chair, Karen Anderson

They also expressed concern over a top-down management culture which has recently treated their concerns in a high-handed manner. This, they say, is a direct consequence of Wasps management board moving away from an artist-led organisation into a corporate entity comprising affluent and well-heeled professionals from commerce who have scant awareness of artists’ temperaments and the unique challenges of making art.

These include sudden increases in rents and a gross under-representation of tenants on the board of trustees. They also believe the board’s conduct in selling off their West Park Place building in Edinburgh was questionable. After renting it for 25 years from Edinburgh City Council they bought it for £1 in 2021.

In the Save Our Studios letter, the campaigners stated: “Were you not aware of the poor state of repair the building was in when you purchased it? Did you not have it surveyed? Or was it your plan all along to sell it off, using the prohibitive costs of getting the building up to a safe standard as an excuse? The upheaval to West Park Place tenants can't simply be rectified by the promise of a move to another building.”

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In an interview with The Herald, Karen Anderson refuted these claims and said she simply didn’t recognise the organisation as portrayed by the campaigners.

Yet, she admitted there were “trust issues” and a need to improve communication and engagement with tenants. She also pointed to the perfect storm of economic jeopardies currently swirling around Scotland’s arts and culture sector and tacitly criticised the Scottish Government’s inadequate response in mitigating them.

“I simply don’t recognise the organisation that you’re describing,” she said. “I’m new to this job, having only been appointed five months ago, but I’ve been in contact with West Park Place and tenants in our other properties in Edinburgh.

“If some people believe there has been intimidation of tenants then that’s profoundly concerning. What I will say though, is that at a recent meeting I had in Edinburgh, some of the tenants were intimidating our staff. I realise passions are running high, but shouting at our hard-working staff members is not acceptable.

Inverness Creative Academy

“At our next board meeting in September we’ll be discussing serious proposals to establish tenants’ forums and also a code of conduct. This is something I’ve been urging since I got here.”

Nor does she accept that there was a better way of managing a more equitable tenants’ rent model.

“We had a situation where original tenants were playing very much less that our new tenants and we tried to balance that out. It would have been a huge leap for some of the original tenants, so we’ve been doing it gradually.

“We’re accused of a lack of transparency, but this simply isn’t true. All of our expenditure and outgoings are out there in the public domain.”

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“This is an organisation responsible for millions of pounds. As such, we’re required to have expert, professional representation on our board, including legal, accounting and buildings, of which we have 20. We’ve brought together all the skills that OSCR (Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator) requires of a modern, well-functioning charity.”

Herein perhaps, lies the essence of the matter. On one side are gathered a community of gentle souls, dedicated to their art and who sit slightly apart, detached a little from the temporal and gnarly concerns of the rest of us. We give them this space because we know, though we might not understand it fully, that what they do is beneficial to the temper of the nation.

On the other side is a board of professional volunteers who feel duty-bound to apply the unsentimental rules of private commerce to ensure that this much-loved old collective can negotiate harsh economic conditions. A common factor is evident in most of the dissident tenants’ complaints: a lack of communication, leading to an erosion of trust. 

Briggait tenants 

Ms Anderson seems to acknowledge this: “Wasps has grown enormously since the 1990s. The board has had to become fully professional in outlook, but that doesn’t mean it should be remote. There’s a rosy perception of the past, but wasps encountered problems in the past and that’s why we had to assemble a professional board. But I fully recognise that we need to communicate better.

“I’m eager to get the balance right, but I will never apologise for what wasps has become. In Inverness, for example, we’ve been working with NHS Scotland’s and social work outreaches to connect with people who might not otherwise get the chance to encounter the arts.

“We obtained West Park for £1 and of course we did a survey before acquiring it. How could we not? I’m an architect to trade. We also conducted another survey and discovered it had deteriorated over the two-year Covid period and that there was a structural failure. That’s when we realised it was going to cost £4m to repair.

“I make no excuse if Wasps expands its property portfolio. It’s because we need creativity in places like the Highlands. I think we need to be pragmatic about how we do that. I won’t apologise for what Wasps has become.

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“I know some artists feel it’s no longer about them, but that’s what we’ve got to sort. There are cultural issues there, but we need to find a way of squaring the circle, which is why I’ve pledged to meet the Save Our Studios tenants in person.”

Ms Anderson believes that convincing the Scottish Government to recognise what artists and makers bring to the country must be her main priority. “Our government must realise, for instance, that there has to be green energy support for the cultural sector as well as business.

“We’d also like them to re-visit the reduction in grants to organisations like Creative Scotland. These might not seem big, but they’re huge for many small organisations. In relative terms, the arts are not that expensive. It’s not operatic levels we’re talking about here.

“One proposal our trustees will be considering is to ask the tenants to advise us in this regard. It can’t get any more inclusive than that.”