Collaborations with Asylum Artist Quarter
ROUNDABOUT
Public Art Space
Our work alongside the Asylum Artist Quarter’s #Roundabout public art space project, in Wolverhampton’s Chapel Ash subway, saw our clients work alongside amazing creatives including light artist David Checkley, world-renowned AR artist Hayley Wall, Black Country steel sculptor Luke Perry, and eco-artist Billy Haynes. This Arts Council-funded project has been a yearlong gradual regeneration of a space that was inaccessible to people, considered unsafe, and a place where risk and drug use was prevalent. It is now a place of beauty.
Luke’s sculpture, co-created by SUIT’s Matt Lloyd and installed in the underpass alongside three other powerful works, provides a memorial to past addictions, the resilience of recovery, and the value of lived experience in our community. To see the community visiting the sculpture, reading the words, engaging with our stories, shows such significance and hope. The project came to an end in August 2024, but it has left a legacy and exciting proposals between local artists, and SUIT clients and volunteers…
Asylum Artist Studios with artwork by
[P R O] F I L E
Alternative Art School
SUIT’s inclusion on the #ROUNDABOUT programme in 2024 gave service users the platform to start seeing a creative outlet for recovery as a serious career pathway. Asylum are now delivering a programme that aims to better represent our recovery communities within existing cultural infrastructure, equips them with the tools needed to enter the sector, supports them to expand their artistic practise and continue being an artist beyond the programme.
Asylum’s incredible programme allows clients referred through SUIT to undertake a programme where they can access artist studios, skills workshops and develop their artistic practise within a program of activity co-designed with the cohort. Through multiple showcasing opportunities the focus is to raise the profile and experience of the individuals to enter the professional sector and include their lived experience in the cultural ecology of the city.
The programme includes:
Studio space time
121 mentoring with Curators & producers about their art practise
Group crits & showcase of progress
Workshops with skilled practitioners
Contribution to travel, bursary for materials and production budget for events/exhibition
Partnerships with existing initiatives to showcase work regularly and a final showcase in the Spotlight gallery at Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
Partnerships with local cultural organisations and artists for shadowing days and mentoring
Trip to two other galleries for a knowledge sharing day
Facilitating their attendance to local networking groups
IPS Specialist supporting accessing employment opportunities in the professional creative arts.
Professional documentation of their work
Informal mentoring through a peer buddy system and the support of creative arts lead from SUIT
Supporting the cohort to pursue a work opportunity as an outcome post completion
Click the button below to see what our artists have been working on
