Community involvement creating embroidery panel Creative Land Trust

Impact

Creative Land Trust is building a long-term portfolio of permanent creative infrastructure across London. Our impact on artists, communities and the capital is already being felt in individual artists’ lives, their ecosystems and outreach to local communities.

How Creative Land Trust creates long-term change

CLT is a creative placekeeper; its role is distinct from studio provision. It secures permanent creative infrastructure that would otherwise be difficult to protect through the market alone.

What Creative Land Trust does

THE CHALLENGE

Rising land values, redevelopment pressure and insecure leases are shrinking affordable creative space in London and increasing precarity for artists and providers.

Foundational outcomes

0-36 months

WHAT CLT DOES

  • Secures buildings

  • Protects affordability

  • Partners providers

  • Supports artists

  • Shapes policy

Artist outcomes

1-5 years

  • Workspace secured

  • Providers stabilised

  • Infrastructure retained

Place outcomes

3-7 years

  • Practice sustained

  • Careers opened

  • Access widen

  • Artists retained

System outcomes

5+ years

  • Communities grow

  • Local engagement rises

  • Creativity visible

  • Places enriched

Long-term impact

  • Infrastructure recognised

  • Policy strengthened

  • Model informs others

LONG-TERM IMPACT

A London where artists from all backgrounds build long-term careers, creative communities remain rooted in neighbourhoods, and affordable creative infrastructure is protected.

Creative infrastructure

Securing affordable space for the long term

73%

say they have extended their professional network in the building

87%

say they are confident they can keep their studio long-term

90%

choose to renew their studio rental contracts

50%

of new studio holders were working from home before

182

Artists supported

90%

say they are confident in the long-term provision of their building

93%

agreed their space is affordable

100%

say their studio is essential to their creative development

Our impact includes:

  • A growing portfolio of permanent artist studio space across the capital
  • Hundreds of artists supported
  • Buildings protected for creative use in perpetuity
  • Strong and sustained demand for affordable workspace
  • Long-term cultural and community benefit within neighbourhoods across London

We work collaboratively with studio providers, developers, local authorities, funders and communities to strengthen London’s long-term creative infrastructure.

Our Reports

We commission reports to help illustrate the impact and importance of affordable creative workspace for artists, communities, place, the economy and society.

Nothing Found

Our Reports

We commission reports to help illustrate the impact and importance of affordable creative workspace for artists, communities, place, the economy and society.

Nothing Found

Research

Creative Land Trust was conceived following a series of reports highlighting the challenges of sustaining creative industries in prospering cities, and the risks poses to our culture and economies if the sector is not protected.

Since then, we have seen unprecedented changes to communities and industries. COVID-19 highlighted the fragility of our creative industries as well as shedding light on many other challenges within the sector.

As we continue to understand and forecast the many external forces that affect studio provision, we will document findings, reports and case studies to help inform our support of the sector.

  • Impact Investing in the Global Creative Economy

    Creative, Culture, Capital (January 2021)

    As business evolves to be more than just profit-driven this report focuses on how cultural institutions can demonstrate impact in order to understand new avenues for funding.

  • Representation of Female Artists in Britain

    Freelands Foundation (November 2020)

    Only 29% of solo exhibitions at London’s major institutions are by women. Freelands Foundation release their 6th annual report looking at representation of women artists in Britain. Looking specifically at the way that gender, ethnicity and socio-economic factors intersect and impact on the career outcomes for artists.

  • Re-use and Recycle to Reduce Carbon

    Historic England (February 2020)

    We must prioritise the refurbishment and reuse of existing buildings if we are to actually reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change.

  • NEftA Creative Placemaking

    This white paper summarises two decades of creative American placemaking, drawing on original economic research and case studies of pathbreaking initiatives in large and small cities, metropolitan to rural, as well as published accounts.

Research

Creative Land Trust was conceived following a series of reports highlighting the challenges of sustaining creative industries in prospering cities, and the risks posed to our culture and economies if the sector is not protected.

Since then, we have seen unprecedented changes to communities and industries. COVID-19 highlighted the fragility of our creative industries as well as shedding light on many other challenges within the sector.

As we continue to understand and forecast the many external forces that affect studio provision, we will document findings, reports and case studies to help inform our support of the sector.

  • The Art of the Workplace

    Brookfield Properties (Oct 2022)

    New research evidencing for the first time since the pandemic the positive benefits of arts and culture in the workplace for office workers’ wellbeing, creativity and connectivity. The Art of the Workplace Report reveals what makes offices nationwide happier places to work and the importance of wellbeing in the workplace.

  • Making High Streets Work

    Station to Station, Station to station, Lambeth, Leap, Mayor of London, prd, and a small studio. (April 2022)

    ‘Business office space rents in LB Lambeth increased by 71% between 2009-2019, whilst light industrial rents rose by more than 80%’ The reports demonstrates the local and London wide need for workspace, whether that ‘hot desking’ or co-working spaces, light industrial studios for makers & artists.