We help artists understand and engage with both the art world and the real world: from building networks, finding opportunities, earning money or getting exhibitions to understanding their legal rights, finding affordable accommodation or doing their tax.
To create and develop our programmes we gather intelligence from artists, both through the programme and via research. This covers topics like how and why artists work, their partnerships, and wider visual arts activity. We match this with research from outside of the arts to put it in context, creating new resources and insights. We use all this to build new projects with our partners to help artists meet their ambition.
Our programme is for professional artists at any stage in their careers, working in any medium. Funded by Arts Council England’s London regional office as part of their national portfolio, we have a non-exclusive focus on practice in London. We are an externally-facing programme of UAL, Europe’s largest creative higher education institution. Our programmes are free and open to any professional artist no matter where they studied, including self-taught artists.
Artquest is programmed and run by three part-time workers, all artists, alongside on average 60 artist freelancers who variously write, advise, manage and programme our projects.
Our projects run alongside our regular programme of advice and information, seed funding for peer mentoring groups, monthly advisory studio visits, free online legal advice, a free online studio exchange service, and various resources for new graduates and art school tutors. We do not charge membership fees, our core services are provided free of charge, and many of our projects provide funding for artists development.
All of our content (except Artlaw) is distributed under a Creative Commons non-commercial, attribution, share-alike license.
To keep up to date, join our email newsletter or follow us on Twitter (use #artopps to hear about opportunities from us and our partners), Vimeo, YouTube and SoundCloud.
Our staff
Nick Kaplony: after graduating from Camberwell College of Art and having worked as assistant curator at the Arts Gallery London and Pump House Gallery Nick joined the Artquest team in June 2007. Nick is a practicing artist and freelance curator. His areas of expertise include: education and community projects; exhibition marketing; curating; the public gallery sector; funding applications.
Russell Martin: a graduate of The Glasgow School of Art who has lived in London since 1998. Initially working in gallery education, his self-initiated projects include workshops, residencies, peer mentoring, artist-led galleries, radio programmes, and a series of interdisciplinary arts social events. Russell has been a member of the board at The Showroom, Block 336 and City and Guilds of London Art School, and is an advisor for PRAKSIS, an artist residency in Oslo. His areas of expertise include: collaboration; co-operatives; peer mentoring projects; artist-led spaces; education and community projects; funding applications and general presentation skills; artists networks; negotiation.
Tom Pope: graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2011 and has worked extensively in education and events before joining Artquest in September 2018. His areas of expertise include: gallery education, commissions, arts events, private funding and sponsorship. Tom’s artistic practice combines performative strategies with photography in a collaborative and playful manner, while additionally undertaking large scale participatory performance projects.
Front page image kindly provided by Michael Heeny.
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