Artists do not create entirely alone, however solitary the studio may sometimes feel.
Around every finished work lies a less visible infrastructure: the person who mentioned an open call, shared a studio lead, recommended a framer, explained a funding application or made an introduction that eventually became an exhibition.
In Liverpool, much of that connective work has been quietly undertaken for more than a decade by Liverpool Artists’ Network.
Founded in 2015 by artists Josie Jenkins and Colette Lilley, the grassroots organisation began with a straightforward ambition: to create opportunities for artists working across different studios and parts of the city to meet, exchange ideas and support one another.
Eleven years later, the network has unveiled a redesigned website intended to make Liverpool and Merseyside’s visual-art ecology easier to find - and easier to join.
That's vital in a city celebrated internationally for its culture, but where the people making that culture must still navigate many of the same practical difficulties faced by artists elsewhere: precarious income, limited studio space, fragmented information and the challenge of becoming visible without access to established institutions or professional networks.
A website cannot solve all those problems. It can, however, make the landscape feel less impenetrable.
The rebuilt Liverpool Artists’ Network site brings together a searchable Directory of Creatives, listings for exhibitions and professional opportunities, practical resources and an ArtMap locating galleries, studios, workshops, framers and other creative spaces across Liverpool and Merseyside.
Artists can use it to find open calls, jobs, residencies, commissions and funding. Members of the public can discover painters, photographers, illustrators, makers and other creative practitioners working around them.
It is part noticeboard, part map and part introduction.
“We’re really excited about the website relaunch,” Jenkins said.
“Colette and I are always thinking about how we can make Liverpool Artists’ Network the most useful resource possible for artists and the wider public. We genuinely believe that LAN has something incredibly valuable to offer, and the new website really reflects that.
“It also captures the personality of LAN and represents the community our network has grown from.”
There is always a danger that moving resources online makes an organisation technically efficient while leaving it less human.
Liverpool Artists’ Network says its redesigned site is intended to achieve the opposite: strengthening the personal relationships that have always sat behind its digital resources.
The organisation continues to run networking events, peer-support activity, informal advice sessions and online “Ask Us Anything” conversations. Its events have included artist meetings, rapid Slide Slam presentations and Artists’ Speed Dating - a strictly platonic means of placing creative people who might otherwise never meet in conversation with one another.
The humour of that title is characteristic of a network which has deliberately remained approachable. The visual arts can appear forbidding from the outside, surrounded by specialist language and institutions whose routes of entry are not always obvious.
LAN’s model begins with a much simpler proposition: artists should be able to find one another and ask for help.
“When we redesigned the website, we wanted to create something that felt welcoming and enjoyable to explore,” Lilley said, “making it easier for people to connect with artists, organisations and opportunities.
“The website is now easier to navigate, so artists and visitors can find information quickly, discover creative talent and engage with the many opportunities and resources available through LAN.”
That accessibility is significant not only for artists, but for audiences.
People may live within a few streets of studios, makers and exhibition spaces without knowing they exist. Independent cultural activity is often dispersed across temporary venues, repurposed buildings and small organisations without the advertising reach of major institutions.
A functioning local network makes that activity legible. It allows people to see not simply a succession of individual events, but a creative community occupying and interpreting the city around them.
Liverpool Artists’ Network’s distinctiveness lies partly in the fact that it remains run by artists for artists.
Its knowledge has not been assembled at a distance. It comes from years spent working within the city’s cultural life and understanding the everyday questions that accompany a creative practice.
Where can work be shown? Who has studio space? Is an opportunity properly paid? Which organisations offer support? How does an emerging artist begin to build relationships without already possessing the confidence, language or connections expected of them?
These may appear to be administrative questions, but they shape whose work is made, encountered and sustained.
Talent is distributed widely. Opportunity sometimes is not.
Artist-led networks clearly cannot correct every inequality within the cultural sector, but they can reduce the role played by insider knowledge. A public directory gives artists another route towards visibility. A shared opportunity can reach somebody beyond the usual circle. An informal conversation can make an intimidating professional world feel navigable.
The value is cumulative and not always easy to measure. One connection leads to a collaboration; one listing to a commission; one first meeting to a relationship that continues for years.
It might seem less spectacular than an exhibition opening - but it is perhaps more fundamental.
Liverpool’s cultural reputation rests upon landmark institutions, major events and a history recognised far beyond the city. But it is renewed by people working in spare rooms, shared studios, workshops, former industrial buildings and small independent spaces.
They need audiences. They need one another. And sometimes, they need a reliable place that tells them what is happening and where they might fit within it.
Liverpool Artists’ Network’s new website provides that place online. Its greater achievement is the community of knowledge, generosity and mutual support waiting behind it.
Explore the Directory of Creatives, ArtMap and current opportunities through the Liverpool Artists’ Network website.
Header image: Slide Slam at the Bluecoat
