Creativity is the energy that propels society forward and artists fuel this change through their imagination and work. While great minds are present everywhere, often their imagination does not see the light of the day as most lack financial support, domain guidance, mentorship, infrastructure and tools scarcity. In an industry where the famous get more famous and those who do not succeed vanish under the blanket of failure, a critical support system is required to help our artists to fulfil their dreams. Guilds, associations do a good job in filling this void, but that is not sufficient.

We need smaller tribes where personal attention, mentorship is imparted to the artists, and meaningful connections are made which help them through the arduous journey for recognition of their work. Thankfully, coworking spaces are filling this void. Either through their own or with collaboration with local Governments, art foundations, philanthropist, teachers and professionals who wish to give back to the community.

Why Coworking Spaces for Artists Are Thriving In India

Artists are creative people, who could be sculptors, photographers, printmakers, painters, illustrators, calligraphers, and graphic designers. In India, coworking spaces for artists offer a creative atmosphere along with the necessary amenities to meet their unique interests.

Why Coworking required for Artists?

Artists could either be professionals or hobbyists planning to launch their art career sometime soon. If you belong to the league of either, you’ll need shared office spaces for artists due to several reasons, the key ones being as follows:

1) Distraction-free environment: The creative effort of artists needs a conducive work setting. Working from home or a garage often involves battling multiple distractions, which could be your family members barging in or your friends or neighbors dropping by. Even when you share your work schedule with family and friends, you may still find it difficult to protect your creative time. That’s where a coworking space for artists can come to your rescue by offering you a distraction-free creative space where you can dedicate regular time to produce your artwork.

2)The necessary equipment: Apart from the distraction-free physical space, you’ll also need adequate lighting and other equipment to work on your art projects. Depending on which particular art form you’re working upon, the equipment offered by shared office spaces for artists could include work tables, easels, 3D printers, etching press, silkscreen press, aquatint machine, hot plate, and acid room, to name a few.

3) A motivating community: Art is communication at a very basic and emotional level. As an artist, you simply can’t create your art in a vacuum. Whether your goal is to achieve artistic excellence, financial stability, recognition, or all three, you’ll need a motivating community that fosters ideation, brainstorming, experimentation, innovation, sharing, feedback, and even collaboration and networking. When you work in the company of other like-minded people in a shared office space for artists, you’ll get all these to stay motivated. This will help you to create a consistent body of artwork.

4) Mentoring and guidance: Some artists develop their artistic vision with clarity in their career’s early stages while others may need to experiment and explore before discovering what their true passion is. The latter may try various art media, subjects, styles, themes, and presentations to find their true calling. If you’re an artist exploring your options to figure out your career path, guidance and mentoring offered by coworking spaces for artists could help. Even if you’re a pro and need ideas to bring some variety in your body of work, such mentoring sessions could help.

5) Educational and marketing opportunities: Several coworking spaces for artists host workshops, webinars, Q&A sessions, etc. that will help in your personal and professional growth.  Some of these shared office spaces for artists also organize events, exhibitions, etc. that would help you to showcase your work of art to potential buyers.

In case your chosen shared office spaces for artists has an art gallery, it would also benefit you tremendously by letting you display your creativity to both potential clients and collaborators. Some of these coworking spaces for artists may even decide to use artwork created by their members for their interior décor, which is rotated regularly to craft an ever-changing visual appeal for their members. This also encourages the artists to display their work to the local community.

Now that you know the importance of coworking spaces for artists, you’ll need to focus on the key factors to choose the most suitable one.

What Artists should look while choosing a Coworking Space?

A coworking space for artists that offers all or most of the above should be your ideal pick. Here’re the things you should look for when choosing a shared office space:

1) A supportive and collaborative work environment: Not everyone will understand your creative process or why you do what you do as an artist. Since any creative process comes with a certain degree of vulnerability, it would need communal understanding and support to thrive. When looking for a shared office space for artists, you should focus on the type of people who work there. If they work in a similar field, obsess over the same details as you do, and support and collaborate with their peers, you would be motivated to work in such a conducive environment.

2) Necessary amenities and equipment: In addition to a creative and collaborative atmosphere, coworking spaces for artists should also offer all the necessary amenities and equipment that you require for your creative pursuits. Thus, from standard amenities like AC, tea and coffee, security, and reception to access to equipment like table spaces and shelves, easels, 3D printers, and more, you need to ensure you’ll get everything that you need.

3)Opportunities for professional growth: From workshops, seminars, and webinars conducted by leading names of the art industry to mentoring sessions, collaboration, and networking opportunities, your chosen coworking spaces for artists should offer a wide range of opportunities for professional growth. Be it learning how to find your true calling, creating a digital portfolio, promoting your art, finding clients, or managing your financials, you’ll be able to learn and implement a lot of useful techniques and tips to grow your career in art.

Which are best Coworking Spaces for Artists in India?

1) ArtBuzz Studios, Delhi

If you’re an art student, art professional, or hobbyist looking for a shared office space for artists, this vibrant and creative hub is just what you need. Apart from a creative setting that fosters innovation, growth, and networking, ArtBuzz Studios also hosts open houses, training modules, and workshops by industry experts.

2) Harkat Studios, Andheri West, Mumbai

This international boutique studio is the ideal destination for everything innovative and artsy. Though Harkat focuses on films, it also welcomes artists working in the domain of new media, contemporary art, and community art.

3) Jaaga, Bangalore

Jaaga offers coworking and collaborating opportunities for creators, entrepreneurs, and learners. The not-for-profit wing (Jaaga Trust) of this coworking space for artists operates residencies and programs to help creators solve urban issues via design practice and researched arts.

 

Which are best Coworking Spaces for Artists in Global Market?

Here we celebrate a few of these remarkable initiatives that make the artist behind the art survive and succeed :

1. ESDIP Berlin: Berlin, Germany. ESDIP coworking space is part of the prestigious ESDIP art school in Madrid. The Berlin location houses a combination of teachers, professional creatives and artists who are all around to interact and collaborate with the coworking community. They have 50 workstations within their coworking space, event space, an art gallery and an acclaimed art school. Membership is granted to people who are artists, illustrators, designers, cartoonists, photographers and writers.

The main draw for members is the focussed art workshops which are conducted by experts and often help in artists improving their knowledge and skills. One such workshop is the 2-hour classical drawing workshop conducted once a month on Friday. It\'s for artists of all levels and encourages interaction with fellow artists. There is no formal tuition given. It is an open session and hugely popular due to the introductions and friends coworking members make here. Members can also take courses offered by the school. For an artist, this is the best coworking space in Berlin. Oh, and did we mention pets are allowed. Nice, isn’t it.  

2. Arebyte Studios: London, UK. Arebyte understands artists and creators need more space and an environment conducive to thinking and creating. For that, they need open space, place to walk about, and creative spaces to brainstorm. Making artists as its main customer segment, Arebyte Studios has a combination of coworking desks and studio space based out of 10 locations in London.

Their members are animators, fashion designers, photographers, artists, fabric markers, digital pros, musicians and DJs. They have a photo shoot studio and exhibition space available for rent. The exhibition space as well and regularly host various guest artists. Their hotel generation programme helps non-London young artists to develop themselves and exhibit their work as a solo exhibition with full support from the space. Four artists are shortlisted for a three-month development programme which trains and exposes them to both the creative and commercial aspects of becoming an independent artist.

Their work is showcased at the end of the year, and further funding and support are offered for the future. Most coworking spaces try to build a community of like-minded people and connect the individuals. Some go further and add value to the ecosystem and society. Arebyte does so for arts and culture successfully.

3. CREATIVE SPACES: Melbourne, Australia. An initiative of the City of Melbourne Arts Melbourne Branch, this unique concept goes beyond the usual coworking space and fulfil its mission of providing space for arts and cultural production to flourish. Thus the organisation partners private, educational and government institutions bringing the various stakeholders within the ecosystem of arts and culture and connecting them to enable artists development. CREATIVE SPACES themselves manage two coworking and studio spaces, Boyd School Studios & River Studios and two exhibition spaces, The Dirty Dozen, Capsule & Assembly Point.

Their vibrant and diverse artist community includes multidisciplinary artists, writers, photographers, visual artists, jewellery and object designers, painters, composers, textile designers, architects and engineers and a filmmaker. The huge community is a beehive of creative minds. If you are not in Melbourne, CREATIVE SPACES also offers a directory listing of creative spaces, across Australia. These range from coworking spaces, artist and photography studios, rehearsal and performance space, pop-up spaces etc. for free, sharing basis and hire. Presently they have a total of 1363 spaces listed here. It is an impressive effort by the City of Melbourne, Melbourne Arts Branch.

We hope more and more local councils, arts and cultural organisations realise the advantageous position they are in and the tools and infrastructure they have at their disposal to bring together an ecosystem and enable artists and local culture to flourish. 

4. RADIANT HALL: Pittsburgh, US. RADIANT HALL is a non-profit foundation whose mission is to create and preserve a studio environment for working artists. Started in 2012, by Ryan Lammie who was looking for a studio space it evolved into first inviting friends and then as the word spread, local artist community. Now it has three spaces for coworking among artists, operating out of Nova Place, located in Central North Side, RADIANT HALL in Lawrenceville and SUSQUEHANNA in Homewood. All provide a communal place and semi-private and private artist studios ranging in 90 square feet for a half studio to 440 square feet for a double size studio. Its open plan studio space approach encourages collaboration, coworking and sharing of ideas.

For members it also offers online artist profile on its website, participation in their twice a year, spring and fall Open doors where public is invited to tour the studios, 1 on 1 studio critiques with curators, artists or critics, artist spotlight in newsletter and finally artists can also request promotion from RADIANT HALL for their exhibitions and talks. A fully dedicated community to artists and its fast growth, focus on the artist than just monetary benefit, the assurance of non-displacement for artists is a huge benefit for the Pittsburgh artist community and a critical nerve centre for the community to cowork, collaborate and flourish.

5. SMART SPACE STUDIOS: New York, US. It is impossible not to mention New York when it comes to art and culture. With spectacular museums and art galleries, New York is a melting pot of artists and creative people. Victoria Mile, an advertising executive and one such part-time painter experienced first hand it was increasingly hard to find an affordable studio space to work in Manhattan.

To solve this problem, she launched SMART STUDIO SPACES in Oct 2016 which quickly grew to 20 members and is now a thriving affordable coworking space for artists right in Manhattan. Located on 1178 Broadway, a 24-hour space, it offers access to studios A-L, storage, easels, use of common areas, lockers and drying racks. It offers basic membership from $450 per month to premium membership at $650 per month. For the hobbyist and part-timers, the coworking studio space also offers a weekend membership of only $275 per month. SMART SPACE STUDIOS has plans to launch private 200 square fit studios soon. It is truly a coworking studio space made by artists for artists.

6. Wejha Art Center: Kuwait City, Kuwait . An interesting addition to the list and based out of Kuwait, is this artist coworking space.
Interesting because when I reached out to the founder, Mr. Abdulaziz, he mentioned unable to view this site as he does not have permission to access (I am assuming people do not have permission to access external sites in Kuwait). Read more about our interview with Mr. Abdulaziz here.

7. 104factory: Paris, France We would like to also give a shout-out to 104factory, an accelerator for artists and creative industries supporting innovative projects influencing culture and also those having social impact.

The above coworking spaces are best fit for designers, creatives, sculpturers, painters, visual artists, photographers, videographers, textile designers, filmmakers, illustrators, cartoonists, writers, jewellery designer, fashion designer, composers etc.