Thank you so much for joining us.

It's really interesting actually. I don't have one of those pivotal moments that I kind of really remember as this kind of starting point. But I always loved art as a child, my granddad was very creative, so I drew with him on weekends. And one of the first things I remember is drawing Spitfires, airplanes, he was really into that. And then just really loved being creative, but I don't have a formative experience of going to a gallery or a museum, like something that was kind of very pivotal in that way. I suppose I just enjoyed it, and then chose the subjects that I chose through school and then into university. So I did a foundation art and design and then a fine art degree and then worked for a little while in a print studio in Leicester. I suppose there, that's where I really felt like I honed my love of learning. I think, I work in learning because I love learning myself, I love those kind of moments where you're leading a workshop or you're working with people and they have this spark or this feeling, this moment that you just see where they do something that they feel super proud of, or achieved something that they just thought wasn't for them. And I think that's the thing that keeps me going. It's the moments that I do my job for really. And then yeah, I decided to go back and study and did an MA in printmaking. And alongside that I worked for an art gallery in Bristol Spike Island, and there was opened up to the world of gallery education and working in galleries and meeting artists. And I suppose for me, my approach largely comes from being that practical background of studying art as an artist, exhibiting, kind of leading workshops, being the artist who now is, you know, the people that I work with, and knowing kind of what's important and to the approach of how we work for them. And then yeah, I came to Camden Art Centre in 2016, so from Bristol, from that job at Spike Island, and have been there since.

Well, the focus on learning. It's an international art gallery that places learning of equal importance as what's happening in the exhibition spaces. As part of the learning team, we sit within a wider programme team with exhibition curators, public programmes, residency curators, and we have conversations about the programmes that we work on, it's very audience focused. It's also that really lovely balance between a small organisation - it's a medium sized organisation, so it's not too big, so there's not as much bureaucracy as some of the larger institutions. But it's not too small, you have a big enough team to do the things that you want to do. And we always say that we're zone two, we're a bit like a regional organisation, a regional gallery, but in London, and I think for me, I moved to London for my job at Camden Art Centre, but I'm a regional girl at heart, I think. So there's something about the feel of the place when you walk into it, and the people that work there, that's super special.

Yeah. So actually, Camden Art Centre started its life 50 something years ago as Hampstead Library, and then changed to Hampstead Art Centre, and then into Camden Art Centre. The thing that started Camden Art Centre were the courses. So it's always had that kind of learning through it, we've got a ceramic studio, we have a drawing studio, but more than drawing happens in there. We've got an artist studio for residencies and projects, and then three gallery spaces for exhibiting artists. We're not massive in scale, like I said, we're that kind of really lovely size organisation, there's two floors. The learning studios are super visible, so you see the ceramic studio as soon as you walk in the building, you walk through a bookshop, up the stairs, or go up in the lift to the next level, where there's the three gallery spaces, the artist studio and the drawing studio, all on the same level. So actually, it's really natural for a group to come in, go through the gallery spaces, and then into the drawing studio, or vice versa. We also have a lovely garden, and we do use that quite a lot in the learning programme and the public programme with events, particularly in the summer, it's really unique to have that space. The artists that we show are often, you know, it's an education working for Camden Art Centre, often there will be the first kind of show that the artist will have had in London or in the UK. So we'll work with a mixture of established artists from across the world, and they might have a larger scale show in one of the bigger gallery spaces or we will work with more emerging artists or new commissions in that gallery three space. So it's a real mixture. Lots of the people that we've worked on have gone on to have big shows at Tate, you know, won Turner prizes. It's kind of that moment where kind of artists come and are nurtured. And I think yeah, like you said at the start in your introduction, it's very artist focused in all that we do.

Super broad, really. So we are called Camden Art Centre, but we're not in Camden. We're in Camden Borough, which is where the name comes from. But we actually sit on the Finchley Road, so we're between Hampstead and West Hampstead, which are quite affluential areas. So we have really a real mix of people that come through the center, from people that book on to courses, come to use the cafe, you know, obviously arts sector people that come through to the exhibitions. But largely, the role of the learning programme is to bring and find those people that aren't coming, and give them an experience that's supported through the spaces. So whether that is through outreach projects in schools, nurseries, family centres, youth centres, bringing people into the building for workshops, or going off into their settings, and then kind of working with artists, in both onsite and off site, obviously, most recently, online, developing programmes in that way. For the learning programme, really, our target has always been people in the boroughs of Camden, Brent, Barnett, and Harrow. So it's always been very much about locality. Whereas now, with some of the online spaces that we've created, we do have young people attending our youth collective online project from across the world, and two of our core members, one is in Lagos, one is in Azerbaijan, actually. And then we do have London and other places in the UK. So that's been quite a kind of different feel for us. But essentially, the main aim is to kind of reach people who walk past that building every day and think what is that red brick building on the corner of Arkwright Road, perhaps think that it's not a space that is for them, or potentially, have never been into a gallery space before. We've all got spaces that we've never been into before. I've never been to a football game or, you know, things like that. There's just things that aren't in your history, they're not in your background, your parents didn't go to a gallery space, so potentially, why would you ever go to a gallery space, unless something happened through an experience, through school, or something you see on social media that I suppose interests you. But a really broad audience in terms of background, but also age group, and that is very specific to the learning programme, really, as well. And I think one of the things to say is obviously we've been in this time, through the pandemic, the Camden Art Centre is still closed. And through this time of working remotely and being outside of the building, it's made us even more interested and passionate, and kind of it feels the urgency to think about that locality and that positioning and the people who are local to us and how we engage them.

Yeah, I suppose the main thing to say is we don't have a collection. So it's always a challenge working in a gallery team, because you are creating projects and programmes and resources around something you haven't seen yet. And that needs to be accessible from the first day of the exhibition, but you haven't seen the exhibition in making it. And actually, I haven't actually ever worked in the museum, so I've never worked with a collection, this is just a really natural way of working for me. And it means that there's a real focus on research, kind of talking to the artists and picking things, looking at what they've done previously, and kind of really like going deeper into context around the work. So the main difference is, there's not a collection, things that are constantly shifting, we have different exhibitions that are generally on, but anything between an 8 to 12 week basis as change, and then we have a two week change installation period, and everything shifts again. And the spaces changed quite dramatically. Now, commercial galleries are set for sales. So non-commercial, which is kind of where we sit in the public sector, is more about kind of coming and seeing work and kind of enjoying it for the work itself, the experience of viewing it, how it's curated, what the artist is kind of wanting to say from that. It also means that artists can take more risks. It's not necessarily about selling something at the end of it, it's about those kinds of conversations and discussions and the things that they want to say. But quite often, the artists that we do work with are represented by a commercial gallery. So often you'll see, on the website page, like it's supported by XYZ, which might be a commercial gallery in New York or London or wherever the artist is from, or not really. So that's the difference, really, the lack of collection, the consistent changing of exhibitions, and not having a focus on artists selling work, it's very much about seeing and experiencing, enjoying and discussing, and all the things that go around those creative experiences of seeing and enjoying artwork.

So we have a development team who are the fundraisers for the organisation. We are an Arts Council national portfolio organisation, which means that we receive regular funding from the Arts Council, which we then reapply for, on three to four year cycles. And then we're funded through a variety of different ways. So different trusts and foundations, so individuals or larger scale trusts like Esmée Fairbairn, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, John Lyon's Charity is one of the biggest funders, specifically for the learning programme. So we'll go to them for specific projects or for core funding towards certain aspects of the programme. And then there's individuals, so patrons, people with individual wealth, who would like to support the arts, who either approach us or we approach them, if we feel something would be of interest. That all sits with the development team, but as a head of learning, it's a large part of my job. So a large part of my role is going to patrons events, or doing different talks, and evaluation of really thinking about the impact that we're making through those projects. And we do that for ourselves, but it doesn't hurt when you've got a really kind of good evaluation report or a really kind of structured reflection point to then show funders the impact that you are making with the projects that you're doing on the audiences that you're working with.

I mean, for me, it really means that anybody should be able to walk into our spaces and have an experience that feels meaningful to them. So some examples of that would be on a special educational needs schools programme, we employ an artist who has lived experience of disability, learning disability. We work closely with Action Space, who are a charity who supports artists with learning disabilities. And we pay a support fee to them, we work really closely. So it means that we enable Evan, when he walks in the door, or opens Zoom, which is what they're doing at the moment, has the same level of experience as the other two artists that he works with on the programme. I don't need to phone him, like talk to him about times, check in on certain things that are to do with needs. Action Space, do that, so he can be seen on the same level and have the same experience as the artists who do not have those additional needs. And I suppose, when I say do not have additional needs, they actually do have needs themselves, so we think about things like parents, mothers having time off to give birth and not losing your place on a project that you've worked on for six months or something. It's really broad, those terms, and I know that can be difficult, but actually, for me, my approach is, at the start of any conversation that we have with artists, is thinking about what that artist needs in order to work with us in the best way possible, and make sure all of their needs are catered for. And that's the same for the audiences. And I suppose for me, it's also part of saying, admitting what you don't know, you know, I'm a specialist, and we're a specialist in visual arts, in gallery education, but I don't know what a young family from Kilburn will need. I don't live in Camden, I live just outside of London, and actually, for me, that's where partnership work comes in. So you work with the specialists who know more about the people that you want to bring in, and the important issues that they face. So a collaborative approach from us as an organisation to any partners we work with and the artists is a real key part of how we approach everything that we do. So being super flexible with that approach, thinking, I've got this amount of money, we'd like to do a project that lasts this amount of time, where do we start with that? Rather than going with a kind of A, B, and C handout to somebody, it's like, let's sit down and create this project together from these elements, from this framework that we have. And it means that anything we do then is meaningful, it works for the organisation that we're working with, it's not extra work, it enhances the offer. So for me, those terms, there's so much, we could do a whole podcast about these things. And in no way am I a specialist on all the different kind of levels of these things, but for me, it's about being open, being flexible, and put in as much as you can yourself in the position of the person that you want to work with. And where there's a disconnect there, making sure that you're working with somebody who's a specialist in that area.

Do you mean the artists that we work with in the learning programme or across the whole organisation?

Yeah, ok. So in terms of the artists that exhibit, yeah, we do work predominantly with living artists, it's not always the case, but predominantly so. And that research is down to the director and the exhibitions curators, so might be people at shows that they've seen, if they've been to like Venice, or Documenta, or different kind of arts festivals across the world, it might be through particular research strands. So most recently, we had an exhibition called the Botanical Mind, which was directly a result of our curators, one of our exhibition curators research practice, and that had a mixture of new commissions from living artists, and then more historical works. And actually, over the last couple of years, we've had more of those kind of balanced exhibitions with historical works alongside newer living artists. I think that is a really great learning opportunity. It's always a really great source for us in the learning team to think about how we talk about that, and how we write down some of those themes. In the learning team, it's very mixed in terms of how we find people. We don't tend to do call outs and that's not because we're against call outs or anything like that, it just hasn't been something that we've done in recent years. For me, I try and look beyond the doorstep. So that has always been something that I've talked to the team about in terms of reaching artists and who we work with. So not necessarily just looking at what institution, what artists other institutions are working with, but thinking about how we find new voices and new people to bring to the programme. That means that we will often work with artists who haven't worked in learning before or with audiences before in this way. And that collaboration between us as a learning team, as the educators working with the artists, that connection is really key.

And for me, when I meet an artist, I'm interested to hear about their practice. And then also, it's around their attitude to opening that practice up, to working with audiences, and to thinking about how people experience their work. And when that connection is made, you know that they're somebody that you want to work with. So for me, experience of working with artists, or working within learning in this way, is not a criteria of working with Camden Art Centre. And that does mean that we have been able to really open up the artists that we're working with, and bring new people into the organisation, and new voices into the organisation. On the flip side to that, we also do work with artists who are experienced and are used to working with audiences, they are really passionate about working with learning, and they've done it over a number of years. So there's a real balance there, but the thing at the core is around their practice, and their attitude and passion, I suppose. And the kind of aim of everything that we do is to kind of break down some of those themes that are in the exhibition. And sometimes that can be difficult, we can have very conceptual shows, things that kind of do need breaking down, and I always remember sitting in an exhibition by an artist called Rose English that we had a number of years ago, and the gallery space was completely dark, it was carpeted, it had a series of chairs, and kind of lit pieces on the wall. But the main artwork was a score, a sound piece that she'd created with a composer. And we sat in the darkness with a primary school group from a local primary school, and one of the support workers, classroom assistant said, is this art? And a child, before I could answer, a child said, but an art is whatever an artist wants it to be, because it's about making the things that they're interested in. And it was seven years old, this young boy that said it, and they'd worked with us, that was January, so they'd worked with us for three months on a project, and we've been kind of talking about how artists make work. For me, artists make work to understand the world we live in, to understand themselves. And that had really resonated with this child, and that's what their response was. I think that's the case, it's like thinking about how we break down some of the things that are in those exhibition spaces. And an artist practice is the best way to do that, because it's connected to them, it's something they inherently understand and can talk through. And I suppose I should also say that for me, meeting an artist is a massive thing. Knowing that there are such people in the world that make, you know, there are artists that make work, and I use this example whenever I talk about these things, but for me, an artist was a card on the Game of Life. Now, I don't know if you two would have ever played the Game of Life.

But it's a game where you go around, it's a board game, you go around, you pick up a salary, so you get money every time you go on the board, you might pick up a husband and a wife, maybe some kids, you know, some status symbols, like a yacht, you know, whatever. But the artist card was a picture of a white man with an easel, like a palette and like a sculpt, you know, like a sculptor. That was what it was. And it was actually I think, 16k, which might not, actually lots of artists might not actually reach that salary. But that's what it was, and it didn't feel like a real thing to me as a child. And actually, I think having somebody say, I'm an artist, this is how I make my work, this is how I make my living, this is why I do it, is actually really fundamental to the work that we do.

So part of your work at the Camden Art Centre also involves artists in residence. Can you, for anyone who's not familiar with what an artist residency is, could you explain a little bit about how that works and how that links with the education programme?

So like a residency, it's a period of time that an artist can come, I mean, it can be in their own studio, online or in a space, a physical space, to really concentrate on either making a new body of work, it can be around research, it can be around reflection, but generally, it's about having a set period of time with an organisation to think about themselves and their work. So at Camden Art Centre we have a ceramic fellowship, so we've currently got an artist, Phoebe Collings James, who's freelance Lomic's ceramic fellow, and she's in the studio - well, she'll be back in the studio when we reopen, but she's in the studio making work over a period of time, and then that will lead to an exhibition in autumn, in the gallery spaces. And artists are paid a fee to have that residency, and those residencies are kind of, those artists are found for those residencies in a similar way to the exhibition spaces. So through research, through approaches, perhaps through people we might have worked in the learning programme with, who then go on to have a residency. It's very, very different in its makeup, it might be other artists that have kind of made suggestions, it's very broad in terms of how they come to be at Camden. We have also done call outs previously for those residencies.

So we have the ceramics residency, and then we have sort of more general studio residency, which is up in our artists studio, on the gallery, the same floor as the gallery is. And again, that is a time for the artist to come in and make work. So our last studio residency was an artist called Walter Price. And he'll be showing his work in the first show that we reopen with, hopefully, in late May. So he spent time, a shorter period of time painting, and then had an open studio at the end of it. So often associated to residency is our open studios, which is either work made during, you know, work made during the residency, like work in progress generally, but also can be a way to kind of see the insides of a studio as well. So it kind of depends on whether it's seen as a bit of an exhibition, a small scale exhibition, or an actual like, showcase into the studio. And then through the learning programme, those artists will work with our audiences. So perfect timing, that Phoebe Collings James is actually leading a session for our youth collective online community this Saturday. So Phoebe is going to do a tour of her studio, not at Camden Art Center, but her actual kind of studio and then sit and throw ceramics on the potter's wheel whilst talking about her work. That's a really unique opportunity for a user collective online community to speak to and hear from an artist who then is going to have an exhibition in autumn, and that's, like super exciting. And similarly, Walter, when he was in residence last year, spoke to the youth collective in the building and took them into his studio and talked to them. We also have historically always had a youth residency over summer, that is offered for, the youth collective community can apply for, and then is selected, and we'll have one or two people in residence over the summer. And again, that's six weeks of studio space and time just to make work. I think it's really interesting to think what that time can then lead on to for artists, you know, does it lead to a show? Does it lead to another residency somewhere else? For us, some of the ones that we've done in the learning team, it's led on to creation of portfolios that have meant that they've decided to do a foundation and they've used their experience to gain a place at university. So yeah, it's a really kind of great moment for an artist to concentrate on themselves without any pressure of outcome.

That sounds incredible. That sounds like a really, really fantastic part of the creative process and part of an artist development. There are so many things in this interview that you've mentioned, that I'm just like, that's great, I'm really glad this exists.

I suppose it's the difference in galleries to museums as well. Some of the ways that we work with artists in this way is just quite fundamental to how galleries work, and perhaps not so much to museums.

I was going to say we're actually running a youth collective online session on artist opportunities at the end of April, because I think it is something that needs demystifying, what is a commission, what is a residency? How would you apply for funding? How would you pay your rent? Some of those, like, how'd you get an exhibition in a gallery? So we've invited an artist to come in and talk about their experience of that and break down some of the things, these terms for the collective, because, yeah, it can seem quite impenetrable, and I think it's kind of great to kind of talk it through more.

If magically, you had unlimited funding, Gemma, what cultural space or what project would you put that towards funding?

I think, for me, one of the things that I love about some of the work that we do is that it can be offered to people without them paying for it. So fees and money immediately puts up a barrier. What I would love is to have an art center, that's kind of like a university model, but with no fees. So public programme events, lectures, talks, workshops, courses, studio spaces, all available to book and hire and attend for free, and have this amazing kind of, like, Centre for Making, Centre for Learning, Centre for Connection, really thinking about it being a civic space, a space for people to come in, programme their own events, have their voices heard, tell their stories, I suppose. So there's like so much logistics around anything like that, but I just, I'm imagining it up in the clouds in my head, you know, like a print studio or a ceramic studio, a suite of kind of like computers, a space for live drawing, and just a really active space where people are coming in, sketching, making, creating things, showing those things, talking about it, bring in their friends, bring in their family, a space, a creative space just to be in and hang out and enjoy. So I suppose, yeah, that kind of civic space, it's a destination for people like, oh, I'll meet you at Camden Art Centre, and we can do A, B and C.

I suppose it's just, if making makes you feel happy, do it. Like, most of what we do, at the end of the day should be fun, it should make you feel happy, it should have that kind of impact on your wellbeing. And there's no more time than now, where that is really needed. So if you've got a creative project or something creative that you've wanted to do, do it, you know, like, just have a go and don't put it off. And yeah, when we can all get back to seeing art, come to Camden Art Centre and see what we're about, come and have a cup of tea in the cafe and have a look around the exhibitions.

Gemma, you've been absolutely amazing. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's been really enjoyable.