Shop Windows project looking shaky

9 North Street, one of the many empty shops in Taunton

By this point in time I was hoping to be spreading the word, creating a hype and telling people exact locations of my forthcoming exhibition that is planned to coincide with exhibitions by my fellow members of Kingston Studios Art Group. But this is not the case.  Instead we are less than 20 days from the advertised opening date of 18th September and not a single location has been confirmed.

Let me bullet point the project so far...

• All across the nation towns are reinvigorating their town centres by letting local artists exhibit work in the many empty shops created by the recession.
• Kingston Studios Art Group, prompted by Taunton Deane Borough Council decide to do the same.
• An advert is placed in the Somerset Arts Week catalogue publicising the exhibits with a launch date of 18th September.
• The three exhibiting artists set about producing the work.
• We send formal letters with project details to 6 different letting agents, who together control all 10 of the suitable empty properties on North Street, Fore street, High Street and Station Road.
• The majority of agents did not reply.  A few explained reasons why properties were unavailable.  But one said something that suddenly threw things into perspective.  He simply wrote a single line response saying "I have passed the details onto my client".

And that is the key point of why this project has not succeeded.  The letting agents are middlemen.  Formal figures required to act in accordance with their role.  There is little room for creativity on their part or they risk losing the trust of their client, the landlords.

The people who can swing this and give the go ahead for such projects seem to be the property owners.  So as the time runs out on my project I offer this bit of advice to artists running similar projects around the country...  When you prepare your proposals and formal letters, try and get them passed by the agents and onto the property owners.  Address the letter to both the agent and the landlord.  Do the obvious business bit of stressing the benefits to them that your project would bring and hopefully this will result in a phone call from the client to the agent saying "YES! Give these artists the go ahead and let them use my shop. I'd rather see some life in there than have it sit empty".

Additional Note:  You may wonder why I sound so casual about this project when the exhibition is in such jeopardy.  Well the truth is the work that I have produced will not go to waste, even if a shop window cannot be organised.  I plan to go ahead anyway with a gorilla exhibit of the video.  So either way, my video work will be shown in Taunton town centre, at sunset on the 18th September 2009.