Artistically Away From it All

Residency programmes are just the thing to get the creative juices flowing, says Juliet Clough

Given that most Cove Park residents live in series of recycled freight containers, the “thinking outside the box"credo that defines the community might be read as a bit of a challenge. Perched on the eastern shore of Loch Long on Scotland's Argyll coast, these dwellings overlook the lonely, cloud-shadowed hills of the Cowal Peninsula. But the view is also misleading. Isolation is not where this edgy, international residential centre for the arts and creative industries is at.

Artists' residencies like Cove Park are a growing phenomenon worldwide. Artists are increasingly feeling the need for community, not only for technical support but as a way of sharing ideas, explains Clayton Campbell, president of Res Artis, an international network for these programmes. Government and industry interest in supporting artistic production and artist mobility is also rising. So, while Res Artis had only 30 members when it started in 1993, it now has closer to 300.

The notion of the retreat, a place of beauty and solitude where the artist is given time and space to work his other magic, is still very relevant. But there are newer models too, one of which Campbell calls "the extroverted residency", a scheme that encourages engagement with the urban landscape and particularly with the local community; social relevance can do much to ease the case for funding.

Cove Park claims to be unique in Britain for the breadth and overlap of disciplines it fosters. It is "an entirely new concept", says director Alexia Holt, not a retreat but "a place where artists pursue their own work in the context of other people's - an opportunity to understand work outside their own disciplines". Now in its seventh year, Cove Park has offered a catalytic space to all sorts of artists: playwrights and producers, choreographers and musicians, typically working together at conceptual stages of their work.

The cross-discipline culture was important to Cove Park's founders, Peter Jacobs, a sculptor with work in UK and Israeli collections. who also has a separate career in management, and his wife Eileen. Their five-year search for affordable tranquillity plus easy access to a major airport - Glasgow - ended on the Rosneath peninsula, at a conservation park that was formerly Ministry of Defence land used as a US ammunition depot.

Cove Park's surroundings benefited from years of "benign neglect", says programme producer Julian Forrester; its woods and wetlands support a wealth of wild orchids as well as the odd Nissen hut. The environmental mix mirrors the centre's culture, one that thrives on the creative sparks that fly when artists from different "boxes" think in tandem. Where else in the UK would you find Israeli and Arab poets getting together, as they will this summer, to find a common voice? As Forrester says: "We like a challenge here."

The park's former visitor centre forms the nucleus, complete with kitchen and laundry, a seminar room and sophisticated IT suite. A variety of Portacabins, sheds and containers have been converted into flexible studio and workshop space.

Near the shore, three freight containers, converted by award-winning Urban Space Management, and two oak pods, turf-roofed like the cubes, make up the accommodation, all self-catering. The latter are relics of the BBC's Castaway series, transported from the Hebrides and upgraded by their architect Andy McAvoy. In June, six new cubes will add three more studios and three bedrooms, enlarging capacity to 10 people.

Inside the pods, Habitat furniture, craftily fitted kitchens, bathrooms and underfloor heating provide considerably better than basic comfort. The container cubes, by a pond where ducks scurry, look minimalist, yes, but also bright and inviting. Each has a canvas bed, a leather sofa, a work table, a minuscule kitchen and a shower room. Television is restricted to the centre. After three months in what is basically a 20ft by 16ft biscuit tin, many tenants become addicted to the cubes, Holt says. “We have problems getting them to leave.”

Silversmith Lucian Taylor, who worked last season on innovative techniques for Eureka 2005, the UK design initiative, confirms this. “I am very fond of my summer home,” he says. “I am freed from tyranny and distractions that comes from an excess of possessions.”

Cove Park's 50-plus residencies, varying in length from a week to three months, are awarded to UK and national artists each year between May and November. They are in huge demand; 144 applications were submitted from around the world this ye the three-month visual arts residency funded by the Scottish Arts Council. It was awarded to Glasgow-based sculptor and writer Fiona Jardine. This season will see performing artists, painters, poets, essayists and media types working and networking at Cove Park.

Big name dropping is easy. Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood will be on residency in September; from June to October, Simon Starling, winner of the 2005 Turner Prize, will be working on a customised boat, the first established artist to be commissioned by Cove Park to create a work of art in direct response to the site.

The calibre of its funding partners also speaks volumes. The Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, whose Springboard Residencies offer recent graduates a boost at the start of their careers, has been crucial to the success of Cove Park as has the Scottish Arts Council and the Jerwood Charity. This years backers include The Royal 0pera House, Central St Martin's College of Art and the Henry Moore Foundation, all of them helping to progress young talent either through the residencies orthrough complementary programmes for self-funding artists.

No outcomes are expected; there are no mandatory exhibitions or other public commitments. And that's another factor that makes Cove Park very unusual. It takes courage to make no demands and expect nothing particular from artists, says writer and critic JJ Charlesworth. "Happily, they invariably return that faith, with interest, “he says.

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