Written by Ruth Claxton, Alessandro Columbano, Michael Dring and Sean O’Keeffe the proposal was funded by Arts Council England and informed by a series of research visits to workshops, studio complexes and makerspaces across the UK which specialise in support for artists, designers and craftspeople, as well as ‘focus groups’ with practitioners, an online survey and feedback from public discussions.

Survey results, research and information on case studies can be found here, and
you can download the proposal here.

We launched the proposal in 2014, at a public meeting attended by over 60 people and then began working with a range of partners to make the facilities it outlined become a reality.

Since 2015 Ruth Claxton and Alessandro Columbano have been working with the Research, Enterprise and Innovation team at Birmingham University to develop the proposal through the STEAMhouse project, which will open in Digbeth in April 2018. You can find out more HERE.