Clementine Scott
When one thinks of destinations for cutting-edge contemporary art, North Lincolnshire may not be the first place that crosses the mind. However, the 20-21 Visual Arts Centre is challenging this perception. The Scunthorpe venue, which is based in the formerly derelict St John’s Church and celebrates its 20th anniversary this year (the centre’s name plays on how renovation commenced in the 20th century, but finished in the 21st), has established itself as a key player in a rising regional culture scene, and has provided a springboard for several exhibitions which have gone on to tour the UK.
Michelle Lally, the centre’s former Visual Arts Officer who now works in an arts management role for North Lincolnshire Council, is most passionate when she discusses the potential for local institutions to make the art world more accessible to residents of her hometown of Scunthorpe. With the rather poetic statement that “every area has its own arts ecology”, Lally is keen to celebrate what makes Scunthorpe’s local artistic culture special; she points in particular to the presence of artists’ studios alongside gallery space in venues such as Barton-on-the-Humber’s Ropewalk and the youth-oriented not-for-profit collective Café Indie, which enables a more direct link between artist and viewer.
Furthermore, Lally highlights how other thriving sectors in the region have helped the arts scene, especially during the pandemic — prior to the reopening of galleries, Scunthorpe’s Central Library played host to 20-21’s exhibition of Tatty Devine jewelry, and the Park Library has played host to the Crosby Collective, which provides a subscription service for access to creative facilities, and challenges the myth that a career in the arts necessitates moving out of one’s hometown.
Throughout our interview, Lally emphasises repeatedly the importance of ensuring that people’s first experience of the art world is a positive one. Having never met anyone growing up who worked in the sector, since then she has all too often encountered the sentiment that art ‘isn’t for the likes of us’, and the pervasive stereotypes of art as unfriendly, difficult to understand, and exclusive to those living in cities. Indeed, the trajectory of Lally’s own career challenges the notion of art as exclusive; despite extensive experience in front of house, exhibition coordination and marketing for 20-21, as well as a master’s in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester, she nevertheless emphasises how her early experience outside of the arts sector, including in retail and in care homes, has aided her in her later career in museums.
Lally also espouses a sentiment which runs counter to any perceptions of an unbridgeable divide between those who work in art and the general public, that access can start with the employees themselves. Her own process of gaining knowledge of unfamiliar art forms, such as the performing arts, ran parallel to her new position at the Council, overseeing a broader range of cultural venues than she had at 20-21.
“This broadens people’s preconceptions of what art ‘should’ be, without compromising on the intellectual substance of the exhibits”
It is also admirable how Lally is able to address deepset negative preconceptions about art with solutions that never feel patronising towards those who haven’t had the opportunity to visit galleries before. For example, she stresses the importance of diversifying gallery spaces — this could mean utilising libraries or other community hubs for temporary exhibits, integrating art into the urban landscape (Luke Jerman’s replicas of objects from the North Lincolnshire Museum hidden around Scunthorpe in 2017 jump to mind), or even displaying art in pubs. Each of these approaches to the display of art helps to overcome the mental barrier some people have of what they ought to ‘do’ in a traditional gallery space, while also immersing those already initiated in the art world to view art in new contexts.
Similarly, Lally notes how some recent 20-21 exhibitions have dealt with art forms which do not fall within the traditional definition of ‘fine art’ — the incorporation of street theatre and live music alongside visual art at the Centre’s tenth anniversary celebration, or the 2010 exhibit centred around tattoos — and how this broadens people’s preconceptions of what art ‘should’ be, without compromising on the intellectual substance of the exhibits.
There is an elephant in the room throughout our interview: how this rosy picture of widening access to art has been hampered by Covid. North Lincolnshire Council has admittedly been lucky in that they have had the resources not to need to furlough anyone in the arts sector during the pandemic; nevertheless, there has been an undoubtable negative effect on the freelancers who make up the majority of a sector which experienced severe austerity measures even before Covid.
Moreover, even though many venues are continuing to offer digital experiences such as virtual gallery tours post-pandemic, Lally notes how in-person gallery visits are crucial to arts funding, whether it is donations or revenue brought in from the perennial institutions of the gallery café and gift shop.
“A blended approach”
As we move away from discussing matters of funding, Lally appears genuinely excited about the new directions in which the digital shift, generated by Covid, could take the gallery, and sees the repeated lockdowns as opportunities to experiment. 20-21’s newly produced 3D gallery tours can double as archival material to immortalise exhibitions past, as well as making the gallery more accessible to those unable or unwilling to travel to 20-21 in person.
The various creative arts workshops hosted by the gallery pre-pandemic, combined with packs of artistic materials sent in the post, could be shifted online to capitalise upon the general public’s eager desire to take up new hobbies in the first lockdown. 20-21’s new digital resources can also continue to aid its access mission after the pandemic, via what Lally describes as a “blended approach”, wherein traditional school visits to exhibitions may be combined with online activities which ensure that engagement with art starts in the classroom before the gallery visit, and continues afterwards.
There are clearly some pitfalls in adopting an entirely digital strategy. Lally notes the drop in engagement with online events after the first lockdown as the public understandably grew tired of endless Zooms, and the aspects of art — a piece’s colour, texture, and the way it interacts with its physical space — which simply cannot be translated to a digital context. Nevertheless, the overwhelming impression given by Lally is one of hope and optimism about the sector’s future and about art’s power to preserve human connection in times of crisis, whether that connection is with up-and-coming young curators, or with Lally’s own neighbours, who had never visited 20-21 prior to the pandemic, but became aware of the Centre while Lally was working from home.
A similar blend of anxiety and optimism also applies to 20-21’s upcoming reopening and twentieth anniversary celebrations; for a gallery with a heavy emphasis on engaging families and young people, there are concerns about how willing parents of young children will be to visit galleries while restrictions are still fairly stringent. Furthermore, after a year working from home, Lally questions whether the collaborative in-person ‘workplace culture’ to which she is accustomed will return.
The prevailing mood is still optimistic, though, especially as Lally discusses the Centre’s upcoming Museum of the Moon exhibit. Consisting of an inflatable replica of the moon usually suspended from the roof of a darkened, cavernous space, Luke Jerram’s evocative work has toured cities ranging from London and Barcelona to Dubai and San Francisco since its conception in 2016, but it seems especially suited to a world in recovery from a pandemic — its sense of spectacle undoubtedly helps draw people back to a gallery which they haven’t visited in a year, and on a more practical level, exhibits that consist of a solitary work in an otherwise empty gallery are ideal in an age of social distancing.
“A year to celebrate”
Yet not all of 20-21’s upcoming exhibitions revolve around accommodating more visitors post-pandemic; Dan Rawlings’ Future Returns reflects on the wider history of Scunthorpe as an industrial town, exploring the interplay between his sculpture created from a reclaimed oil tanker and the surrounding 19th century church architecture.
Later this year and early in 2022, 20-21 will play host to Jason Wilsher-Mills’ vibrantly coloured sculptures, affectionately described by the artist as ‘I, Daniel Blake meets the Beano’; Wilsher-Mills’ incorporation of augmented reality apps in his work and continued engagement with disability rights in the art world chime particularly with 20-21’s aims of making art accessible to all. In a time of great uncertainty for the arts sector, 20-21 does not appear to be losing sight of the unique artistic culture in which it is situated, and of its goals as an accessible gallery.
In the closing minutes of our interview, Michelle Lally refers to 20-21’s anniversary year as a “year to celebrate”, and judging by the Centre’s post-pandemic plans, she may well be right.
Clementine Scott
Featured image courtesy of Dan-Cristian Pădureț via Unsplash. Image licence found here. No changes have been made to this image.