SME Partner

Sarah Rowles, Q-Art

Academic Partner

Dr Dave O ’Brien, City University London

Project Title

Networked Value: Understanding the impact of Q-Art

Project Description

Q-Art is an organisation for students, staff, and early career artists that aims to share practice and break down barriers to art education and the art world. It does this through: our monthly open crit programme for artists of all backgrounds to attend or present work in; an annual exhibition for crit presenters; plus publications and videos that feature interviews with art staff, students, and industry professionals from across the UK. A crit is a model of learning that enables artists to present their work to an audience and obtain feedback on how their work is interpreted and how they might take it forward.

The project used Social Network Analysis to help evaluate what impact the crits had on the individual networks of early career artists. The six month project involved interviews with ten participants, five who self-identified as ‘self taught’ and  five fine arts graduates.

The sample size was small but the researchers found that Q-Art did not have a huge impact on the growth of individual networks and that networks tended to generate and expand around particular projects artists are working on. The project found that artists who referred to themselves as ‘self-taught’ were relatively wealthy and had already built up for themselves quite extensive networks in the arts, either through personal connections or a number of short courses. A number of the participants interviewed were wealthy enough to try and pursue a career in the arts and that this supports academic literature, which suggests that the greatest enabler to participation in the arts is money as this gives people the time and security to pursue this.