In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, many artists across Scotland are being priced out or forced out of their studios by Wasps - the charity which manages all the buildings. Livelihoods are being lost in the process.
We believe that Wasps has completely lost sight of its founding principles to serve and support Scotland’s artist community, and instead risks helping to destroy it.
'Save Our Studios' is a growing group of concerned Wasps tenants from across Scotland. We have 5 Demands to the Board of Trustees (below) which we believe will turn around this dire situation and help safeguard Wasps studios for future generations of artists.
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Wasps Tenants’ Demands:
1. Scrap the Surcharge
In February 2023 Wasps management imposed an ‘electricity surcharge’ – adding 11% on top of all rents. This is in breach of the leases many tenants have signed with Wasps which state that “electricity and gas standing charges and consumption costs for normal use” are already included in the rent. Wasps said this ‘surcharge’ would be reviewed in September 2023 – we demand that it is scrapped altogether.
2. Fair Rents
In addition to the ‘surcharge’, in May 2023 Wasps management imposed above-inflation rent increases on most tenants ranging from 11-16% and more in some cases (different increases were imposed on tenants in an attempt to address the varying rates per sq foot being paid – an unfair situation Wasps had deliberately engineered). We demand that rent increases are fair, transparent and only ever in line with inflation (a measure which already takes account of increased energy costs).
3. Stop the Sell-offs
Wasps’ management are planning to sell West Park Place – one of our three studio buildings in Edinburgh (having bought it from Edinburgh Council for just £1 in May 2021).[1] This plan directly contravenes the Wasps Trust Charity’s main objective to own its buildings “in trust for the Scottish arts community and operate [them] to the benefit of current and future generations of artists and the wider public.”[2] It is indicative of the widespread mismanagement of Wasps and must be stopped.
4. Total Transparency
We want total transparency over Wasps’ business operations. Specifically, we want an open, fair and transparent rate per sq foot published for each of Wasps’ buildings to avoid the current situation, where different artists are paying different amounts for the same-sized spaces alongside each other. This is deliberately divisive and needs to be resolved in a fair way that ensures no detriment to long-standing tenants.
5. Governance Reform
In order to ensure better decision-making going forward, we need a total transformation of Wasps’ management structure. We need a new Tenants’ Council with representatives from each studio building, to work alongside the board, and oversee the Wasps management’s decisions. Wasps must rebuild the ‘For the artists, by the artists’ governance structure it once had where people with direct experience of working as practising/freelance artists are at the heart of all important decisions.
Why is this important?
Wasps is by far the biggest studio provider in Scotland, managing twenty buildings across the country – in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness, Perth, Irvine, Kirkcudbright, Newburgh, Selkirk, Nairn, Skye, Shetland and Orkney. These are home to 1,000 artists – a large percentage of those working in Scotland.
It is vital that the Wasps charity is run in a way that serves and supports these artists, otherwise there will be devastating consequences for Scotland’s cultural landscape and our society more broadly.
How it will be delivered
