ARC Independent is...
a creative, non-profit organisation based in Glasgow, Scotland.
Cultivating a supportive environment for co-operative activity that feeds independent creativity, and vice versa.
ARC Independent is also…
a Community Interest Company running artists and makers studios for creatives in Govanhill, Glasgow with an attached co-operatively organised ‘Tool Workshop’ to facilitate the makers. Through more targeted outreach projects we create and/or hold space for a diverse range of people to engage with traditional crafts in a community setting that offers mutual support and learning and the development of creative skills, knowledge and organic connections for the benefit of all involved.
Over the past five years we have organised and delivered many creative social events and practical tool workshops through ongoing relationships with our immediate neighbours, namely McNeils, South Seeds, The Bowling Green @ Pollokshields and SPT Subway. We strive to provide people with creative skills and access to basic tools that can enable them to create both functional and aesthetic objects. This also encourages discussion around; connection to space within the city; what art and culture is; and how we can exercise some influence over our cultural and physical environment. Our educational engagement is centred around creativity, environmental awareness and a striving for deeper connection to our living world and one another.
Emergent Practice & Creative Support
This is our Lifecycle of Creative Support and Emergent Practice. This is a creative and generative practice to bring ideas from fantasy into actuality through a process that nourishes and helps everyone involved. It strengthens the relations of the group and the understanding of what it is to be in a group. The experience gained through this type of practice is immeasurable…but it counts.
The journey through germination phase to evolution phase can only happen in organic communication. This happens naturally throughout the cosmos where dissonant and resonant energies collide and co-mingle. It’s a beautiful natural process that requires active involvement and it is how all of the ARC projects to date have come into being. This is how ARC currently operates across; Studios; Workshop; Social Club; World Tree; Woodville Woods.
ARC Independent is… two words and a symbol.
ARC and the symbolic Pictish Arch both stand for a supportive structure. A symbolic support structure actually made of people, looking out for one another, helping one another; generously with their experience and knowledge; generatively with non-judgmental positive regard.
Independent stands for sovereignty and the unique way each human can bring creativity into the world through their own story, which is inextricably connected and interwoven with everything else’s story.
In our practice these words/concepts/symbols should be in a symbiotic relation to one another, always.
If any of this resonates, let us know...