The new UmArts Research Studio will be officially opened on Friday 16 June 2023 with an exhibition of new artworks, talks and performances taking place over the weekend.
It is a working studio, meeting place and exhibition space for UmArts postdoctoral researchers, Small Visionary Projects and artists’ residencies to make new work and engage audiences with their work and ideas through open studios, reading groups, workshops, talks, and performances.
The research studio is a space in which we can have time and space to think together for a day, a few weeks or a few years. A space to develop the social realities of collaboration and making across art, architecture, design and craft. A space to find ways of cultivating the ethics of aesthetics and the culture of ideas. This will be a vital place for developing and engaging with creative research as a form of critical enquiry and opening up new conversations.
The beautiful single-storey wooden building is located at the entrance to the Arts Campus, and is locally known as Smedjan, the blacksmiths, but curiously doesn’t have a forge or chimney. The 124m square workshop has been closed for many years, so it is with great anticipation that we are reopening the space for creativity once again. The building is also of particular cultural-historical value, and protected within the National Interest Cultural Environment Protection for central Umeå.