Advancing creative practice
This case study – which is based on an independent evaluation of the Creative Local Growth Fund by Nordicity and Saffery Champness LLP – highlights how visual artist Bharti Parmar developed her technical and business skills through the collaborative environment provided by STEAMhouse.
Based in the heart of Digbeth, STEAMhouse supports entrepreneurs, sole traders, companies and citizens to build their businesses, develop products and services and bring amazing new ideas to life.
Developed by Birmingham City in partnership with Eastside Projects, and supported by the Creative Local Growth Fund, STEAMhouse brokers collaborative relationships between businesses, academics, arts and creative industries to support innovation and prototyping activity for social and economic benefit.
Bharti Parmar is a visual artist and academic based in Birmingham. Since July 2018, she has been a proactive member of STEAMhouse, using its facilities, technical and business support, and she has wholeheartedly participated in engagement events.
Bharti’s work at STEAMhouse has largely focused on exploring new techniques and processes concerning marquetry (a craft process of inlaying wood veneers). Her work has centred on craft, the mechanics and poetics of repair and how a range of mechanical and digital tools can be used to replace the traditional hand-cutting of marquetry shapes.
STEAMhouse benefitted Bharti by providing access to the use of workshop facilities including metalwork, woodwork, digital technologies and textile processes. Particularly invaluable were the technical expertise available, and the collective and generous atmosphere of artists, designers and engineers working together in the same space – talking and sharing ideas.
In terms of Bharti’s development, STEAMhouse enabled her to:
- extend her vocabulary and repertoire as an artist
- develop relationships with new clients by bringing them to STEAMhouse to see how the work was produced on site
- become more entrepreneurial in her engagement with potential marketplaces, particularly through a more strategic use of social media platforms
- develop work that she would not have been able to achieve within her own studio because of a lack of space, materials and technical expertise
- make her business more sustainable, by expanding her audiences for contemporary art and promoting sales through individuals and collections
Since joining STEAMhouse, she has participated in an number of significant projects including featuring on #ITVcreates and being commissioned to make an installation called ‘Matching Pairs’, a set of marquetry playing cards, for the Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art in October 2019.
