This article maps some of the different ways that learning happens in artist studios. In particular, it considers the intersections of the studio and other archetypal learning and making spaces, both historically and in the present, and how the inherent porosity of the studio enables a folding in of different models and spaces to support the development of creative practice.
In sharing insights from Freelands Foundation’s ongoing internal research into the studio as a site of artist learning, crucially it emphasises considering the architecture of the studios and the communities that these facilitate in tandem, as both equally essential to learning in studio environments.
Image: Rachel Wharton’s studio, Ulster University, Belfast, 2024.
The Studio as a Site for Artist Learning
By Rosie Hermon
Mapping the different ways that learning takes place in artist studios, through artist anecdotes and archival research.
8-min read
The Studio as a Site for Artist Learning
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8-min read
The Historical Porosity of the Studio
The studio as both Learning Environment and Tool
Studio as Community
Studio as Art School
Studio as Workshop
Studio as Platform
Distributed Learning... and a return to the Studio
About the author
It is through its multiplicity that the studio has the potential to support artists’ learning and development in myriad ways.
The Historical Porosity of the Studio
When one imagines the archetypal image of the artist’s studio, what comes to mind? Probably the ‘romantic’ idea ‘of the individual genius artist toiling in their space’ (Harold Offeh, Artist Interview, 2024). However, drawing back the curtain on the notion of the studio as the crucible of individual genius reveals a complex, polymorphous entity that is irreducible to a singular idea or understanding. It is through its multiplicity that the studio has the potential to support artists’ learning and development in myriad ways.
From its entry into the English language 250 years ago, the term ‘studio’ has always been somewhat unstable, first meaning a sketch, then an artist’s workplace, and later expanding to include other kinds of workplaces. This linguistic transition accompanied a shift in practice, from the artisan in the workshop to the artist in the studio, which Farías and Wilkie position as an historical rupture – located in the artist’s search for originality, and crucially, in their seeking a structure that allows for experimentation (Ignacio Farías and Alex Wilkie (Eds.), Studio Studies: Operations, Topologies and Displacements, 2018).
This rupture is less keenly felt by James Hall, who considers the studio a place that exists ‘in a symbiotic relationship with artisans’ workshops, monks’ cells, scholars’ studies and other indoor and outdoor spaces’ (James Hall, The Artist’s Studio: A Cultural History, 2022 p.10), reflecting the ongoing porosity of the artist’s workplace. The different spaces that Hall identifies exemplifes different parts of the creative process: the production of the workshop, the reflection of the monks’ cells, and the contextual and critical engagement of the scholars’ studies.
Taken together, these two historically oriented articulations of the studio start to indicate its potential as a porous site where different processes can intersect, and in which experimentation can flourish. Crucially, these historical tracings begin to point towards the studio as a structure in which creativity is a socially and materially distributed practice rather than "the cognitive privilege of the individual' (Ignacio Farías and Alex Wilkie, 2018, p.iii).
Enabling creativity as a distributed mode of practice – as evidenced in its origin in the workshop and its symbiotic relationship with multiple, different sites of creative production – is something that the studio facilitates well, and has done for centuries.
Enabling creativity as a distributed mode of practice... is something that the studio facilitates well, and has done for centuries.
The studio as both Learning Environment and Tool
Enabling creativity is a process in which the studio is active. Within the studio, "the artist discovers the optimal relation between place and practice. In this sense the phrase ‘learning takes place’ has a reality beyond that of transmission and event, to one of the interdependence of learning and place." (Derek Pigrum, Teaching Creativity: Multi-mode Transitional Practices, 2011). The correlation here between creativity and learning that Derek Pigrum notes, is not accidental.
An artist’s creative practice is a process of ongoing learning, and therefore as a space that supports and enables that practice, the studio itself becomes a learning environment and tool. The learning that happens in the studio, or across the studio – and therefore the studio’s crucial role in artist development – is not a by-product or container of creative practice, it is the practice.
In a studio an artist can ‘dream’ work with their body and with their hands (Lady Kitt, Artist Interview, 2024). They can engage both directly and indirectly with all aspects of a making practice by being surrounded by its materiality, whether they can further position and develop their ideas in relation to this. The materiality of a studio and of a studio practice therefore includes a broad range of materials that accumulate in these spaces, such as books and found objects. In this context, the space of the studio encourages different journeys through the simultaneity of making and collecting ideas/ wider contextual references with very practical or practice-specific tools and materials – producing the experimental interplay between these contextual and technical elements. A studio space that is tailored by an artist to the very particular needs of their specific practice also has the capacity to give them agency over what and how they make.
An artist’s creative practice is a process of ongoing learning, and therefore as a space that supports and enables that practice, the studio itself becomes a learning environment and tool.
Whilst the space of the studio is intrinsic to its propensity to support learning through making, so is the promise of time, which is also held within this space. The studio holds the possibility of action, and the possibility of not acting, or of not acting just yet. Being able to leave process in situ, or having the time to reflect on a piece of work until what it is ‘becomes a bit more certain’viii, demonstrates the affordance of fusing the monk’s cell and the artisan’s workshop, reflection with production, time with space. But importantly, having a defined space to work in for a concentrated period of time also produces the conditions for intentional and incidental learning. Whether in allowing an artist to push themselves forward in their practice, or, "to procrastinate, to panic, to not know what you’re doing. To make something awful and throw it in the bin at the end of the day" (Lucy Steggals, Artist Interview, 2024).
The failures, accidents and achievements that might happen across time in the studio further artists’ learning, sometimes the failures more than the successes.
Being able to control the production of one’s own work within a studio environment as opposed to seeking external spaces and fabrication facilities can be a ‘gamechanger’.
Studio as Community
Making, and the development of practice, do not happen in a vacuum. The other crucial element of a studio as a learning environment is the community that it can support and facilitate.
Throughout their career, an artist develops a body of (sometimes very esoteric) knowledge and technical skills. As a community of practice, an artist studio complex therefore has the potential to foster an array of different materialities and approaches to art making. Thus highlighting the collective expertise embedded within a community of artists can be invaluable.
(Within studios) knowledge doesn’t drip down from some sort of hierarchy of savants but actually seeps out through the community.
The studio generates the potential as a structure that facilitates the sharing of practice and expertise across the artist community and beyond, as well as a support outlet for critical feedback from peers and others invited into these spaces. Like studios themselves, studio communities take different shapes and are oriented in different ways; modelling community in differing ways.
The historical porosity of the studio can be expanded through reconceptualising and adding to the series of archetypal spaces that James Hall positions in relation to the studio when mapping its historical trajectory. Locating the art school, the workshop and the platform within and alongside the studio.
These models of studio community in turn orient the learning of the studio in specific ways.
Describing the studio as a series of models could be reductive, especially as ‘there should be as many models as there are artists’ (Harold Offeh, Artist Interview, 2024) when thinking about the development of individual practice. However, considering the different modes and focus of studio communities as each a potential model to emulate or adapt, is instructive in demonstrating the structures that constructive to enables artists to learn while making. And indeed, the first of these models is the intersection of the studio with the art school – 'studio as art school' – and the explicitly educational thinking that might happen within a studio space.
Studio as Art School
Being embedded within a community of peers and mentors is a core feature that supports learning within an art school, and thus understandably a familiar and generative structure that an artist post-formal education might try to ‘recreate’ (Rachel Bride Ashton, Artist Interview, 2024) within subsequent studios they may inhabit. Being situated within a community that feels familiar in its function opens opportunities that in a way guarantee a stream one incoming new ideas and methods, exposing the artist to engage in reflective critique.
To be in a studio, to have studio neighbours – studio mates – I think it’s an incredible thing, and a very educational thing too.
Whilst a studio can facilitate similar functions to the art school, it's important to note that within a studio, the hierarchies between teacher and learner often found within formal education are disrupted, as the artist is always both an expert and learner of their practice – a duality which the studio continually brings into focus through its communities of peers. The blurring of the roles of teacher and learner in the ongoing development of practice can influence artists’ learning at all stages, travelling from the art school studio into the studio beyond, and from the professional studio into the art school.
For example, artist-teacher Kate Thackara has described how thinking about the art classroom within secondary education as a studio, can shift ideas of practice in that space to something that feels more collaborative. It is a practice "with students, with other teachers, with people I invite into the space, rather than just me and the material" (Kate Thackara, Artist Interview, 2024).
As well as knowledge seeping out and across a studio community, towards nurturing peer learning, the kind of learning that takes place in a studio has the potential to seep out and inform the ways that artists learn and teach beyond this space. This takes the form of more open, collaborative and less hierarchical structures that support learning through practice, which whilst influenced by the studio-based education of the art school, can also disrupt and challenge modes of learning and teaching in formal educational spaces.
Studio as Workshop
Another model of studio community that emerges is the folding together of the studio and the workshop. This is an idea already highlighted by James Hall in his historical mapping of the development of artist studios, where he emphasises that the ‘craft knowledge and collaboration’ embedded in the artisan’s workshop are ‘vital’ for artists (James Hall, The Artist’s Studio: A Cultural History, 2022 p.10).
In delineating the model of 'studio as workshop' in relation to the contemporary practice of studio communities, the emphasis becomes welded to the development of technical skills and material practice via a material dialogue with others and the repetitive practice of making together, as suggested in the idea of workshopping.
Many creative practices are supported by a productive movement and conversation between the space of the studio and the space of the workshop as a site and holder of technical expertise.
On its own, a workshop is a self-contained site of making that sits adjacent to the studio. It is a set of specific technical facilities housed within a dedicated space, providing access to particular and often specialist making processes, supported by dedicated technicians with advanced material skills. Many creative practices are supported by a productive movement and conversation between the space of the studio and the space of the workshop as a site and holder of technical expertise. But folding the workshop into the studio can lead to ‘abandoning certain ways of working’ (Emii Alrai, Speaking Studios, 2025) in the service of material experimentation and the development of original works.
In the studio of artist Emii Alrai, teams of people come together to produce large-scale projects, both on and offsite. The studio itself is the artists’ workshop. It is the team of people, more than the specificity of the space, and it is a process of collectively and materially figuring out the work. The artist describes this as, "we do jousting and chucking knives at polystyrene and stuff to just like loosen up and make it fun… I think the teams that I work with are very trusting of the processes that we kind of go through to get to [the artwork]" (Emii Alrai, Speaking Studios, 2025).
The more people that are invited into a practice within a studio, the more porous the boundary between private and public in the studio becomes.
Studio as Platform
The more people that are invited into a practice within a studio, the more porous the boundary between private and public in the studio becomes. Whilst the reflective solitude of the monk’s cell is important, as is the space to test things and to fail privately, making the studio public at specific moments and under specific conditions dictated by the individual artist or community can progress practice through utilising the studio as a platform, as another kind of resource for thinking. As a model studio as platform includes the potential to ‘close the gap between production and experience’ Samra Mayanja, Speaking Studios, 2025 ) to present or to make ideas, artworks and processes public in ways that might be constrained in institutional contexts.
Public programmes within studios also offer artists the opportunity to contextualise themselves within a wider community, and allow for the cross-pollination of ideas between the studio and the world beyond.
Public programmes within studios also offer artists the opportunity to contextualise themselves within a wider community, and allow for the cross-pollination of ideas between the studio and the world beyond. As such, the idea of studio as platform can be imagined as encompassing a series of concentric circles, situated in relation to communities that are defined by their proximity to the studio – from a community of internal peers, to engagement with specific external groups and other artist peers, to a more general audience that might form a community around the studio.
Distributed Learning... and a return to the Studio
This is where the studio starts to overspill its architectural constraints. The learning is distributed, moving between a solitary process of making, to peer critique and dialogue, to material experimentation with others, to engaging with a wider public, to being embedded in a place...
We, not I, not singular. Community, collaboration. With artists, with place, with studio.
As noted at the outset, for some artists the work of the studio takes place across multiple sites. The kitchen, the train, the library, the beach, the gallery, can support "studio-like processes – drawing, thinking, designing, model-making and so on" (James Hall, The Artist’s Studio: A Cultural History, 2022), as well as perhaps a quality of inspiration that comes from new or different surroundings.
To return to the idea of porosity, raised earlier... part of the slipperiness of the studio is therefore that the studio is both the place that an artist works and the kind of making practice that takes place in this space, which can be transferred to other spaces too.
But ideally these off-site spaces and multiple communities augment the architecture of the artist’s studio. They do not replace it. They scatter its functions before enabling a converging again in a defined space, which enables a longer-term perspective across a practice, as a cumulative learning over time.
About the author
Rosie Hermon is Artist Development Curator at Freelands Foundation, where she works on the Studio Fellowships programme, artist residencies and connected research into the learning that takes place in artist studios. This has been developed through artist interviews, talks, workshops and exhibitions since 2021.
Beyond her role with the Foundation, Rosie is a curator working across artist projects, residencies and research practices, with a focus on developing creative partnerships that span multiple localities. In 2025, she submitted her PhD thesis, which has the title, ‘’Like a ghost’: Producing the Triangle international residency network online through curatorial practice’.