Save Our Artists’ Studios in Edinburgh

We are local artists based in West Park Place artists’ studios in Dalry, Edinburgh.

Our studios, based in two historic old industrial buildings, host over 50 artists and creative businesses and are currently threatened with closure by the building owners. We need your help to ensure that our studios remain open and thriving as working studios for local artists.

Our area, Gorgie-Dalry, already has the poorest provision of arts and cultural resources in Edinburgh. Closing the studios would eliminate most of what provision there is.  The proposed sell off would make it impossible for some of the arts workers there to remain in business at all. 

The property owners WASPS - Workshop and Artist Studio Provision (Scotland) bought these publicly owned studios from Edinburgh Council for just £1 in 2021. Now, only 2 years later, they are threatening to close and sell the building without any meaningful consultation with the community or the artists based in the studios. 

It’s not just the tenants who would be affected. Our studios are also a centre for arts education and training, with many people from the local area and further afield attending classes and workshops there.These historic buildings should not be sold off to be developed, as is sadly likely, into yet more purpose-built student accommodation. Our area is already saturated and this would not meet the real need for housing for local people.

Instead, this valuable community asset could and should be restored and upgraded to become an arts hub for the area: not just studios, but a centre for education and training, exhibitions and other events. 

Please sign our petition, and help us make sure that our studios remain and thrive as an important cultural asset within the Gorgie-Dalry community, sustaining local artists livelihoods and the wider creative community. Thanks for your support!

Artist-tenants at West Park Place Artists’ Studios