[10 March] Quezon City Artspace Meetup: NO | Baraks | Sampaguita Project

Artist-run spaces around the world serve as crucial platforms for artists to collaborate, share ideas, and support each other, free from institutional or corporate demands, especially in the Philippines where geographical and socioeconomic challenges often isolate us from each other. These spaces not only facilitate creative exchange but also engage with the broader community through public programs that make art more accessible and encourage deeper engagement with the audience. Artist-run spaces are also especially important for emerging artists and offer opportunities to exhibit their work and gain recognition. Furthermore, these spaces play a significant role in democratizing art, allowing diverse voices to be heard and providing a forum for artists to address and reflect on pressing social and political issues through their work.

However, more often than not, those who run and manage these artist-run spaces get very busy with event logistics and preparations, that we rarely get the chance to have in-depth conversations with our peers to discuss opportunities for collaboration and support. In the proposed Local Gathering, representatives from three artist-run spaces located in Quezon City, Metro Manila (ie. NO, Baraks, and Sampaguita Projects) are provided space and time to sit down to meet and discuss their organization’s background, vision, business model, curatorial strategies and programming, and challenges, especially in the post-pandemic context, to try and find points of intersection and solidarity. The gathering will be hosted by NO on 10 March and is invite-only due to limited venue capacity.

NOTE: The Philippines has other numerous artist-run spaces—in Quezon City and all over, aside from the three participants. Owing to limited funding and resources, the gathering can only accommodate these three organizations, to start. This first meeting will be considered as a prototype, with the hopes of developing it further and opening it up to other colleagues and locations in the future.