Saving Bankley

Throughout the PhD so far, my attention has often been pulled elsewhere, by an ongoing crisis at Bankley Studios, my artist community in Manchester. I'm going to use Gibbs Reflective Cycle (1988) to think through this experience – which has not yet been resolved. 

What happened?

Based within a fairly decrepit old mill building a short walk from my home in Levenshulme, we Bankley Studios members have faced a tumultuous few months since October 2025 when our landlord served us with two legal notices warning he was poised to forfeit our lease early – leaving us to scrabble around trying to meet the long list of conditions he put on us. 

Some of these were valid – our paperwork and organisation could definitely have been better – but his deadline was unreasonable and unachievable. Much of the pressure and stress fell on those of us who happened to be on the small management committee at the time.

We are a cooperative, ie a non-profit, volunteer-led organisation. Within a matter of weeks, we had to get our heads around what was being asked of us, fire safety legislation, various bits of complicated law for commercial premises, the meaning of our lease clauses, find some pro bono legal advice, approach Manchester City Council for help/advice, fundraise, deal with journalists and keep the campaign alive, as well as booking in the various professionals we needed to sort bits of work. My journalistic skills have been useful to the group I think. 

The process went from a month of high octane stress as we worked to do all this by the tight deadline, to an information vacuum lasting for weeks that I found very difficult to cope with (I found it harder than the crisis). I was not especially surprised then when a court notice appeared in mid January, telling us we had an initial eviction hearing in March. 

However, a fortnight later our solicitor received a notice to say they would ‘stay’ these proceedings ie withdraw the court application and would negotiate with us instead. We don’t yet know the implications of this – it could result in an early agreed exit date, or we could end up seeing out our lease to October 2027. You never know, maybe Bankley Studios will still be in the building after that.

My Thoughts/feelings 

I have found the emotional side of this experience quite challenging. The sense of injustice about what was happening to us fuelled me for a while, and we (as a management committee) worked very hard to make sense of and respond to the immediate crisis.

Frankly, it’s been time-consuming, exhausting and an emotional rollercoaster (I have Bankley-related stress dreams several times a week – including last night after starting this writing). It’s also quite boring – I find myself droning on about it quite a lot, and it’s definitely getting in the way of me using my studio. It has taken up headspace I should have reserved for PhD work and other bits of my life. 

I’ve been up and down with my own take on our situation and the possibility of resolution. I was quite hopeful but when the court summons arrived in January, it nearly pushed me under again. From then onwards, whenever I thought about Bankley I experienced a physical stress reaction – anxiety, racing heart, shaking hands. It ffeels like being at the bottom of a huge, insurmountable mountain.

I felt extremely pessimistic about court and the high costs involved (and time and mental load involved in fundraising) and then worried my negativity was impacting on my colleagues. I recognise this was a sign that I’m feeling burned out though and I’m now trying to be more mindful about my boundaries and limitations. This has led to the eventual decision to leave the studios and let others take over.

Evaluate & analyse

It’s difficult to really for sure at this point what our final outcome will be, but we are currently in a better situation than I feared a few weeks back. Another committee member sent me a message last week which mentioned the concept of “losing well” and that has stuck with me. If we have done everything possible and acted good faith – which we know we have – then what more can you ask? 

It’s a fact that artists are being pushed out of their buildings by gentrification - it has happened repeatedly in Manchester and beyond. The artists make an area creative and interesting and capital and profiteering follows - with artists generally being pushed out as buildings are redeveloped or rents go up. The huge, glaring irony in our own situation is that Bankley House is not being turned into housing – it is being renovated but will apparently still have artists studios within it. Just possibly without the artist cooperative who have been in the building for almost 35 years. Make it make sense.

I think we have worked very well as a team and have managed to get some great advice and support. The wonderful, kind solicitor Steven Jennings from Land Law in Altrincham has stuck with us throughout this process and his advice about trying to de-escalate this dispute and re-start direct negotiations with our landlord has been very helpful. Hopefully this will now start to happen. Steven’s other advice was to pay a building surveyor to look at our lease and clarify where our repair obligations lie, and he had us get all this information into a digestible form ready for court, if it came to that.

I'm trying to look for the positives in this experience for myself as well. One of which is getting to know other artists within the studios better and working as a team, especially those on the management committee. I’ve learned that running an arts organisation is a huge amount of work – even more so when the building is in poor condition, as so many artist studios are. 

There is so much free mental labour within the arts – the added pressure here of a demanding landlord, and a clunky (and I think) outdated cooperative structure has not helped. The experience is also a reminder for me that there are many distractions which can pull my attention away from my own creative work. That I need to be mindful of boundaries and of how much of my time and energy I give away to others.

The final positive I am taking from all of this is the power of community. Going public about our situation and launching a crowdfunder - which raised more than £5,000 from generous supporters within a few weeks - showed us that Bankley Studios and Gallery does matter. People care whether artist studios and artist-led organisations exist. Even the council responded to us quickly when we told them about our predicament - their ability to help is quite limited but the fact they met with us showed that they see the value of creative community. I do wonder if some of this took our landlord by surprise - possibly he under-estimated how well connected we were as a group. I have no idea but it has been nice not to feel so alone. 

Conclusion & action plan 

My main takeaway from all of this is about my own boundaries. In future, I need to watch myself when drama happens and try not to get too sucked into the crisis. As a group we need to find ways to pull more cooperative members into supporting us or we will all end up burned out. I really do believe that spaces like this are important, and should be fought for. But I think the other lesson for myself is recognising when to quit and protect my own time, energy and practice.