There’s a cloudless blue sky above Paisley as I make the 20-minute walk west from Gilmour Street Station to the suburb of Ferguslie Park. St Mirren Park football stadium is visible across a stretch of bare grass to the north, while contrails from departing planes make white scorch-lines above me (Glasgow Airport is only a couple of miles away). My destination is Craigielea House, a grand stone villa dating to the turn of the 20th century, which artists Laura Aldridge, James Rigler and Nick Evans have recently refurbished and opened to the public as Sculpture House, an artists’ studio-cum-community workshop space.

When I arrive to meet Aldridge, the local postman is chatting to her in the front yard. There are planting boxes dotted around, ready to be filled with herbs and shrubs for a ‘dye garden’, while several apple trees sit in big plastic tubs around the porch. These were donated by local resident Angela from the garden of her soon-to-be demolished house. She’s moving into a new-build right behind Sculpture House and first visited the venue to get a better view of her home under construction.

^{Sculpture House / Pictures: Sean Campbell}

‘This is only going to work if we bed ourselves in,’ Aldridge tells me later, as we sip coffee on the front steps which are covered in multi-coloured encaustic tiling by ceramicist Joanne Dawson. ‘We can’t be this distant, aloof presence. We want the house to become a record of the things people do here and the gifts they give us, so they can walk past and say “I made that”.’ 

But how did they end up here in the first place, nestled on the edge of a large housing estate which remains something of a tabloid byword for post-industrial decline (in 2012 and 2016, Ferguslie Park was named the most deprived area in Scotland)? First of all, Aldridge points out, the deprivation tag has been unhelpful and stigmatising for residents of the area which, she says, has brilliant community spirit and a history of self-organising to improve public spaces. ‘I first did a series of craft workshops here funded by Renfrewshire Council in 2020. I was struck by how much people were taking things into their own hands, like the Pals Of The Privies, who restored the local park. They were used to being let down by the authorities so they just got on with it.’

Around the same time, she began talking with fellow sculptors James Rigler and Nick Evans about how precarious contemporary artists’ lives could be. ‘That model of burrowing yourself away in your studio and then occasionally selling artworks for millions of pounds to very rich people . . . that’s just not how it works for most of us,’ she says. They also talked about feeling ‘cut off from the world’ in normal, warehouse-type studios, and the unquestioned hierarchies of value which mean that some artists see educational and community activities as secondary to making and selling work. ‘It’s unhealthy and old-fashioned,’ Aldridge says. What if things could work differently? What if the three of them could pay their studio rental on an in-kind basis by offering creative activities to locals and maintaining a building that the community could use?

One day during her 2020 residency, Aldridge was walking past Craigielea House, then a vacant council property (it had formerly been used as a social-work office). ‘The person I was with pointed out what a great building it was and said “it’s just lying empty. It’s crazy!” I said “yeah, that would make a great residency space”. A few years later, here we are. It’s weird to think back to that conversation.’ The three friends formed Sculpture House Collective and initially tried to secure a deal with Glasgow City Council (‘but we got no response at all’). However, Leonie Bell, now Director of V&A Dundee but previously Strategic Lead for the Future Paisley Partnership at Renfrewshire Council, jumped at the opportunity.  

The trio were shown several spots, including a former police station and a vast factory site, but the ex-domestic residence, close to the local community, seemed ideal. Rent is officially £1 per year on a 20-year lease. In reality, the group estimate they’re offering the equivalent of £17,000 per annum in time and labour, not to mention pouring capital in to fix the place up. ‘The council agreed they’d make it watertight but the rest was up to us,’ recalls Aldridge. Collapsing roofs had to be repaired, interior walls knocked down and grates removed from windows. ‘It was a bit of a fortress when we moved in; I think there’d been some vandalism. Because it had been used for social work, local people didn’t necessarily have the most pleasant associations with the place.’

The first creative project at Sculpture House involved seven students from The Prince’s Foundation Building Arts course, which teaches traditional craft skills. Joanne Dawson’s beautiful front porch is one result of this, while Oliver Pitt and Lara Preiti made a stunning stained-glass surround for the interior entrance. It’s not just visiting craftspeople who have made the space feel like home, though. The Pals Of The Privies’ pre-teen ‘adventure group’ have moulded little glazed ornaments for the spots above the coat hooks. Eventually, the team hope the house will be full of things made by local people. The light-filled front room is free for nearby residents to book and is already in regular use, as are the ceramics studio and kiln room behind it.

Sculpture House is also a functioning studio for several artists. While public spaces occupy much of the ground floor, to the rear lies a spacious wood and plasterwork area (there’s a hint of the TARDIS about the place). Most of the studios are on the first floor, including the print room of Laura Spring, who will work with local schools to create and use dyes from the plants grown out front. 

‘We didn’t believe this would come together until the day we signed the lease,’ Aldridge says. And the group still has moments of doubt because of the untested nature of what they’re doing. ‘But when you’re an artist, there’s so much that doesn’t make sense financially that you develop this kind of blind faith.’ There are planned capital bids for restoration work, and lots more, but people from Ferguslie Park will remain central to all plans for Sculpture House. ‘We’re not looking to own this building,’ states Aldridge. ‘We’re developing a community asset which we hope will be here for a long time.’

Find out more about Sculpture House, Paisley at sculpturehousecollective.com