Imagining new futures

It’s 25 years since Somerset House opened its doors to the public but the story of how it has been transformed, from a palace for the Queens of England to a cultural powerhouse, spans over 500 years and includes masked balls, Royal Societies, the British Navy, taxation, the courtyard as a civil service car park and much, much more.  

We occupy a historical architectural masterpiece, yet we’re not a venerable arts institution but an emerging one, which has set out to change the rules and challenge what a creative space might be in the 21st century. The true essence of Somerset House lies not in its past but in the future. 

No public subsidy

Over 25 years we’ve done a series of bold experiments, all aiming to make a reality out of Sir Simon Jenkins’ campaign begun in the early 1970s, to turn our beautiful building from government offices into a cultural space for all to enjoy.   

Part of the deal was there would be no public subsidy, so from the start we had to invent a new model to survive financially. What was perhaps less clear was what would the creative and artist model be? A museum?  An exhibition and events venue? We tried all of this and more, and each experiment, whether it survived or failed, left us in a stronger place. 

The model we have shaped has been designed to address profound change in a perpetually shifting creative landscape – where arts organisations can no longer exist as islands, and artists can no longer be boxed into single disciplines.

The boundaries between artistic practice and creative entrepreneurship are becoming blurred, and technology has infiltrated and reshaped pretty much everything, adding further impetus to the desire of younger audiences for new cultural experiences.

As if this wasn’t enough, both arts education and government funding have been in persistent if slow decline. This situation requires new ways of thinking, as well as new structures and business models, and this has been our starting point. 

Home of Cultural Innovators

Most visibly, we’ve reimagined a historic building for the future, with a powerful combination of inspirational architecture and contemporary culture, creating a compelling dialogue between past and future. We have developed an original approach to addressing pressing issues of our time with eclectic and thought-provoking programming that challenges convention and offers alternative perspectives through a creative lens. 

We’ve also built an open and welcoming venue, attracting a broad and diverse audience, including younger audiences and we are at the end of a two-year project to turn Somerset House into a food and drink destination.  

Look below the surface and we’ve turned ourselves into the Home of Cultural Innovators, convening an unrivalled range of nearly 3,000 artists, makers, start-ups and social entrepreneurs working across the arts and creative industries. Probably the most important single shift was making space for artists by setting up Somerset House Studios in 2016.

This was accompanied by the extraordinary Makerversity establishing a home for designers and makers, the launch of our co-working space the Exchange and, over time, shifting all the office rentals to be organisations and businesses that fall within a broad definition of the creative industries, including charities and social enterprise.

This interweaving of the different elements of our creative community has established us as the Home of Cultural Innovators, which sits at the heart of our bold new model of what an arts institution can be today. 

Societal early warning system

We live in a world that has many challenges. But creativity needs to be at the centre of tackling these challenges. Great ideas often don’t come from individuals working alone, but from community and that’s what we have made.

Somerset House makes this possible, we enable creative connection, we bring worlds and minds together, we allow artistic and social innovation to happen together. In a climate of division, we foster open dialogue and a safe space for reflection and debate. 

Central to this is a commitment to supporting the workforce of the future and delivering long-term change in tackling under-representation in our sector, through a range of career entry points and professional development opportunities, supporting thousands of young people a year to enter the industry. 

I often describe artists as a kind of societal early warning system, the canaries in the coalmine. I’m not going to predict what Somerset House will be in 25 years’ time because to a very large extent that will be determined by where the artists, designers, innovators and creatives take us.   

Part of a rich creative ecology

Looking ahead, we will prioritise the vital work we do to support the next generation of talent into the creative industries, equipping them for the future. Having grown into one of the top ten visitor attractions, we will also rethink how we use the site and how we could do more with it. Like many arts organisations we’ve been guilty of prioritising investment to the front line and haven’t always invested enough in the organisation that underpins it, so a big organisational data project is a key foundation stone of what comes next.  

We have built an acclaimed and distinctive cultural programme with exhibitions and events that reach younger audiences, so over the next years we will look to expand this at Somerset House and on tour, which we are regularly being asked to do.  

Cultural leaders from around the world visit us in their search of new institutional models, so although our focus for now is firmly on our home, it’s not hard to imagine other Somerset Houses in the future. We’re proud of the very special, unique place and community, we have built over 25 years.  However, we are always conscious that we are only one part of a rich creative ecology, that can only survive, let alone thrive, if there is solid bedrock of public investment in both the education system and cultural sector.  

Some of the best creative talent in the world call Somerset House home, so looking ahead we can feel confident that a home of cultural innovators in such an inspirational building can help us imagine new and better futures.