We are excited to introduce Common Room, a new talk series presented by Wasps Studios, created to bring together artists, designers and makers from across our community.

The pilot event in the series will take place on Thursday 16 July (5pm–7pm) at South Block in Glasgow and will be hosted by Mil Stricevic from Irregular Sleep Pattern. The discussion will feature fellow Wasps tenant, co-founder of GOOD Brand Consultants, Chris Lumsden alongside Mil, as the cohort muses the question ‘can space inform creative purpose?’ to talk about how their own working environments can influence their creativity and shape artistic processes.

Common Room is hosted by the Wasps Studios network, which stewards 18 buildings across Scotland. It aims to encourage collaboration, debate and inspiration in an informal and welcoming setting.

Join us for an evening of conversation with artists, designers and makers as they discuss the relationship between creative space and creative purpose.

Over the coming months, we look forward to hosting more Common Room events with Wasps-based artists and creatives as speakers and panellists.

Refreshments included at event. Click here to book your spot now.

To celebrate the launch of Poppy Nash’s SEE / AND KNOW / BOTH SIDES OF THE QUESTION, textile artist and craft expert Clare Hunter will be in conversation withwriter and co-founder of Decorating Dissidence Lottie Whalen. Clare and Lottie will discuss the secret life of textiles, exploring the ways that textile art has been used as a tool of protest and delving deeper into the stories of ‘disobedient textiles’ that inspire Poppy’s work, including Lorina Bulwer, Agnes Richter, and Marie Leib.

Join us from 6:15pm to view the exhibition, handle textiles, and have a go at stitching your own fabric square. The conversation will take place between 7-8pm, with an opportunity for audience questions. Book via Eventbrite here.

Clare Hunter has been a banner-maker, community textile artist and textile curator for over twenty years and established the community enterprise NeedleWorks in Glasgow. Her first book, Threads of Life, won the Saltire First Book Award, was a Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month and a Radio 4 Book of the Week. She published her most recent book Making Matters: in Search of Creative Wonders this year.

Lottie Whalen is a writer, researcher, and co-founder of Decorating Dissidence, a research project that explores radical histories of craft and the legacies of those histories in the work of contemporary makers. Her book Radicals and Rogues: the Women Who Made New York Modern came out in 2023 and she is currently working on a project about artist friendship.