BLOC SPACE
RICHARD BARTLE FOUNDER OF BLOC SPACE.

RICHARD: We originally started about 9 years ago after graduating from College. I came out of College wanting to carry on and work with other Artist’s in particularly in Sheffield. I found an empty building, only a small place just around the corner. Set up up a studio with three other people I graduated with, we had all jobs but I was slowly left with the responsibility of looking after Bloc and then I realised I actually enjoyed doing it. Then I thought about expanding getting more spaces than we had. About three years ago we relocated to this building and now we have 50 artists.
And there’s Bloc Space. It’s only small, when I took the building I went looking around seen a particular space and I thought we could turn that into a Gallery space and the landlord actually gave us some money to build it because it was separate to the rest of the building and three years on we’ve have had some fantastic exhibitions on, showing recent graduates and people with a connection to the Yorkshire region.
PETER: It has a reputation for being an experimental space is something that you’ve encouraged or has it developed naturally?
RICHARD: Yeah we tend to favour Artist’s who want to come in and try out things, for us the most successful exhibitions we’ve had are the ones where they say “I’ve got this idea, been messing around with things in the studio, ideas in my sketchbook they then want to work in the space and see their ideas a gallery context. To me the most successful shows are the people who push the boundaries of what they are doing.
PETER: How do you see the future of Bloc Space and Studios, is there room for expansion?
RICHARD:Yeah that’s what I am working now, there’s a unit next door which is different, Bloc as it is now is what you call Sheffield’s little besters, in the old days when they used to make cutlery everyone used to work in a small room for plating and stuff and this is what this part of Bloc’s like it lends itself nicely to turn them into studios. But next door is big open space there’ll be chipboard partitions plenty of natural light and what we are planning to do is moving the art gallery over into that space and it looks onto a more busier street and we are going to have a café in front of the gallery and that’s another way to attract more people, then we are going to get some darkrooms and an internet connection.
The other building is separated by a cobbled street called Jessops Lane which dates back to the 17th or 18th Century, so we are going to clean it up and maybe have market stalls, record fairs, benches for a communal area, anything, we just want to keep the place dynamic and to get as many visitors down.