Our story
In the early 2000’s, a group of artists who had recently moved to Dunbar and the surrounding area, got together with the idea of creating studio spaces in the old Victorian primary school at West Barns. Shân Edwards and Andrew McNiven had secured a lease from East Lothian Council and welcomed Liz Adamson, Graeme Todd, Susan Mowatt and Davy Henderson on board to transform what was an unused building into a workable space that artists could use.
The building had been boarded up and looked very unloved. Inside, it was a shell with all of the stonework and rafters exposed. Through various small amounts of funding and a lot of hard work, we managed to line the interior and build studio spaces that allowed us to work as artists whilst we all had small children to look after.
In 2014, Liz Adamson, Graeme Todd and Susan Mowatt managed to secure substantial funding from Viridor, which enabled us to insulate the building for the first time, renovate the windows and install secondary glazing. Thanks to the architect, Malcolm Jones, we were also able reconfigure the internal spaces and create a beautiful Project Space by revealing a wooden floor which had been hidden under several layers of fibreglass (the building had previously been used to manufacture canoes).
We now have eight generous sized studio spaces and a Project Space that is available to hire.
