Talking Art and Community with Kaya Fraser

Shall we start with you saying who you are and what you do…

I am Kaya Fraser, I am a visual artist, artist facilitator, and creator from Perth, Scotland.

Amazing, so what kind of work have you been working on in the past year?

In the past year, I have worked on a few residency projects. Last year I was the artist in residence on Isle of Bute. Here, I worked with working-class communities on the island and looked at the similarities that I share with them.

We focused on the memories, the positive memories, that we have from growing up. I grew up in two schemes, Potterhill and North Muirton. I have an amazing affiliation with growing up in these two places, and how it has made me the person I am – an artist and a human being.

The communities that I came from are really pretty golden, and I am proud of where I am from. But if I look at any deprivation index, there is a disparity between my memories of my upbringing and the data that is recorded for local governments. The two schemes that I grew up in score low in many factors, including education, transport, crime, jobs, and income, and I don’t feel like it grasps the full truth of the people who live in these communities.

When I went to Bute, I looked at two schemes that were on the island that were also scoring the lowest on the SMID, and I was keen to work with those groups and communities specifically. Not to highlight them or intentionally make them aware that the areas were scoring low, but to speak to them and get their feedback on how their education system was. How safe they feel in their communities. If they locked their doors at night, regardless, and see where all this ‘data’ came from. It’s subversive, submissive data collected, and what good does it actually do for those areas?

I started by putting out an advert because I was working remotely from home in Perth; I didn’t get to the island for the first 3 months of the project, and everything was done via telephone calls and interviews over a cup of tea. I got to speak to several people from the island, younger people and older people. I started the interview by talking about home life and how they feel at home. Their social housing communities and where else they’ve lived in the past.

We talked about privately rented accommodation they’ve had in places like Glasgow and compared that to the warmth and the bills in social housing. If they lived in a Glasgow tenement, we talked about how it was always cold and how they couldn’t afford their bills because they were such massive spaces. Then going back home to Bute in these communities how their homes always felt much cosier and warmer, and more affordable to heat.

We talked about the food that we make and eat at home and comfort food. We talked about education and their relationship with education as well. How they loved school, and they had really good relationships with their teachers. We talked about their school friends, the ones they’re still friends with that they’ve known for years. All these kinds of positives and a rose-tinted outlook on life growing up in these communities. Areas that are meant to be deprived. Then, from that, we created a sound piece with the interviewees who were willing to have their conversations recorded and used for artwork. It was called milk + two sugars, please.

It became an overall history project in the sense that it did become an oral audio sound piece. It transpired by starting off with the home, then a look at the schemes that they were from. Then the island itself and its connection to Scotland and the mainland, and it was all from a positive outlook. Detracting from this poverty-safari-like artwork that is so popular now. People who are not from deprived areas looking in deprived areas for any kind of credit or artwork that they think looks aesthetically cool. When they’ve not actually had any experience of growing up in these kinds of communities themselves.

It kind of had me irritated as a working-class artist growing up and then going and studying art; there were so many kinds of people that were exploiting the communities that were similar to where I grew up. So I wanted to take that power back into my own hands.

In the last year, I also worked on running a little art show initiative in Dundee. This was with 10 committee members, but at some point, it got down to just 2 of us. It was like a grassroots committee of artist-run initiatives. We were funding opportunities for emerging artists to come and exhibit with us. That was where I grew my curatorial hat and learned how to do everything from funding applications to hosting artists to come and make work. Funding a budget that would allow us to continue and help the Scottish art scene, providing these opportunities for graduate artists or emerging artists in Scotland.

I also got some opportunities to facilitate workshops for Scottish Artist Union. We discussed how sometimes we need to go back to being unprofessional. When I was working at the gallery, I was volunteering. I didn’t get paid for it; everything I put in was just time, soul, and energy. But it was all for what I see as a benefit to me.

However, it’s problematic because if you’re working three jobs, you might not have the privilege or time to do this. So we supported a constitutional change to be written into our artist-run initiative, which is set up as a charity. We’re trying to change that so that in the future artist-run initiatives throughout Scotland will be able to be compensated for their time so that it doesn’t become so elitist.

Then, in addition to facilitating workshops for the Scottish Artists Union and Creative Scotland, I have facilitated for community groups in Perth. This year I was invited along to run workshops for Raise The Roof festival, a festival celebrating women in Perth for The Year Of Stories. I was given Gender Equality Perth as my community group to focus on, and they chose Jess Smith as the storyteller that they wanted to look at.

So I facilitated three workshops with them; one was to initially have a research workshop that would decide on what piece of artwork we would like to make. We took an activist approach; we wanted to make some banners. We wanted to make banners with an old kind of craft and textile base, and that was mostly inspired by the information we found out about the storyteller. That’s the kind of medium that they would have used, and some of her stories incorporated aprons. So we decided to put the text on aprons as well. I got them to make a textile work with pictures that were all done in the other workshops, and we’ve put it together to make a cultural piece.

I’ve also done an audio workshop for a festival at Loch Maddie in North Uist this year. That was looking at the environmental crisis in Scolpaigs specifically. This is a national heritage site, and our focus was trying to record and encourage locals to go out and record the environment. Doing it at this national heritage site as it goes through development for a new nuclear missile hub. This environment is going to change massively due to the development of this missile hub.

So we went to Scolpaig as it was going through these changes, and we recorded and talked to some locals that signed up for the workshop. We looked at artists that were doing this over in National Parks throughout America, and we tried to teach them how to listen to different sounds. Whether it’s natural sounds like wind and waves, or water, insects, and bird species. And also the difference in noises that humans make. Maybe this will change with diggers or a lack of farmers going out and herding sheep. We looked at the sound of extinction, a campaign that came from America to influence this way of art activism.

You’ve been at a studio in Perth; how has that been?

I’ve been at a studio in Perth for the last two years; it was the studio I managed to get into during lockdown. It had just opened up in 2020, and within the first month, it was closed down due to COVID. So when I got in in late 2020, the studios were very quiet. I got that funded as part of some sort of remuneration that Creative Scotland tried to give to ARI’s. So through working for the gallery we could be remunerated informally by ways of accessing a pot of funding for professional development.

I had half my studio funded through that, but the funding difference in Perth in comparison to Dundee is massive. Dundee studios are at such a lower rental rate; I’d say about half the price of Perth. I even took into consideration that maybe it was due to it being such a new build; it had much higher bills and outgoings than these ones that have been existing much longer.

But as they’ve filled the units in Perth, it has become much more of a business center for creatives, and it’s kind of priced a lot of visual artists that would be staying in Perth out. You have to really be selling commercially to make the money that they are expecting you to pay for a studio space. So I am leaving Perth Studios, and I’m going down to Glasgow where I have a fully funded studio and one studio that is much bigger and much more affordable than my current one.

You’re from Perth, and you’ve got a huge amount of history here, so why move to Glasgow?

So I graduated in 2020, which was obviously a difficult year to graduate in. I didn’t get a degree show, so I didn’t get any documentation or exhibition experience. I decided I’d stay on the committee at Generator for my term, which would be two years. I thought I’d give myself two years to stay in Perth and just apply for all opportunities that I could see. Even within Tayside, I didn’t just keep it to Perth. I went all the way up and down the Tayside area and looked at the opportunities that have arisen in the last two years, but they have been few and far between.

It’s highly competitive and also open to people outside the area, so it’s difficult to stay working in Perth. The opportunities that I have been getting and being successful with have been within rural areas all over Scotland. Being based in Glasgow would make more sense because the West Coast seems to be providing much more opportunities. Whether that be in rural or in urban socially engaged arts. There are just hundreds more opportunities arising down there to apply for, and I’d be successful in changing my base and location there.

I’d love to see a change in Perth, but I don’t think it’s going to come any time soon, and without the opportunity of growing a CV in socially engaged arts, I don’t feel like I would have the…I don’t have the experience to be the change yet. It’s not something I’m saying I wouldn’t want to come back and be a part of, though.

What does the change look like?

The change would look like…more funding in government bodies, and more programs dedicated to changing the visual arts in Perth and the visual art scene. Changing the opportunities not just for graduates but also for students who are at different levels from different schools. Even just accessible arts hubs for people who just have an interest in Perth and art. Using local artists as well as those outside Perth.

A lot of the art workshops that are happening in Perth are for profit; you have to have money to attend them. There’s no funding for people with an interest in accessing them, which cuts off a lot of people in Perth who might still not have the time, money, or ability. And they can’t be temporary solutions.

So, yeah, I’d like to come back and hopefully be the change that kick-starts the project, but you have to have the know-how and work for other places that are doing this successfully.

So the final question is, what’s next? You were saying Glasgow; what are your plans?

I got a free studio space down in Glasgow that comes along with a bursary, and my plan is to fully put focus on an opportunity that I have been given with the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh.

Next, I’m working on a body of work for a solo show at Edinburgh’s Carlton Hill Collective Gallery for their emerging artists programme ‘Satellites’. The work will take a look back at the roots of my research and the development of my working-class scheme sublime series. Using what I’ve learnt from my experiences since graduating in 2022.

I’m focusing on that whilst also taking on some freelance jobs in rural Glasgow in art hub positions, and facilitating workshops. So hopefully I’ll just be getting back into a studio environment and buzzing off people who are interested in similar things. Being around creatives that have the same goals and outlooks as I do, ethically and morally as well.