Welcome to Studio Upstairs

exploring complex human experience through art

Studio Upstairs is a working arts community with studios in London and Bristol.

It is a place for people to express their interests, abilities and talents through the arts who, for reasons of mental health difficulties or emotional distress, choose not to participate in traditional arts institutions.

Studio Upstairs is managed by a committed team of practising artists, art therapists and psychotherapists. It is not a treatment centre providing art as an introspective pastime, but a place where people find that through creating art, both privately and publicly, they can transform their lives.

Intrinsic to our ethos is that studio members, managers and volunteers can produce work and exhibit alongside each other in a public gallery setting. There is a genuine interest in the production of good art.

Informed by the traditions of Dartington College and more recently Black Mountain College USA, Studio Upstairs believes that learning is about experience and experimentation rather than being based on a formal curriculum. It is also influenced by R D Laing and the Philadelphia Association with their particular work in therapeutic communities outside of the institutional framework.