The alchemy of ACME: turning ‘land rent’ into art in the London real estate market

Artists’ presence in an urban setting is generally thought to increase the value of land, so much so that a range of policies have emerged encouraging artist activities in neighbourhoods as urban renewal strategy, i.e. creative cities, creative economies and cultural industries. But increased land values often results in increased cost of access to studio and living space, forcing artists out of the very same neighbourhoods. In this paper, we examine the creative assemblage of Acme Artist Studios, founded in 1972, and now one of the largest providers of artist studio spaces in the city of London, UK. Acme operates within complex economic and political forces that produce ever increasing land use values, exacerbated by what Henry George described as ‘land rent’, value attracted by location, i.e. through the activities of public investment and community labour. ACME undermines these forces in order to provide studio access for artists well below market rates. In this paper, we argue that Acme’s assemblage nomadically encounters, negotiates with and navigates within the frameworks of increasing land use values while also creating a new socio-economic territory through its unconventional practices and outcomes. Our findings suggest that the Acme model transverses relations of power with tactics that in effect redistribute ‘land rent’ value into the hands of artists through long-term affordable studio lease rates in a way that allows for the legitimacy of artistic practice independent of ‘highest and best use’ of land in conventional market terms.