Manifesto — Harlesden High Street

HARLESDEN HIGH STREET MANIFESTO, 2022-Present

Harlesden High Street encourages marginalised artists to take pride in their diverse life experiences and create work that strives to achieve a high standard of quality. To work in a creative field is, in itself, a privilege, and with this in mind, we want to encourage artists to work with principles of dedication and empowerment. Our space brings all people of all backgrounds together to a community in North West London that has an artistic and cultural background that needs to be celebrated and supported. Our manifesto outlines our aims and standards as a creative space and gallery:

Our core values are formed by our experiences as outsiders navigating the art world.
We value self-determination, integrity, and respect in opposition to cultural norms dominated by apathy and privilege.
Our collective experiences of elitism, segregation and complacency has kept us moving forwards and progressing as marginalised people of colour in the arts and the world in general. Our mission is fundamentally to centre the voices of those who feel a sense of alienation.
We encourage and help our artists to develop their practices: we support them to think outside of the box and consider new approaches, whether this be conceptually or visually.
We aspire to show new and interesting ideas and visual styles; we are uninterested in capitalising on cliched pop references and topical current events.
Our mission is to help artists to tap into their individuality and explore their own perspectives and/or roots of their culture(s) and to reflect this in the truest sense through their own practice.
We wish to showcase art practices that are accessible and that can be experienced by people of all ages, social and cultural backgrounds.
We do not tolerate elitism, racism, misogynism and any anti-social or disrespectful behaviour in our physical or online space.
We don’t use artists to prop up our space by dependending on them for income
Our represented artists receive 60% income vs 40% and we invest heavily in their career without demanding a fixed consignment per calendar month and work to their flexibility and needs.