Factoryroad: A Shop of Industrious Creatives

Exactly ten years ago we opened our shop, Factoryroad.

Working prototype for the FR shop site. This wasn't all of the artists.

Possibly ahead of its time, it was named for the street we live and work on — known, as the name suggests, for its rows of factories, humming away all day and sometimes into the night with a half day on Friday. Channelling the industrious, round-the-clock nature of working, the building we still live and work in — Factoryroad’s base — was built by one of the factory owners for himself, with the foreman’s house built next door, and we still look out from our studio every day at the Victorian factory behind us (now flats, of course).

I’m thinking about the Factoryroad Shop today not only because I’ve just noticed it’s ten years since its launch, but because had its roots in the collaborative, spontaneous, risk-taking way of working that we’ve always fostered, and which we’ve struggled to get back to after a hammering by the isolation and hesitancy of the pandemic. It’s coming back, but our shop represented an energetic pulling-together of friends and colleagues who all made and designed lovely things, and whose work we wanted to sell alongside our own in one place — the site itself was commissioned from an ex-student and creative colleague, Nathan at Smile, then a new company.

From robustly working-class backgrounds, and living with a strong sense of purposeful industriousness, both of us channelled usefulness and productivity in all that we did. You can see it in the design of the site, based on a found invoice from a real factory, hand-drawn rubber stamps included. For us Commerce + Art was never, and still isn’t, a dirty combination, and we embraced the idea of giving a leg-up to our creative mates who made beautiful things.

Factoryroad itself as an entity had existed since the late 90s, making T shirts, 45rpm record adapters, doing record distribution and and making records under our label Blunt Force Trauma — it even had a Tumblr!

From our lovely Tumblr, still there today.

A natural follow-up to a lifetime together putting on music, social and creative events in clubs, empty and unorthodox spaces, we’d done promotion the long-hand way — going out, driving miles to see people in person, make friends and connections, taking pressies and enthusiasm. To network, you had to travel, and travel we did, in our series of odd little cars.

And the thing about FR is that we did it all, everything, without funding. No arts council money, no grants, no awards. Not that we didn’t try a few times — we were just never eligible, or the hoops to jump through were creatively restricting, or we didn’t move in the right circles. So we gave up on that fairly quickly. More correctly, we funded everything ourselves, sometimes putting the household in a precarious position. We didn’t come from money and neither of us had any - only what we earned at the time from freelance illustration, a little part time lecturing and Leigh’s job at the time in a series of record shops — which he proactively decided to leave behind in 2007 — and we were paying a mortgage and studio rent. So we took what with hindsight were huge risks, gambling sometimes thousands on ambitious projects that we never sure would pay us back. But they did pay us back — always in ways we couldn’t predict, and always slowly, but surely.

Nowadays, I see the ease with which Crowdfunding or Kickstarting is deployed — and good for you, if you can do a nice job of that; there’s something terribly appealing about being answerable to a hundred strangers who’ve given you money. I’ve funded plenty of those projects myself, but we never felt comfortable risking anyone’s money but our own!

I still don‘t know who this girl was! If you’re her, let me know.

Getting someone to wear your T while DJing was a superb free promotional method!

Gifting our wares!

To this day, our manifesto remains:

“Our projects are usually created and executed together, and are usually things we want to try out, do for the sake of doing, or experiment with. They’re neither designed to make money (though they sometimes do), nor to satisfy any brief but our own. They’re also, sometimes, collaborative, and are almost always for the entertainment and engagement of other people.”

You can still read this at the top of my Special Projects page, which attempts to gather as many of these together as possible, though there are too many to list (and many, though it seems improbable, are ‘pre-internet’, with no traces online to link to).

As well as a shop, Factoryroad was also a gallery that held myriad events in its space, and was supported by a network of creative friends from a mile away to 5000 miles away — they attended in person, contributed work to shows, and spread the word. Every event was a huge undertaking, and you can read about some of those shows and events here.

We even ran a radio station from there, Altar Ego — itself an incredibly challenging project, even for two ex-pirate radio people, which we weren’t sure we could pull off till we’d, erm, pulled it off…several times.

“Go ahead and chew everything that you’ve just bitten off, Sarah”.

Instructions for using Altar Ego Radio’s mixer. Oof. Sounds like a bollocking.

Doubling up as our working studio space, the gallery space itself eventually became too disruptive and energy-consuming amid the mad amount of client work and other commitments happening at the time, so we pressed pause on it. (We just do things now without disassembling the entire studio for a week.)

Painting scrap cars, because we can! And *not* inside our office space.

The Factoryroad shop was a commitment to our friends and colleagues to provide a platform to sell their work, which most didn’t have at the time. We built it to offer a selling space to some of the people we’d worked with the most, at a point in time when it was far less easy to jump online and set up a payment system and a shop. But it was also a time when was Instagram wasn’t as massive, Etsy wasn’t the big thing it is now, accounting and book-keeping was still a little on the time-consuming side, cheques could still be written, and the avenues for selling were fewer.

Even just ten years ago, promoting, in other words, was harder, but we had the audience and mailing list to make it work.

Some of the artists involved eventually moved away from their creative practice, or lost interest in selling products, and our shop, though beautiful, wasn’t live for long. It might have existed for longer had it been set up today where, a mere ten years later, selling your art online is not just an nice added extra, it’s pretty much mandatory for any artist.

In the end Factoryroad evolved into four separate shops — the busy one I run now, a Discogs shop for records, a smaller shop just for our 45rpm adapters, and a new one for our other business, Inkymole’s Motors, designing and selling automotive accessories and parts. But I look back at all the FR stuff today — stuff it’s impossible to do justice to in one brief article — with fondess and gratitude that we crammed them in, and took those risks, feeling the roots of it all underpinning everything we still do, and tuning into the gentle tapping of my foot as I feel the same urge to ‘get cracking’ again — but with the added perspective, experience and wisdom of someone a few years further along.

For the curious, here’s some of Factoryroad’s collaborators, who either took part in projects or shows, were the star of a show or film or collaborated in some other way — music, film, art, sound or video recording, food, admin. Most are still creatively active, though not necessarily in the same at form. 
In no particular order:

Melanie Tomlinson (metal sculptor, jeweller)
Strictly Kev / DJ Food (designer, recording artist, DJ)
Henry Flint (2000AD comic artist, illustrator)
Buddy Wakefield (spoken word poet, author, performer)
Dick Hogg (prints and artwork)
Peter Horridge (illustrator, designer, typographer)
Aaron Lloyd Barr (was illustrator, then agent, now co-owner of ATRBUTE)
Max Ellis (illustrator and photographer)
Anthony St James (photographer)
Ed Garland (author and musician)
Sage Francis (rapper, hip-hop artist, label owner, musician)
Buddy Peace (hugely prolific musician and producer)
B.Dolan (musician, producer, rapper, activist)
Gareth Edwards (screenwriter, film director)
Louisa St Pierre (illustration agent)
Jed Smith (chef)
Alisha Miller (public artist)
Jonathan Levine (gallery owner)
Andrea Gibson (spoken word poet, author)
Anne Coleman (textile artist)
April Ball (designer)
Beth Robinson’s Strange Dolls (dollmaker and artist)
Caroline Allen (sculptor, artist)
Drew Jerrison (author, now senior marketer in publishing)
Florence EMA Blanchard (artist)
Andrew Bannecker (illustrator)
Nomoco (illustrator)
Stan Chow (illustrator, DJ)
Joe Rogers (artist)
Alan Titmash aka Jonathan Pelham (musician, now art director)
Graham Robson (illustrator, now a senior artist at Games Workshop)
The Cloud Commission (prints and original artwork)
Solo One (original artwork and stickers)
Dick Hogg (prints and artwork)
Tom Hare (woven sculptures and vessels)
Jacquie O’Neill (illustrator)
Jill Calder (illustrator)
Kelly Merrell (doodler)
Lisa Hayes (jewellery)
Rebecca Lupton (photographer)
Shirley Gibson (designer)
Nigel Axon (architect)

Sarah J Coleman (illustration, prints, stationery)
Factoryroad itself (music ephemera, T shirts, 45rpm adapters)

Linkless But Nonetheless Participating People:
Lisa Hayes (jewellery)
Tracy Walker (artist)
Brook Valentine Menown (assistant)
Lily Blythe (assistant)
Rebecca Lewis (artist management)
Bob Neely (music)

Hassan Massoudy at October Gallery

With his wide, calligraphic bold strokes made with sliced balsa, home-cut nibs and eye-watering water-and-pigment colours (so vibrant his catalogue contains a disclaimer about the camera not being able to capture the naked-eye colour) Hassan Massoudy's work looks easy and is anything but. In his 70s now, he's an absolute master of his trade, having studied calligraphy in Baghdad and travelled to Europe. As well as his art being beautiful, and mesmerising, seeing it in person threw up questions and ideas about his process and the definition of 'art'; now settled in Paris, he's made the shift from what he describes as being a 'just' a craftsman to being an 'artist'.

The difference?

"The objective of art is more complex - more profound - than the craftsman's aim. Art asks pointed questions about the human condition. Art deals with the entire range of human experience, it engages with life and death and examines what must be done to make something new.

"The craftsman, however, is concerned with the ambiance that surrounds us all, and with making necessary objects that are both useful and agreeable."

As someone who considers themselves neither, but is at the same time a bit of both - I've certainly spent a life making useful objects visually agreeable - I found this definition interesting and challenging. I've always felt a bit outside the world of 'art', but with the definition, purpose and remit of 'art' in perpetual, fluid transformation, it's hard to run a diagnostic and come out with any sort of accurate idea about what percentage of artist, craftsman, illustrator, lettering artist and anything else any one person's composed of. So I stopped worrying about that, and started enjoying the idea of being all of those things, at once and at different times.

Further material for pondering come in Hassan's next statement:

"The origins of art lie in the mysterious act of creation, whereas artisanal production is based upon reproducing what has been done before, using previously developed ideas, and often-repeated motifs."

I was a member of the Guild of Master Craftsmen for many years, and took a certain pride in that. It meant my work had been checked by an outside body and deemed acceptably 'masterful' - at quite an early age too: I was still in my 20s. But it was indeed all about 'the craft' - the hand skills, the use of a pen, the control of one, the levels of service I gave to my clients - all things measurable by what, and who, has gone before; existing standards. The Guild did not award membership for creativity, necessarily, nor good ideas executed badly in a frenzy of excited production, or for trying something that had never been done before. It simply recognised a set of skills, and standards. I wonder if this is what Hassan was talking about.

I'm not a member any more, as it's not relevant to the work I do. I'm no longer a member for the same reason I don't enter competitions (see my blog about this), and I look at Hassan's work and see someone so in control of his ideas and materials that he has transcended the need for any sort of external approval. Surely, the ideal place to be. And yet...

Hassan's work oozes confidence and professionalism, but what's really interesting was seeing the many copies of the same piece of work stored in files at the side of the gallery, for sale. He doesn't approach a piece of blank paper and hit a perfect 10 out of the end of his nibs first time. He makes the same piece, over and over again, and chooses 'the one' for public showing. This is why, when the guest at the gallery asked why the pieces in the folder were the same price as the framed version on the wall, the curator replied 'because it is the same piece'.

At 24 Hassan had his own studio in the centre of Baghdad, and did familiar work - editorial pieces, signs, ads, commissions here and there, becoming resident calligrapher for a cinema chain; that rather nice and sought-after thing, a regular gig with a single client. But he says that 'after becoming conscious of the necessity of exploring things more deeply, and of adding something new, I sacrificed that continuity of tradition to search for something else' - which he describes as a 'painful' step. He entered a place of uncertainty, where there were 'no guides' from the strict rules, formalities and structures of traditional calligraphy.

Now, I've never done any sort of calligraphy course, nor lettering classes, so I never had any rules to break, though the desire to break them was present regardless. Thinking back, I've never had much in the way of formal education in terms of methodology or technique other than a little life drawing, painting at school and a lot of typography study - ems, picas, x-heights, slide rules, justification, orphans, widows and so on. That bit I relished. Instead, we learned techniques for problem solving, meeting deadlines, idea generation, managing multiple jobs, answering a brief. So I can't imagine what it's like to put yourself and your output outside of everything you've ever learned and practised. I suppose the equivalent would be me entering a period of exactly that discipline and formality, having existed for most of my life in a world of loose experimentation, learning on the job and figuring-it-out from necessity. I tried to put myself in Hassan's lovely, imaginary polished shoes, but my imagination couldn't stretch that far.

That Hassan has to do his pieces over and over again was reassuring. It felt like he was 'like us' - unsure at first, pushing out some wonk before the magic, and maybe going back to what he'd originally thought was the wonk but was actually 'The One'. And the element of chance was surprising; he must surely sometimes do 50 and STILL not get 'the one'. I wonder what he does then?

I was more interested in the extreme detail of Hassan's work, though I had been drawn towards it by the long-view of the massive strokes. When you get RIGHT IN THERE, the way the ink scoots across the surface of the very specific paper and lands in weighty soaks at the edges, drying to miniature galaxies, it's a world of its own; these things were what got me talking and thinking most animatedly. There are entire illustrations in the edges of those apparently casual sweeps, and tiny inky rebellions up close where the material flew off, flicked, bled and refused to be told. Step back though, and the whole thing looks like a model of creative obedience.

Of course the pieces in the show aren't just visual exercises; they're illustrated quotes, poems and pieces of prose. That's what's written there in Arabic, tucked inside and next to the strokes, underneath in faintly-off-centre lines, and in pencil beneath that. 9th century philosophers, 16th century authors, pre-Christian saints and contemporary scientists, writers and thinkers are all explored by his pen. The shapes and sweeps didn't necessarily correspond to the words - we soon abandoned trying to 'see' the quote in them - it was more a case of feeling the sentiment. If you could read Arabic of course it would be right there. But I enjoyed relying on the exhibition card only and the tiny pencil words; I chose not to engage with the quote at all, I could ignore it till frustration kicked in.

I went to the show expecting to have my eyes stretched and soothed by seeing someone else's work in the flesh, to get close up to the movement of ink across paper which isn't my own, and all the good that comes from that. I didn't expect the experience to stimulate so many questions and so much rumination on my own work and where I am in life, and what comes next. Usually, those questions arrive in the middle of the night, weighed down negativity and anxiety, but here, they didn't. Maybe that's because I was in the presence of someone who's made that journey, has many more years on the planet than me, and whose work effectively said 

'whatever it is, and is going to be, it can be this, or it can be that; it can be everything, some of it, and none of it. And although it's up to you, it's just as equally going to be out of your hands'.

(Sarah Coleman, 2018)

There we go. I should go ahead and illustrate that now, in my own tribute to Hassan and his beautiful work. If, if...if I'm up to the job...whispers one voice, while a louder one tells it to get lost, stop worrying, and pick up a loaded brush.

'Breath, Gesture and Light' at the October Gallery, Shoreditch, December 2017-January 2018.

Watch Hassan Massoudy working here.

Having assistants is great!

Lisa wasn't officially an assistant, but this is what assistants are supposed to look like, efficient and cool and in control

...in my head, anyway

Since the late 90s, I've had assistants. The first one was my best mate Jules; the second who worked next to her was my other mate, another Sara, and the third, my sister's best mate Michelle. At one point all three of them worked together alongside me, doing different shifts, helping me run the wedding stationery business which ran alongside my illustration and lecturing work - you can see why I needed extra hands! - and later I employed a family member to run the accounts (who's still here).

'Staff' Christmas Party, 2003 - Sarah, Jules, Michelle.

This is Jules 7 years later, sitting in judgment with later assistant Drew, who LOVED stamping things.
And assessing the suitability of my clothing on arrival at work. 

We often get emails asking whether we currently have an opening for an assistant or intern. I've almost always said no - and not because we don't need one, but because we already have one. And we make an important distinction between Interns and Assistants - traditionally, and especially of late, Interns aren't paid; they're meant to be getting 'work experience' on the job, something companies can easily take advantage of. They're often expected to be grateful for the opportunity, and do it for free. We don't buy into that however; if you're working with and for us, yes, you'll most definitely be getting experience in the form of Illustration Boot Camp, (just ask our former assistant Brook), but we'll also be gaining from your input, knowledge, skills, your third pair of hands, eyes and your brain. So it benefits both parties, and for that, we pay very fairly, and handsomely over the minimum wage.

Lily was invited to rifle through my entire archive of original work, and put up an exhibition of what she liked - followed by the curation of a show of her own work, and a blog written about the process of doing both. 

Graham Robson did a similar thing in his first week - put up his own show of work, which included two murals, one of which Sarah is sitting in front of at one of our pop-up Secret Sunday Breakfasts! (I'm eating off my collection of Inkymole press)

If you come and work with us you'll be expected to work. Not watch. Anyone can make tea, and I'll probably make as much tea as you do. If you do make the tea, however, you'll be shown the right way to do it (bag in first, milk only after it's brewed). But you'll also be asked to undertake a sometimes bewildering variety of tasks which engage the brain and call for initiative.

For example, our successive assistants have:

- been our 'eye in the sky' back home as we travel through Europe checking out an exhibition venue, looking out for logistics, watching email, helping to order passes and other legalities

- helped paint a 15m mural in a half-completed building without power or light - on breeze block, the bastard of all substrates

- helped painted a restored pub, powered by chips

- made an oversized silicone penis door stop, from scratch

- worked out the basics of copper etching and assisted in etching album cover art

- completed entire illustrations in a style to complement mine

- built an archive

- been a waitress in our pop-up restaurant

- edited and subtitled a film

- went on a solo mission to London, twice, to find a suitable exhibition venue

- set up an image tagging system

- set up a server

- been indispensable right-hand (wo)man during the publicising, set-up and installation of a two-week exhibition - twice

- pitched in with drawing hundreds of mathematical formulae for a 72ft high Manhattan billboard

- been the Fourth Man in setting up the technicals of hosting an online and FM radio station over a 72-hour shift (including doing 2 live DJ slots)

- built 3 websites

- helped build a web shop

- solved endless technical challenges

- solved brain-crunching iTunes issues

- turned a Mac into a PC to run broadcast software

- installed a Firewall

- done photoshoots

- accompanied us to agency dos

- built an iPad folio system

and that's by no means an exhaustive list. These jobs of course are all alongside the day to day tasks like simply giving a second opinion, brainstorming, researching and ordering supplies and equipment,  making lunch and dinner for everyone in the studio, and stamping hundreds of mailings and Christmas promotions.

Graham adding a hand-painted postbox to the office front door.

Brook Valentine with Leigh in her show-hosting costume/shoes!

...and seeing if your name's down on the list.

So you're kind of in at the deep end if you come here, but part of that challenge is accepting that there will be days when there is simply nothing for you to do. The single most quoted obstacle to having an assistant which I hear illustrators talk about is 'but what will I give them to do'? And that's why our assistants have to have spades of initiative, for precisely those days when you need to either fend for yourself, or work out what WE need you to do - because often, when you're really busy, you can't actually see what needs doing, or where you need help, till someone else points it out to you. When your assistant starts to spot what needs doing before you do, you know you're onto a winner, and all those slightly awkward days early on in the arrangement have all paid off.

Sarah Jinks constructing a piece from almost 2500 Swarovski crystals for our 2006 'If A Girl Writes Off The World' show

Graham helping with the etching

As well as the obvious joy of having a pair of helping hands, there is the changed dynamic of a studio with another person in it who isn't you or your partner. As we've got older, our assistants have, as a matter of chronological fact, become younger than us - and this is a GOOD THING. Millennials come in for a shit load of stick, but they're great - they're interesting, they think in a different way, their skillsets are not the same as ours, neither is their experience of the world, and their energy is refreshing. I don't actually even like the word Millennials - there's something very 'other-ing' about it - but there is most definitely an energising effect to having one bounce into your studio with their slightly askew, quick humour, ideas, opinions and musical choices (we will check the contents of your iPod before we say yes - there's no point you spending your days hating what we're playing, and vice versa - because some days, we'll put you in charge of the tunes!)

The second reason I've heard people give for not having an assistant - including me, definitely, from time to time - is 'but having an assistant is just going to create extra work for me'.

Well, yes, it is. It can be hard work in the early days having someone in your space that you don't know, and you can't just bury your head in your work and pretend they're not there. You have to make sure the bathroom's tidy. You need to make sure you've plenty of tea bags. That they've got somewhere comfortable and well lit to work in. That they know how you like to have your phone  answered, that you've set up their own email address from your studio; that hey feel comfortable around you and they have plenty to do - bearing in mind, 'plenty to do' when you first start in a job, especially compared to your own workload, can actually be about a third of what you yourself would consider 'plenty to do'. But when the ball's rolling nicely, and you've all got to know each other's ropes, it's wonderful.

Graham 'at the wall' - the 15 metre, bastard breezeblock wall

If you think you're getting bit overwhelmed from time to time, you work by yourself or feel like an injection of energy is needed, I heartily recommend an assistant. It took me a long time to get used to the idea of a helper beyond giving roles to my mates and family, as I too used to worry about what they'd do, feeling that I might bore them to death, or their presence would be extra work for me. They don't have to be five days a week - ours have never been, except in REALLY busy times - as the likelihood is they'll have their own shit to crack on with. But maybe try it. The benefits are mutual, long-lasting and good for our brains, careers and creativity. You'll very likely help them on their way, via them helping you on yours.

And who knows, you might even have FUN.