Our Support and initiatives

Axis Art Film Festival 2025 ran from 8–14 September. The programme included over 30 short films, seven themed nights, and live Q&As hosted by Lucy Wright. This archive records the films, themes, staff picks, and highlights from our inaugural edition.

The 2024 Axis Fellowship brought together artists Uma Breakdown, Asuf Ishaq, Hannah Leighton-Boyce and Sean Roy Parker for a year of making, reflection and connection. From selection through to mentoring and curated projects, this archive captures their journey and the ideas that shaped it.

Our fifth year of Mental Health for Artists brought together artists, curators, and creative practitioners for five free online events exploring the realities of sustaining wellbeing in the arts.

A guest curator series where artists and curators choose work by Axis Members around a theme, creating fresh ways to explore contemporary art.

We commissioned 18 artists to share honest reflections on art school, from the best bits to the hard lessons to alternative paths entirely. The result is a vivid snapshot of how artists learn, grow, and sustain their practice, well beyond any single institution.

In summer 2024 we curated a season exploring costume, performance and identity. Four artists shared how dress, movement and persona shape political expression, imagination and lived experience. Recordings from the series sit in our Member Knowledge Base.

Our 2024 season brought together artists, writers, and therapists to explore how we care for ourselves and one another through creative practice, conversation, and reflection.

The third issue of Social Works? Open, Axis’s journal for and about social practice art. Published in 2023 and developed through the SAFEDI project, it explores how artists advocate for equality, diversity and inclusion across social practice and cultural policy.

SOAL: Ambassadors and Storytelling for Artists expanded the Social Art Library through Art Fund–supported commissions, workshops and public events. Artists explored new ways of archiving social practice, creating stories, toolkits and artworks that captured artists’ and communities’ responses to the pandemic and wider social change.

SAFEDI (Social Art for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) was a partnership between Axis, Manchester Metropolitan University and the Social Art Network. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, it supported six artist commissions testing how socially engaged art can strengthen equality, diversity and inclusion, influence cultural policy and create more equitable opportunities in the visual arts.

The second issue of Social Works? Open, Axis’s journal for and about social practice art. Published in 2021 and produced with Social Art Network, this issue forms part of Axis’s growing archive of projects exploring art, society and collaboration.

Social ARTery created an ethical online space for artists and communities to connect during Covid-19. Through the Pioneers Programme, 20 artists co-designed the platform, shaping new models of digital care, collaboration and mutual support that continue today.

Axis was one of the first and only arts organisations to offer direct financial support to artists during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Hardship Fund for Artists distributed £15,000 in support bursaries from Axis’s own reserves, demonstrating a continued commitment to care, community and artistic resilience.

Social Art Library is an artist-led archive and resource library for social practice, created by Axis. 

An Innovate UK-funded partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University that transformed Axis into a self-sustaining, research-led organisation and established new artist-centred systems of validation.

Social Works?: Live was a one-day celebration of socially engaged art, attended by over 130 artists, producers, commissioners, academics, and participants.

Social Works?:Open is an artist-led journal for and about social practice art in the UK and beyond. 

Commissioned by Axis in 2015, Validation Beyond the Gallery explored how artists working outside traditional gallery systems gain recognition for their practice. The research became a catalyst for rethinking how Axis supports and values artists, marking a shift toward an artist-first approach that continues to guide the organisation today.

Open Frequency (2003 - 2014) was a research tool for curators, critics, writers, collectors, and students exploring contemporary art practice, attracting a national and international user base.

A limited edition tote bag created in 2014 with artist Wendy Saunders, based on her painting of Pussy Riot. The bag became one of our most recognised editions and even reached members of Pussy Riot in Russia.

In November 2008, Axis launched Future50, a selling exhibition showcasing the work of 50 Axis artists at Project Space Leeds. 

Dialogue (2005–2007) generated new critical writing on contemporary art practice. This programme reflected on the work of artists featured across the Axis website, alongside a broader circle of emerging and mid-career artists. The aim was to foster a greater understanding and appreciation of their critical reception.