Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Flick waited nervously in the old café for the artists to arrive for their meeting.
She’d been round to them all and introduced herself and told them there would be a meeting today.
Some of them had looked at her warily as if she was going to come in and change everything about their happy little status quo.
She was dreading telling them that that was exactly what she was here to do.
She had bought some nice biscuits and cakes from a little bakery in the town and hoped that would go some way to placate them.
One by one they filtered in, eyeing her and the cakes suspiciously.
Flick thought that her nan had probably never called a meeting before.
She definitely hadn’t told Luke about the financial problems Waterfall House was facing, even though she lived with him, so it was very unlikely the other artists knew either.
She glanced around at their faces. Her nan had told her they wouldn’t like change and she could see they already had their defences up. Luke gave her an encouraging smile which made her feel fractionally better.
‘Thank you all for coming,’ Flick said.
‘Not sure we had much choice,’ Aidan muttered.
‘Shut up, this is important,’ Luke said.
Everyone looked at Luke in surprise. Clearly they weren’t used to him speaking up but Flick was grateful for it. Although she was capable of defending herself, she decided to ignore it and press on, not wanting to antagonise anyone just yet.
‘I’m not sure how much my nan has told you but Waterfall House is in trouble.
The way I understand it is that none of you pay any rent here but you have an arrangement where you pay twenty-five percent of any sale to my nan.
But there aren’t any sales, not one single sale since Christmas, for anyone, and last year wasn’t much better.
So no money is coming in and, while the mortgage on this place was paid off many years ago, there are still bills and overheads.
Some of you may know that she sold her house in the town a few years ago and moved in here and has been using the money to pay the bills for this place ever since.
That money has now run out and, in true Audrey style, she’s been burying her head in the sand and hoping something miraculous would happen.
She’s now run away to Australia for six months and left me to deal with it. ’
Flick knew that sounded harsh but this was her nan all over. She loved her nan but Audrey was a dreamer not a doer .
‘We’ve now reached a turning point. We have six months to turn this place around or my nan will sell it.’
There was a gasp from Rose. ‘Waterfall House has always been here.’
‘I know but it’s not making any money. The café isn’t in use so we’re not getting any money from that and there’s only five artists here when there used to be so many more.
By the sounds of it, my nan has given up on the place.
She said a developer has been after her for years to turn this place into a hotel and my nan has reached the point where she’s willing to let him if we can’t do something to save it. ’
‘Can’t you do something?’ Katherine said to Luke, which Flick thought was odd.
‘As Flick said last night when I offered to help, throwing money at it isn’t the answer, we need to think about a long-term solution here. We need to be the ones to change.’
‘What do you have in mind?’ Ethel said, folding her arms across her chest as if she would say no to anything that was proposed.
‘Firstly, I want to say that your work is stunning,’ Flick said.
‘All of you. I had a good look around your shops this morning before you arrived and the quality of the work is exceptional. That is not the reason for our lack of sales but some of your rooms or shops could be presented better. For some of you your area is just a workspace, not a space for showcasing your wonderful art. I’d like you all to look at Katherine’s studio and see how her space is laid out.
Every mosaic is displayed beautifully with clear prices on all of them, they aren’t stacked up in piles with no prices.
Some of you don’t have any stock at all.
You need to think about what your space looks like to potential customers and whether it appeals to them. ’
‘I suppose we can do that,’ Rose said.
‘Some of you need to diversify. Aidan, your sculptures are stunning but most of them are dragons.’
‘I like dragons,’ Aidan said, grumpily.
‘And that’s great for fellow dragon lovers, but some people might prefer to see a dolphin, a deer, a puppy or an eagle. Could we try doing some other animals, alongside the dragons of course?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
Flick ploughed on. ‘Rose, your landscapes are lovely but maybe you could also paint some animals, portraits of celebrities, pets, flowers just to try to appeal to a wider audience.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Footfall, or rather the lack of it, is one of our biggest problems. We need to give people a reason to come up here. To that end I want to reopen the café. Well, not me personally, I don’t know the first thing about serving food, but I’ll find someone to run it.
If people are up here for a coffee they might be inclined to wander round your studios.
We could even offer a voucher, say five percent off to spend on your art for every time they spend twenty pounds or more in the café. ’
‘I’m not sure I want my work discounted,’ Katharine said. ‘It devalues it. ’
‘It’s only five percent,’ Luke said.
‘For every customer who spends twenty pounds. That’s a lot of customers.’
‘It’s also a lot more customers than you’re getting right now,’ Luke said.
Katherine pulled a face and muttered something under her breath.
‘I’d like to give them other reasons to come up here,’ Flick went on.
‘The fact that you create your masterpieces here and that this is a working studio is one of its attributes. I’d like a day a week where you’d be demonstrating your work and we’ll advertise it to try to encourage people to come up here.
That could be every Saturday for example and it would be a demonstration day for everyone, or we could have a quilt demonstration day on the Monday, wood carving demonstration on the Tuesday for example.
People can ask questions and talk to you about your process. How would you feel about that?’
‘Do you want us all to be topless?’ Luke teased.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Ethel said.
‘It was a joke, Ethel, just a joke about something me and Flick were talking about earlier. No one will be topless.’
‘I should think not. No one has seen these breasts for forty years since my husband passed. I’m not going to whip them out just to sell a few quilts.’
‘No one is asking you to do that,’ Flick said, passing Luke a glare.
‘I think it’s a great idea,’ Luke said, quickly. ‘People love that kind of thing, watching someone work, and it really gives them an appreciation of how much work goes into one of our pieces. And it’s only one day a week, what harm can it do?’
‘I don’t work well with people staring at me,’ Rose said.
‘I’m not really a people person,’ Aidan said.
‘You kind of have to be if you want to sell your work. Or at least pretend to be,’ Flick said.
None of them looked particularly happy about this. Flick wondered if this was part of the reason for the lack of footfall: grumpy faces and bad attitudes.
‘We need more artists too. If you know anyone who offers something different to what is already here, then please ask them to contact me and we can discuss getting them a space,’ Flick said.
She looked around at them. None of her suggestions was being met with joy right now, so she was dreading saying what she knew she had to say next.
‘I also think we need to offer something that the average person can afford to buy. Most people do not have enough money to spend three thousand pounds on a painting.’
‘I’m not lowering my prices,’ Rose said.
‘Me neither,’ Katherine said and Aidan shook his head vehemently.
‘I’m not expecting you to. As I said, all of your work is exquisite and I’m sure more than deserving of the price tag.
But Rose, for example, you could offer prints of your work for a fraction of the price.
You could even look into getting some of your paintings printed on mugs, bags, t-shirts, mouse mats, the options are endless.
That doesn’t compromise your work but it makes it more accessible for the average person.
Katherine, you could do smaller mosaics, coasters for example, pots, tree decorations.
Aidan, you could do mugs, plates and bowls for example, or very small versions of your brilliant sculptures.
Luke, you could do the same. Ethel, your embroidery is beautiful, you could offer some personalised embroidery like an initial or a name, you could embroider pictures of animals.
I can advertise our working studios, do Facebook or Instagram ads, put notices up on local online forums. But there’s no point encouraging people to come up here if they can’t afford anything. ’
‘You want us to produce tat for the tourists?’ Ethel said, distastefully.
‘I want you to get some sales, because surely twenty-five pounds is better than nothing?’
‘It will still take a lot of our time to make things like this, even on a smaller scale,’ Aidan said. ‘My time and skill are worth more than twenty-five pounds.’
Rose nodded. ‘Even the smallest canvas, say four by five inches, would easily be fifty pounds to reflect my level of skill and experience.’
‘Maybe you could not put so much time and effort into the smaller pieces,’ Flick tried.
The looks around the room were scandalised.