WELCOME TO APS
About
Artist Professional Support (APS) is an artist led organisation in Leeds focused on artist support, mentoring, and community led creative practice.
We work across all forms of art to support people to make work, build confidence, and stay connected through mentoring, peer programmes, exhibitions, and practical professional support.
APS exists to reduce barriers in the arts and to create space for artists to grow without needing to justify who they are or how they work.
We work alongside artists navigating rising costs, limited space, and uneven access, supporting them to keep building practice on their own terms. We build spaces where artists can show up as they are, learn together, and feel held while they grow.
Our work takes place across galleries, pop ups, community spaces, and peer led programmes. Everything we do is shaped by care, access, and shared experience.
We are not rebuilding what was lost. We are building what artists need now.
How we work
We are not a service delivered to a community. We are part of the communities we work with.
Our approach is shaped by lived experience, collaboration, and care. We design programmes with artists, not for them, and prioritise access, flexibility, and shared learning over competition or hierarchy.
Our work includes artist mentoring and professional support, peer led development programmes, exhibitions linked to process, and community based creative projects.
Our Story
APS has been building and holding creative space since 2005. Formerly known as Aire Place Studios, the organisation grew from a small artist led initiative into a trusted organisation supporting thousands of artists across Leeds and beyond.
Over the years, we have weathered floods, Covid, and in 2025 the forced closure of our Studios on Kirkstall Road site due to redevelopment.
Losing the building meant losing more than bricks and mortar. It meant losing a place where people found confidence, connection, and belonging. At the same time, demand for our work increased as affordable space disappeared and isolation grew.
We did not stop. We adapted.
As we relocate and rebuild in Bramley and Stanningley, we are not recreating what we had. We are taking time to build what is needed now, shaped by community voice and long term sustainability.
WHO WE WORK WITH
APS is open to everyone.
Our work is informed by the experiences of artists who have historically been excluded from cultural spaces. We design our programmes to be accessible, supportive, and flexible, without requiring people to label themselves or fit predefined categories.
Artists engage with APS in different ways and at different stages. Some come for mentoring. Some for peer connection. Some for exhibitions. Some simply to feel less alone.
All of these ways of being involved are valid.
LEADERSHIP AND GOVERNANCE
Artist Professional Support is led by artists and cultural workers with lived experience of the challenges our communities face.
Founder and Director: Sarah Francis
Our Board is artist led and community rooted, bringing experience across disability, neurodivergence, queer identity, and working class life.
PARTNERS AND NETWORKS
We work in collaboration with a wide range of cultural organisations, community partners, and artist led networks locally and nationally.
These partnerships help us share learning, build solidarity, and support long term change across the sector.
archive
Looking for past programmes or exhibitions?
Visit our Archive to explore previous projects, exhibitions, and documentation from across our history.