Wandsworth Artists’ Open House has lost its funding and will not run as a full borough-wide event this October. Putney School of Art and Design is stepping in to pay for a smaller version instead.
The open house is the borough’s annual art trail, running for more than 20 years, in which artists open their homes, studios and other venues to visitors over two October weekends. More than 200 artists across almost 100 venues took part in last year’s event, which the organisers called “the biggest year yet”, part of Wandsworth’s London Borough of Culture year, the Mayor of London’s year-long culture title.
Twelve months later the outside funding has gone entirely.
“We are excited to announce that, after Putney School of Art & Design heard that Wandsworth Artists’ Open House would not go ahead as a borough-wide event this year due to lack of funding, they, with support from Enable and Lynn from Sprout Arts, came up with a plan to coordinate a smaller-scale non-digital 2026 event,” the organisers said in a statement on the event’s website.
The school is not just organising, it is paying. Fees for artists have been cut because the event is now mostly paper-based, but the organisers say the reduced fees will not cover the costs and there is no external funding. So the school has agreed to cover everything left over, including staffing time, marketing, design and print. “We are so grateful to PSAD for taking this vital project on especially so late in the day,” the organisers said.
The event is normally organised by the Wandsworth Arts Team at Enable Leisure and Culture, the organisation the council pays to run its arts and leisure programmes, and Enable’s own website describes it as “a key part of Wandsworth Council’s arts support programme”.
The cut lands inside the council’s wider budget crisis: it faces a £137m budget gap over the two years from 2027. Whether this cut is part of closing that gap, or the end of a grant tied to the Borough of Culture year is currently unclear.
What’s different this year
The event still runs over the first two weekends of October, but it will look different. There is no interactive online map and no individual artist listings on the event’s website. Instead the school is producing four printed trail maps, one each for Balham, Wandsworth and Battersea, Putney, and Southfields, Furzedown and Tooting.
Artists’ costs have changed too. Venues on the trail paid a registration fee of £60 for a single artist, rising to £200 for five artists sharing a venue. Separately, the school is offering table space at its own two Putney sites, the Main Site on Oxford Road and the 3D Campus on Disraeli Road, for £15 per artist, covering both Sundays, aimed at artists who cannot exhibit from their own homes.
Registration for the trail closed at the end of June. But as of mid-August the school was still inviting artists to ask about table space at its own sites.
The organisers say they are “disappointed not to be bringing the full event together in 2026” and “hope to return in 2027”. Whether they can depends on the answer to the funding question.
Visit, take part, or ask
The trail runs over the first two weekends of October, with printed maps from Putney School of Art and Design covering four areas of the borough. The school’s own sites on Oxford Road and Disraeli Road open on Sundays 4 and 11 October, 11am to 4pm.
Artists who want to ask about exhibiting at the school’s sites can email Belinda Bates at bbates@enablelc.org. General questions about the event go to psad@enablelc.org with ‘WAOH’ in the subject line.
