Produced by Creative United and hosted by Somerset House, with support from Creative Scotland and in partnership with Vastari.com and UCL Innovation & Enterprise, the Future of the Art Market Unconference is set to be one of the year’s most significant events in the art industry calendar.

More than 200 industry leaders and professionals from across and beyond the contemporary arts sector are expected to attend this important half-day event, followed by an evening reception hosted by Creative United to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Own Art scheme.

The Future of the Art Market Unconference will promote a collaborative and proactive dialogue shaped by its participants, without the top-down, rigid approach of conventional panel discussions and presentations. These sessions will not have a nominated leader, therefore everyone will have an opportunity to voice and discuss their opinions with their peers.

The themes to be covered will be crowdsourced on the event’s website and curated by you; you can register to propose new topics and vote on the existing ones. 

As a delegate, you will be invited to take an active role in shaping our agenda for the day, which is expected to focus on topics such as the future of the traditional gallerist; the role played by blockchain technology in the emergence of a digital art market; how artworks will be valued in 30 years’ time; and the consequences of Brexit on the UK art market internationally.

24 hours before the Unconference itself, a revealing new Future of the Art Market Report will be published by Creative United, in partnership with Arts Council England, Creative Scotland and DACS. It promises to be a compelling read for anyone interested in (re)defining their practice and position in the art world.

Authored by Lucy Rose Sollitt, the Report surveys the significant changes that have occurred in the contemporary art market over the past 15 years and explores the dominant issues and trends that are likely to have an impact on the size and shape of the market in the decades to come.