theCoLAB: A collaborative laboratory 

theCoLAB collaborates with conviction and inventiveness and creates opportunities for artists to use unusual sites as experimental laboratories to realise their most ambitious, far-flung and life-affirming work. Operating beyond the confines of the white cube since 2011, theCoLAB conceives and realises its large scale, long term, complex artistic interventions. By embracing risk, instilling trust and being courageous, theCoLAB’s work changes the way we perceive, experience and understand the interrelation of space, place, concept and sculpture.


Selected collaborations

theCOLAB’s work ranges from cultivating major commissions for the Artist’s Garden across 1400sqm of glorious overlooked space on the terrace above Temple Tube rooftop, to proving how Women Make Sculpture by landing a sentient space module on UCL’s Bloomsbury campus. theCoLAB helped realise Chris Dury’s long held dream of building a dry stone Horizon Line Chamber on the sea, attached a pristine white-suited artist-as-figurehead to a lowly canal barge, brought a contemporary archaeologist’s view of Gotland through Boyle Family’s World Series commission and it continues to take artists back to the core of creative thought through its site-specific drawing residencies.   

theCOLAB continues to challenge and expand the sculptural realm and to extend the appreciation of contemporary sculptural practice in all its forms. 

Claire Mander’s exploration and support of women artists’ work extends to selecting and co-curating exhibitions with other organisations including Procreate Project for its Mother Art Prize 2020 for 19 artist-mothers at Cromwell Place; two editions of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC’s Women to Watch programme for its UK arm showing work by artists including Alison Wilding RA, Rana Begum RA, Abigail Reynolds and Ludovica Gioscia and participating in the Subject Matter/RCA Align talks.

Claire Mander sits on Westminster’s City for Sculpture panel and was on the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s Arts Grants Panel for a decade. She is a member of the Board of The National Festival of Making which runs the highly successful Art in Manufacturing programme and of the artist-led 303 Projects in Lowestoft, Suffolk. She was formerly Deputy Director of the Royal British Society of Sculptors and a Trustee and Chair of the Steering Committee of UK Friends of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She is a member of AICA and has published two books and numerous catalogues and has given/chaired many talks about women artists and site-specific commissions including at RCA, The National Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery and with Antony Gormley about Skulpturlandscap Nordland.

She holds an MA (Distinction) from the Courtauld Institute of Art and was a City solicitor.

With thanks to Debevoise and Plimpton LLP for the provision of legal services, facilitated by LVFA.

The Artist’s Garden Advisory Board

Georgina Adam, The Art Newspaper, Aica

Melissa Blanchflower, Turner Contemporary

Helen Pheby, YSP

Richard Wentworth MBE, Artist

Councillor Jessica Toale, Westminster City Council

theCOLAB Sounding Board

Sara Graff - Accountant

Beth Colocci - Independent Curator, Patron of the Arts

Bill Price - Director, Strategic Growth, WSP

Nina Wisnia - Illustrator, Patron of the Arts

Douglas Wylie - Vice President Legal, Kerzner International

Debevoise and Plimpton LLP - Legal services, facilitated by LVFA

WSP - Structural Engineering

Westminster City Council

Meet the Team

  • Claire Mander

    Director and curator of theCoLAB.

  • Alice Walters

    Senior Project Manager and Producer.

  • Nina Blychert Wisnia

    Illustrator, Patron of the Arts.

  • Anne Rawcliffe- King

    Consultant.

Environmental Sustainability Statement

Our planet is facing a climate emergency, and we need to act now. 

theCoLAB commissions women artists who are seriously under-represented in the field of outdoor sculpture to realise their most life affirming work in our vast open air public space: the Artist’s Garden on the roof of Temple Tube in addition to other unusual spaces and free-to-access public spaces, where all are welcome. We are committed to reducing the environmental impact of our commissioning and exhibition process; without a liveable planet, there can be no art and culture.  

We have taken the following steps to do this: 

We have joined the Gallery Climate Coalition, and pledge to at least halve our carbon emissions by 2030, from a 2022 baseline (the Artist’s Garden was founded in 2021). We will regularly calculate the carbon footprint of our operations, to track progress towards this target.   

We work in close partnership with Westminster City Council who have committed to their own Climate Emergency Action Plan here. Westminster Council’s Carbon Offset Fund will provide a grant for us to install solar panels and a rainwater collection system at the Artist’s Garden, by the end of 2024. Currently the site has no power or water supply. 

 We know that our main direct environmental impacts include flights for research trips to visit international artists and exhibitions, and the road and air shipment of materials and artworks for our exhibition programme. We have committed to tackling these impacts by challenging the ‘high growth short term approach to funding and development' in the arts. Each site-wide commission at the Artist’s Garden is on display for a minimum of 12 months, sometimes longer.    

As part of this slower more considered schedule we actively work with artists that consider the environmental impact of their chosen materials at the outset of the commissioning process, including the potential for materials be reused or recycled when the exhibition is finished. We aim to commission artists to make new work that can be fabricated in the UK to avoid the use for any air freight. Where necessary we negotiate with shippers about alternatives to air freight for the supply of any materials from international locations and we request that all packaging is reusable or curbside recyclable.  

All of our printed marketing materials are created on recycled stock. We do not send printed invitations to openings and encourage our visitors to sign up to email newsletters to get information. 

 Our organisation has a Green Ambassador who is responsible for sharing our environmental policy with our suppliers and collaborators; ensuring our air travel is kept to a minimum, collaborating with other GCC members and keeping records for our annual carbon reporting. theCoLAB shares office space in a co-working environment (Exchange at Somerset House) to reduce our energy grid usage. 

We aim to take action in line with the principles of climate justice, recognising the connections between the climate crisis and other global injustices. We want our environmental actions to support - rather than undermine or ignore - the needs of people on the frontlines of marginalisation and injustice. We have set these targets and are taking actions in the knowledge that we aren’t yet doing everything right. We still have a great deal to do and much to learn. We welcome feedback from our artists, audiences and partners on this environmental statement, our targets, and on our plans for action.