'Incredible' community response to 'revived' Slough contemporary arts space

The co-founder of an arts assembly headquartered in Slough said the response to its refurbished space for artists and creatives has been ‘incredible’.

The group of artists and cultural practitioners known as ‘without SHAPE without FORM’ (WSWF) have rebranded and reopened the former Citroën premises in Bath Road.

Rooted in Sikh philosophical concepts, this renovation marks a new chapter in their mission to ‘deepen engagement with art, spirituality and mind wellbeing’.

Artistic director and co-founder Deep K Kailey said the location and ‘deep sense of community’ in Slough inspired them to move in nearly eight years ago.

“Since we've been touring, there hasn't been much going on here, and now we've revived the home space,” she said.

“It's quite incredible in Berkshire to now have a contemporary art gallery open four days a week.”

‘without SHAPE without FORM’ began as a two-week exhibition in 2017, which received a huge community response, leading to it being a permanent fixture.

After receiving Arts Council support for a second exhibition in 2019, Deep said they realised the world was ‘going to go through a mental health pandemic’ after the COVID lockdown.

“We're sitting on this incredible mental health knowledge that comes from Sikh wisdom. How do we share that with everybody?” she said, and their next exhibition, ‘Journey of the Mind’, was born.

After touring the project around the UK for four years, they decided it was ‘time to come home’ to Slough, and their opening times have now changed from once a month to four days a week.

“At the beginning, there were only five volunteers, and now we're 52, so we have the capacity to open more often and longer hours,” said Deep.

“That's important to the work we do. Engaging with people – we're talking about Sikh wisdom [and] mind wellbeing.

“You should be able to encounter people who are also on that journey – that's where real connection happens.”

Journey of the Mind is a permanent exhibition at WSWF HQ, and their latest exhibition, Reflections – Sangat and the Self, opened in September and will run until May 2026.

Beyond the expanded galleries in the redeveloped 7,500sqft premises, there is a new learning studio, community spaces and podcast facilities to host Saturday arts clubs, creative mind workshops and Simran (a practice of stillness and deep listening).

“It's our own space, we get to program it the way we want to, and we almost see the Slough space as a lab where we get to experiment with ideas [and] test things out,” said Deep.

“Journey of the Mind [will] open in New York, so we have those partnerships externally, but [doing] something in our home space in Slough for the local community is incredibly powerful.

“Our ambition is to demystify spirituality and make anything to do with mind well-being really practical and really attainable.”

After an ‘amazing summer’ of producing their vision, Deep knows that ‘getting to this stage was only a minuscule percentage of the work’.

“The true sense of any achievement is what people say back,” she added. “Three statements that keep coming up the most are, ‘This is really special’, ‘Wow’ and ‘This is so calming’.”

The newly opened arts space at 221 Bath Road is open to all from Wednesday to Saturday, 12pm to 6pm.

Visit www.withoutshapewithoutform.com