Since 2010 Letting Space has played a crucial role in the development of social art practice in Aotearoa.
They have commissioned over 20 major projects by contemporary New Zealand artists, curated three major arts festivals, provided specialist advisory services and developed a long standing vacant space project brokering service that is renowned Urban Dream Brokerage in Wellington and Dunedin.
Letting Space have looked to transform the relationship between artists, the public and their environments to enable social change. The programme was curated by Sophie Jerram and Mark Amery with producer Helen Kirlew-Smith and has involved networks of artists and creative thinkers.
“Letting Space are undertaking rare and important work that has the capacity to both generate social transformation under the guise of contemporary art, and in so doing assist in the transformation of the norms of contemporary art itself.”Under umbrella organisation Wellington Independent Arts Trust today they support projects by emerging and established projects by providing consultation and advice. In 2023 Urgent Moments: The Letting Space Projects 2010-2017 was published by Massey University Press, edited by Amber Clausner and Letting Space founders Sophie Jerram and Mark Amery. In 2020 they published Brokered Dreams:98 Ideas for Vacant Space, a book cataloguing the over 120 projects supported through Urban Dream Brokerage
The first seeds of Letting Space were sown in Tamaki-Makaurau, Auckland, in the mid-nineties in response to the increase of commercial property vacancy in the CBD caused by the 1987 stock market crash. At the time, Letting Space founders Mark Amery and Sophie Jerram were on the Artspace Aotearoa board and with fellow board member Judy Millar began finding vacant spaces for installations by artists.
Between 2007 and 2009 the Global Financial Crisis led to global economic recession. In Te Whanganui-a-tara, Wellington, Mark Amery and Sophie Jerram decided to join forces again. The proposed programme was different to that of 1993–94 — the new Letting Space was committed specifically to work that had economic and environmental concerns.