Long before the Lux Foundry was a trendy Hope Street cafe, it was an oven factory.
Around the corner, on a street conveniently named Ovens, great big ovens – kilns, to be precise – are baking beautiful works of art at the School of Clay and Art.
![Studio Walk co-organiser Joshua Simpson at Studio 23a.](/web/20170303063118im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/j/w/d/h/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gujrzx.png/1487833478182.jpg)
The cavernous studio – founded by Shane and Jane Kent to fill a gap left by TAFE closures – is one of more than a dozen creative spaces that will open their doors to the public on Saturday for the Brunswick Studio Walk.
Charlotte Watson and Joshua Simpson, visual artists who work out of Studio 23a on Leslie Street, started the self-guided tour after it dawned on them just how many creative spaces were concentrated in and around the suburb's industrial quarters.
![Toast founder Daisy Watt at her loom.](/web/20170303063118im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/j/w/d/a/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gujrzx.png/1487833478182.jpg)
On Leslie Street alone, Studio 23a is flanked by a wholesale butcher on one side; further down there's a film studio, a dance studio and a community radio station. Around the corner, the delicious smell of caramel wafts from a confectionary factory.
The public's interest in the creative process was well and truly confirmed at last year's inaugural walk when hundreds of people flocked to the seven studios on the itinerary, observing printmakers, painters, sculptors, fashion and furniture designers and everything in between.
"It's great to see the machine behind it all because quite often we're only exposed to the finished product," says Simpson. "We go into a gallery and there's the art, and light boxes – but there's so much infrastructure around it [that we don't see]."
This year the walk expands to 16 studios, each of them a bustling centre of creative activity happily coexisting with Brunswick's industrial past and present.
![Daisy Watt, right, with the Toast Workroom residents.](/web/20170303063118im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/j/w/d/7/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gujrzx.png/1487833478182.jpg)
On Prentice Street, 22-year-old Daisy Watt opened the all-female Toast Workroom just five months ago. It's a small but bright space filled with the beautiful clothing, jewellery and art works of its resident makers.
Watt, whose loom occupies one corner of the space, wanted to recreate the type of communal work environment she enjoyed as a student at at RMIT.
![SoCA founder Shane Kent and teacher Kate Jones, in the studio.](/web/20170303063118im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/j/w/d/i/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gujrzx.png/1487833478182.jpg)
"Some of them [artist studios] are so isolated, like you're locked in little boxes, and I didn't want that," she says.
The need for more high-density housing in Melbourne's suburbs is also transforming the landscape, and that means some studios have a precarious existence.
Perucci Studios and Plein Air Studios, home to emerging artists and designers and both on this year's itinerary, have just six months remaining on their lease, with the Ballarat Street site rezoned for residential development.
The Brunswick Studio Walk is on Saturday February 25, 12pm to 5pm, at various locations.
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