An AYR artist’s project aims to bake bread to earn the dough to fund the arts.

Robert Singer’s experimental bakery on Cathcart Street, Narture CIC, has been 40 years in the baking.

He told the Advertiser: “I’ve always wanted to be an artist, but from early on in life I had to get a proper job.

“I suppose it was an imposition from parents that I had to.”

Robert left school and got work in catering. He worked his way up from porter to manager and recognised the kind of profit that could be made.

But, in midlife, he said, he ‘burnt out’.

Ayr Advertiser: Narture CIC baking the bread to earn the dough to fund arts projects.Narture CIC baking the bread to earn the dough to fund arts projects.

He reset himself, putting together a portfolio and applying to study at the internationally recognised Glasgow School of Art as a mature student at 45-years-old.

Four years later, in 2001, he graduated having spent his studies focusing on the nature of the relationship between art and food.

He said: “Bread is a metaphor. If you mix flour and water, you attract yeast and you get a culture.

“If you nurture it, you will have bread for the rest of your life.

“It’s a metaphor for looking after our culture. If you overfeed it, you kill it, if you under feed it, you kill it.”

While talking to the Advertiser, three customers came to the bakery to pick up a fresh loaf, but the third is left empty-handed as Robert has sold-out.

Robert’s plan is to bake and sell 40 loaves a day, which will make enough money to cover the rent of the bakery, pay a part-time bakers wage and, most importantly, allow for Ayr’s old tourist office to become a arts hub.

The 68-year-old already has the keys to 22 Sandgate, across the road from the bakery.

Ayr Advertiser: Inside new studio and gallery space at the old tourist office in Ayr.Inside new studio and gallery space at the old tourist office in Ayr.

Robert said: “Ayr is historically a market town, we despearely need to return Ayr to a town based on produce not on commodities.

“We need to return to the artisanal value - the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.

“That would attract the artists, and then they would be the attraction to draw visitors to the town.”

The Narture CIC team plan to tidy up the new premises and get the inside ready for their first exhibition expected in September.

To keep up to date with the project, visit narture.co.uk or search for Narture CIC on Facebook.