In Cambridge - a city so filled with artistic individuals, flourishing theatre and music scenes and a rich cultural history - contemporary art often seems to be distinctly absent. Cambridge art project Changing Spaces is a notable exception. Chances are, however, you haven’t even heard of it, unless you have had the fortune of happening across one of their window or pop-up exhibitions as you walk through the city.

It is an exciting experience to stumble upon these spaces, often in unexpected locations. One example is a current showcase of student work from Cambridge School of Art in the Grafton Centre, incongruously situated between Claire’s Accessories and the Orange shop. Another is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it window exhibiting textile work on Regent St. Locations magically appear and disappear, as the property-owners find new commercial uses for the shops. But the heterogeneous and fleeting nature of the exhibitions can also leave the whole project shrouded in obscurity. My curiosity piqued, I sought to meet with one director of the project, artist Anji Main, to find out more about its fascinating story.

So what exactly is Changing Spaces? Founded in 2009 with a grant from the City Council, it is a project designed to ‘creatively enhance our high street’ through a continuously changing cycle of exhibitions put on in empty shop spaces around Cambridge.

There are few criteria for applications to exhibit, with an online form and an open policy designed to encourage a diverse range of art, from professional live or performance art to student artists. Much of the project’s emphasis therefore lies in a desire to assist and provide a platform for what Anji describes as the ‘cutting edge of contemporary art’. As a non-commercial project which focuses on emerging artists, it is a fresh and welcome alternative from either the established sites or commercial galleries that otherwise populate Cambridge. I wonder if the use of shop spaces is merely a gimmick, and if the enigmatic nature of the project preventing it from reaching its full potential. As Anji points out, however, contemporary art often alienates exhibition-goers who are unfamiliar with the traditional museum context. When art is located in the open, non-exclusive domain of the high street, people might feel far freer to enter and explore the space.

The spaces can attract a weird and wonderful variety of exhibitions. One example is performance installation ‘The Fencing Project’, which with live choreographed fencing and a projected backdrop of digital sport ‘explore[d] the relationship between live action and remote interaction, via the digital mediation of an invented sport’. Or live art project, the ‘Hunt and Darton café’, which merged art and enterprise to create a fully functioning café. So successful was the café that Anji tells me that in recent months, Changing Spaces has been contacted by numerous businesses and culinary enterprises asking to use a space. But the project isn’t about getting rid of spaces or making huge profits: it’s hard enough procuring and keeping hold of spaces in the first place, and the organisers charge a very minimal fee for window space. Run entirely by volunteers who also happen to be artists, they are passionate about continuing to discover and exhibit new art, and find more spaces to fill with new exhibitions.

This is an intriguing premise, and what strikes me most about the project is the sheer amount of work and energy put into it by the directors. They often play a large role in curating the exhibitions, particularly in the cases of non-professional artists such as students currently exhibiting their work at the Grafton Centre. Admittedly, I found this exhibition lacking in professional polish or interesting curation, but it nevertheless contained some interesting highlights. ‘Curating can make or break an exhibition’, Anji rightly points out, and it can be a sensitive task gauging just how much assistance or control to give the exhibiting artists in their temporary space.

Originally funded by a one-off grant, and therefore not intended to be permanent, Changing Spaces now employs an expanded team of directors who continue to seek out funding and new spaces. One exciting future project is a studio space, sought in conjunction with a Cambridge college, which would provide a space to exhibit the work of Cambridge students in term-time and of other artists in the holidays. Of Cambridge students, Anji says that ‘I would love to work with any of them’, again driven by a desire to nurture more creative minds to enrich the city’s culture. And indeed, once discovered, it feels as though Changing Spaces has succeeded in this enrichment.

The exhibitions may not always be very well publicised or entirely successful, but it is their continuing presence which is to be valued. The serendipity of happening across an unexpected trove of art is a delighting experience, a unique feature of Changing Spaces that makes it well worth keeping an eye on.