Culture Recovery Fund #HereForCulture

Posted on October 12, 2020 by

We are relieved and delighted to announce that we have today been offered a grant from the Arts Council England culture recovery fund.

This means we can repurpose our activities and space to make our music and other performance events sustainable long term with social distancing. We assume the ‘rona will be with us for a while yet and we will need to work in a radically different way than before, so this money will help us to transform into what we need to be in this new era.

Our focus will continue to be grassroots arts, local artists, new performers and performers from marginalised groups – and we will keep on bringing performances online as well as in person to make them more accessible to all.

More news soon! #HereForCulture

As our accountant said when we broke the news:

The story continues.

Posted in Community news & views, Fundraising, Future plans, Local music

Covid update

Posted on September 22, 2020 by

Covid update.

Today’s announcement by the govt about earlier closing times for pubs etc will not impact our planned activities as we already had an earlier finish time to reduce contact.

In addition, we have 2m distant seating, staggered booking times for diners and enhanced cleaning procedures as well as a new ventilation system to keep air flowing through the space. We are only using our downstairs area which has more room and higher ceiling / better ventilation.

We are a mask positive space and are taking Covid very seriously.

All of our decisions are guided by the safety and well-being of our crew and community. The balance we hope to strike is providing a space to get healthy food and a change of scenery for mental health and social contact with being safely distanced from others. We are keeping a close eye on local infection rates as we move forward.

At the moment we are opening Weds 12-3pm for community café (drinks, cakes and snacks only) and Saturday 12-3pm for pay-as-you-feel lunch as well as set times for events and groups (see our events for details).

Our programme is small audience in-person events with an online component and online-only events. Our food delivery and collection service continues alongside eat-in events.

Needless to say, the situation is starting to take a financial toll as our capacity is very reduced. You can support us by:

Ordering Art House To Go or paying forward some food for other people:

https://www.thearthousesouthampton.uk/

Coming to an online gig:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/the-art-house-southampton-gallery-cafe-and-venue-324975012

Joining our Patreon Community:

https://www.patreon.com/thearthouse

Or simply make a one-off donation of any amount, even the cost of a coffee!

https://thearthousesouthampton.org/donate/

Posted in Uncategorized

Covid update for mid September

Posted on September 19, 2020 by

Covid update:

We are keeping an eye on the infection rate numbers locally and taking all the precautions as we work to provide a non-commercial, affordable / by donation space for people to meet safely, obtain healthy vegan food and access creative activities.

Our in-person community café and performance events:

Offering a safer, socially distanced and risk assessed space for people to meet and eat including our community cafés on Saturday 12-3pm with pay as you feel food. We are also opening some other days of the week for community café and pay-as-you-feel pantry, see our events section for details.

All events continue to be limited to parties no bigger than 4 and we manage arrival times, spacing and movement whilst you are here to minimise contact with our staff and folks not in your household or support bubble.

We are mask positive, although there is no legal requirement to wear a mask in a café or for our staff to wear masks, we encourage their use where possible and safe.

Our new downstairs space has more room, an extraction system to improve ventilation and we have enhanced cleaning and hand washing procedures in place, as well as hand sanitisers for your use.

Please check our events section for when the community café space is open.

Food!

We continue to offer food delivery and collection on a tiered pricing structure to give our community access to tasty, healthy, comforting food.

Our community pantry runs on Wednesdays 12-3 and Saturday 12-3 providing vegetarian and vegan groceries by optional donation.

Keeping you entertained at home

Guidance is still to avoid contact with people you do not live with, so we continue to support our folks in doing so by providing online and hybrid online/in person events.

Stay safe and well, everyone, we love you ❤️

Posted in Behind the scenes, Community news & views, Events, Future plans, Local music, Our crew, what's on

Update for 22 August and plans!

Posted on August 22, 2020 by

It is getting chillier and meeting up outside is becoming harder as the weather changes. We are committed to keeping our community safe, we also recognise the importance of creative and social events for wellbeing.

Our space is being rearranged to facilitate 2m social distancing and our crew are putting in place all the safety guidance possible to give our community a space to reconnect without endangering themselves or others.

Please imagine the words ‘socially distanced’ between all the activities we mention as we don’t want to type it again and again 🙂 we are working on having a 2m distance between social bubbles for our activities in Autumn. We are also installing ventilation, have hand sanitiser stations and are a mask-positive space. Timings are also being adjusted to prevent people spending too much time in the same space as one another.

Here is what’s happening in September:

Our community café will be opening on Saturday lunchtimes for prebooked lunches, our food deliveries are continuing too. Bear with us whilst we set up the systems for this!

Live performances are now allowed indoors and we are planning how best to do this, starting with spoken word events and moving onto bands in our downstairs space. We intend to keep live streaming all performances and offering by-donation tickets for those who are still staying home.

Weds 2 September
Southampton Queer Collective social, 7-9pm

Saturday 5 September two performances of Tales of Ancient Egypt with Jason Buck Storyteller

https://facebook.com/events/s/legends-of-ancient-egypt/2575327682742224/?ti=icl

Thursday 10 September – New Forest and Southampton Red Tent talking circle

Community Café events on Saturdays will start up from Saturday 29 August and we hope to reintroduce Sunday Sessions with vegan roasts and music very soon.

Coffee cups have all been unpacked and cleaned WAHOO
Posted in Behind the scenes, Community news & views, Events, Future plans, Local music, Our crew, Uncategorized, what's on | Tagged , , , , , , ,

Covid update Monday 3 August

Posted on August 3, 2020 by

The Art House is continuing to offer online events, including live music streamed from our House to yours in August, food deliveries and kerbside collections and a community pantry with pay-as-you-feel groceries and chilled meals.

We will be pausing food deliveries and collections and our pantry for the first week of August to allow us to rearrange the downstairs space into a multi-purpose, accessible, socially distanced, well ventilated venue area for small performances, workshops and community café events.

Our first live streamed gig from the venue itself will happen on 8 August (without an in-person audience, of course) – see links below for details.

Our first live streamed gig from the venue itself will happen on 8 August (without an in-person audience, of course) – see links below for details.

The plan is to run community cafés on Saturdays with bookable indoor and outdoor seating with maximum social distancing and staggered arrival times to minimise risk. We will update on this next week!

We will continue to operate strict 2m social distancing and no contact kerbside deliveries and collections, too.

The Art House is a mask-positive space and we invite our community to state their boundaries, concerns and requirements clearly so that we can all keep safe and learn how to navigate this pandemic together.

As always, we acknowledge and respect the diversity of our community and how this impacts on differing needs and levels of lockdown for each of us. Our aim is to support people to stay at home as much as possible, but gradually, as far as it is safe, to provide somewhere trusted and well managed to spend time with each other.

You can support The Art House during this phase of our story by……

Ordering Art House To Go or paying forward some food for other people:

https://www.thearthousesouthampton.uk/

Coming to an online gig:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/the-art-house-southampton-gallery-cafe-and-venue-324975012

Joining our Patreon Community:

https://www.patreon.com/thearthouse

Or simply make a one-off donation of any amount, even the cost of a coffee!

https://thearthousesouthampton.org/donate/

Posted in Behind the scenes, Community news & views, Events, Fundraising, Future plans, Getting involved, Local music, Our crew, Our history, what's on

Update for the last week of July

Posted on August 2, 2020 by

Jani here – another week of this weird time done. This week we:

Ran three online streamed shows to a total of 114 households.

Fed 21 households in Southampton and Totton with our deliveries of meals, including some paid forward meals.

Distributed food in our community pantry on Wednesday and Saturday.

Had a small number of kerbside customers on Saturday including two regulars who sat outside! At a table! Whoop!

Had a generous donation of £100 from one regular who we haven’t seen since early March (you know who you are and we miss you sooooo much).

Had our directors AGM (very quick and distanced of course) to sign some accounts – and met our accountant.

Bik has been valiantly filling in the funding application for the emergency funding for music venues from the Arts Council, with Jacqs helping with the figures for this. Wish us luck.

Jani & Ziggy harvested some beans and herbs from the allotment, these went into one of our dishes on Saturday. Yums.

On Friday the government announced a delay to reopening performances, we had not put any plans in place to start performances with audiences yet and agree with this decision. It’s too soon 😞

Next week is our very first live stream from the House!

I’m going to add some links in the comments to things I have talked about here if you want to find out more, watch a livestream, order food, donate or get involved.

Posted in Behind the scenes, Community news & views, Events, Fundraising, Future plans, Getting involved, Local music, Our crew, Our history, Outreach & community events, what's on

Community Pantry

Posted on July 24, 2020 by

We have recently started a community pantry with food from Fareshare.

Dates for the pantry are:

Saturday 24 July 12-3pm alongside our Kerbside collection.

Groceries, chilled meals and pay-as-you-feel takeaway and smoothies.

Wednesday 28 July 12-3pm

Veggies, fruit, bread and non-perishables.

All on a pay-as-you-feel basis, cashless payment preferred if you can for safety.

Posted in Uncategorized
Posted on July 23, 2020 by

Jani here:

Have made a LOT of food and stocked up the community fridge. The meal was a bit of a challenge with random veggies and fruit, but I think it came out well, a veg curry of brocolli, butternut squash, pak choi, kohl rhabi, peppers with a coconut and tomato base, mild spices and fresh coriander. Added some fennel seeds and ginger to give a bit of freshness. Oh and lots of garlic because well. Garlic.

This will be on sale to take away as a hot meal with rice and fresh mango pickle, or as a generous chilled portion to take home.

Collect on Saturday 12-3pm on a pay-as-you-feel basis.

John has made lots of cake and we will have falafel wraps, BBQ boxes, salads and Nachos available too!

Big love to Ziggy for helping chop and clear up too – legend.

Posted in Behind the scenes, Community news & views

An exciting announcement!

Posted on July 23, 2020 by

As of this week, our community pantry and fridge is go!

Fareshare are now supplying the pantry and some of our ingredients for meals. This partnership enables us to provide more pay-as-you-feel groceries and tiered priced fresh and chilled meals and takeouts so folks can enjoy a hearty, high quality Art House vegan meal regardless of income.

It’s been a long term dream of ours to make our food and space accessible in this way, weirdly it took the pause during lockdown to help us see a way to do it!

For now the plan is community pantry and pay-as-you-feel lunches to go on Saturdays 12-3pm and community pantry (mostly veg, fruit, bread and other perishables) on Wednesday 12-4pm. We are still doing food deliveries on Fridays, too.

We don’t ask for proof of income or the reason you need the nosh, it’s about sharing what we have as a community. For now we have a space, a kitchen, helpers and the ability to do this.

Huge thanks also to our Patreon community who support us month to month and make projects like this possible!

Posted in Behind the scenes, Community news & views, Future plans

Our first tentative steps to reopening and the safety measures we have today

Posted on July 18, 2020 by

Update on our first kerbside collection today – it was steady and chilled, we sold out of the food we’d made and had a lovely time, it was so good to see some of our regulars after a 4 month closure! We will be back next week, food for sale out the front again. If infection rates locally continue to be low, we will trial bookable outdoor tables the week after. Slowly and carefully we go.

Posted in Behind the scenes, Community news & views, Events, Future plans, Uncategorized