The pantry features vegan and veggie groceries, fruit and veg, tins, dried foods, vegan meat/dairy substitutes and whole foods.
Our crew are also cooking up delicious chilled meal on a pay-as-you feel basis and will be delivering locally (more details on that soon).
All pay-as-you-feel, donate what you can and take what you need.
No proof of income required and no paperwork / formal dodads, it’s just like walking into a normal shop. You can pay forward meals by donating to cover our costs, link in comments.
We have been asked to help find volunteer marshals to assist with the vaccination programme in the SO16 area for a period of at least three months.PPE will be supplied and a full health risk assessment.
Tea and coffee provided, plus breaks.
This role is to support Solent NHS Trust and the COVID Vaccine Programme by providing support to the community by directing cars through a one-way system to a parking space, ensuring the flow of traffic is moving at a safe pace.
Further marshals will direct and guide visitors safely (on foot) around the course, into the vaccine centre. The marshals are there to be a visible presence, offering clear direction, guidance and reassurance to visitors attending the centre, with help to exit the car park promptly.
If you are interested in helping, please phone or email:
We will be closing our community pantry and meal service for 2 weeks from Monday 21 December to Wednesday 6 January, so that our crew can take a much needed break.Our current plan is to reopen the pantry on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 12.30 – 4pm for groceries and chilled meals, and the cafe for takeaway drinks and cakes only for at least all of January, as the uncertainty about infection rates makes us prefer to err on the side of caution and stick to the strictest Tier rules for now.
Keep an eye our for our online events:Saturday 2 January – The Travelling Talesman will be seeing in the new year with a selection of stories ‘Start as we mean to go on’ (ticket link and details coming soon).
Wednesday 2 – 3.30pm from 6/1/21 we’ll have crafty cafe sessions, drop in online and craft with company!
Our community pantry is open to all and provides by-donation vegan (and occasionally veggie) food each week.
We believe that access to healthy food is a basic human right and our pantry is an act of solidarity, not charity.
🧺 No proof of ‘need’ or explaination is required and we don’t make judgements on who ‘should’ use the service or why.
💰Donations are invited in exchange for your shopping, but there is no pressure and you can donate online at a later date if you need to and ‘pay it forward’ to somebody else.
📷 We do not take and share photographs of people visiting the space without clear and enthusiastic consent.
😀 Our friendly crew are on hand to help and offer advice on unfamiliar ingredients, but you are not obliged to chat if you don’t want to – we usually put some of the stock outside or in our entryway to make visiting even simpler.
This service is run by people who have experienced food poverty, financial insecurity and living as vulnerable people for a number of reasons. We understand the need for privacy, safety and dignity.
Our community pantry is going to be bigger, all are welcome to visit Weds, Thurs, Sat & Sunday weekly from 12.30-4pm for pay-as-you-feel vegan meals & groceries.
This lockdown we are more set up to do things flexibly and remotely and so we are switching from this week to a new way of operating, which we anticipate doing until January 2021. The good news is that our doors remain open, the only change is that we cannot have eat-in customers or in-person shows for the time being.
Our most exciting news is our community pantry is expanding!
We have increased our order from Fareshare so that during lockdown we will have even more veggie and vegan groceries and freshly prepared ready meals available on a pay as you feel basis. Visiting the pantry will be a great way of supporting The Art House, saving money on food and reducing food waste. The pantry will be open four days a week and we will also have fortnightly delivery slots from Friday 20 November (we’ll email out about that nearer the time).
The pantry will be stocked with homemade chilled vegan meals to take away and vegan chilled foods, vegetables and fruit, cereals, pasta, rice, tinned foods and more on a pay-as-you-feel basis. We will also have hot drinks and cakes to take away and our by-donation clothes rail will be up for you to browse.
Our online programme continues with weekly crafty cafés, storytelling, poetry and music events, all on a by donation basis, and we are able this time to keep running our in-person support groups – see our full listings for the rest of the month below.
In February our community was here for us as we fundraised for our survival. We are delighted to be here for you, now, at this time.
Stay safe, stay home if you can, don’t forget your mask when you leave the house
We are also trying out our Sunday Roasts to Go this weekend and will make this a regular event if it proves popular. There are limited delivery slots for SO14 – SO17 postcodes or you can order in advance and collect from us.
Thursday 12 November Red Tent wisdom & sharing circle for women & nonbinary people (in person) 7 – 9pm in person at The Art House (this is a support group and allowed under the lockdown rules) Spaces are very limited and pre booking is essential.
Update: our community pantry is expanding! During lockdown we will have even more veggie and vegan groceries and freshly prepared ready meals available on a pay as you feel basis, 12.30-4pm Weds – Saturday.
We will close this Friday 6/11 to give our crew a chance to adjust to lockdown.
We will also have hot & cold drinks and cakes to take away and will restart our delivery service for meals and groceries.
Our Patreon and donation system will be transforming into a support platform for this service, which we intend to continue through the winter months and add to as we see what people need.
Our online programme continues with weekly crafty cafés, storytelling, poetry and music events, all on a by donation basis.
In February our community was here for us as we fundraised for our survival. We are delighted to be here for you, now, at this time.
Stay safe, stay home if you can, don’t forget your mask when you leave the house ❤️ we love you ❤️
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.
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:
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.
