After almost 5 amazing years at our Lennox Street home in Hockley, today we’re announcing that we’ll be shutting our big red doors at the end of December 2023 to refocus our activities on our Community, Creative and Producing programmes.
This isn’t the end of Nonsuch Studios, but it is the end (at least for a time) of our public programme and venue operations.
But before you panic, crucially, all events, projects and programme scheduled to happen before December 31st (including our amazing Christmas Season) are still going ahead as planned, and our community programme and regular classes will continue as normal (just somewhere else) in the New Year.
Everyone at Nonsuch is bound by our belief that Creativity is Power and going forward we want to invest all the time and effort we can into that belief going forward, returning to our roots as a producing company working to create incredible arts experiences for communities and next-level productions for audiences across the UK and beyond.
Over the past 18 months, what’s become clear is that whilst in another universe having a building would have been a massive asset to us, the realities of the world at the moment mean that our capacity to deliver great things has been diverted to providing TLC to bricks and mortar over anything else (yes, even I’ve unblocked far too many toilets to remember).
Nonsuch Studios is a fully independent and artist-led organisation, receiving no core funding to support our activities and so we’ve made this difficult decision to safeguard our charitable work for the future.
We’re also not the only arts organisation who are having to reimagine their future at the moment, with many other recent announcements highlighting the challenges felt by organisations of all sizes. It’s clear wider support needs to be offered across the sector, to make good on the investment provided during Covid and prevent further and more widespread dramatic changes being made that will change our cultural landscape for years to come.
This year we celebrated our 10th Birthday and despite this sad news, we have some really incredible projects and activities to announce in the near future that we think will be a truly incredible start to our next 10 years and the next phase of our journey.
Within all this, I really want to highlight, celebrate and centre the work of the incredible Nonsuch team, both past and present, who’ve given their all to create Nottingham’s only fringe theatre from the wrecks of an old warehouse against all the odds. They stand head and shoulders above the work that we do and over the past 5 years it is them who’ve enabled us to welcome thousands of audiences to some truly incredible shows that otherwise wouldn’t have made it to Nottingham, invest thousands into new work and artist support, and set the standard for what a welcoming, artist-led space can be. They even made and delivered over 13,000 pizzas in the panny-d giving Dominos a run for their money. Together, we are the spritely folk who decided to set up a venue at the end of 2019 not knowing at all what was in store for them, but even with the wonder of hindsight, we wouldn’t change any of it!
That’s all for now, it’s not the end but it is a BIG shift, and we have some INCREDIBLE and OUTRAGEOUS shows, events and programme coming up for you to enjoy all Autumn long. So, if you come regularly or still haven’t gotten round to paying us that visit yet, you’ve got three months to do just that!
Lots of Love
Edward & Team Nonsuch
xx
