Creative Roots, Bold Futures: Lewisham Arthouse Crowdfund

About Lewisham Arthouse

Lewisham Arthouse has been an artist-led cooperative at the heart of South East London’s creative community for over 30 years. Established in 1992, we operate as a genuine cooperative, with members actively involved in maintaining our building and delivering diverse programmes. Our home is the Old Deptford Library, an Edwardian Grade II-listed building on Lewisham Way, where we offer affordable studios, workshops, exhibitions, music events, and residencies, nurturing creativity and community connections borough-wide.

A New Chapter

Lewisham Council, which owns the Old Deptford Library, has supported us by allowing us to use the building for over three decades. They have now offered us a long-term lease. This marks a major commitment by the Council and lets us secure our future through vital repairs, facility upgrades, and significantly expanded public access.

Strong Support & Partnerships

This ambitious project has strong backing. We’re working closely with funders like the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Architectural Heritage Fund, and are supported by South East Arts London (SEAL), a charity we established to strengthen governance and provide expertise for this next phase. These partnerships help unlock further funding, but your support—our members, community, and allies—is essential to reach our goals.

What Your Contribution Supports

Your support is part of a larger fundraising effort. The total project delivery cost is just over £4.6 million, with £1.4 million needed through match funding. We are actively applying to trusts, foundations, public grant bodies, and local initiatives.

This crowdfunder aims to raise £70,000, showing community strength to unlock more funding.

Your donation will help us:

• Replace the roof urgently

• Upgrade electrics for safety and suitability

• Improve front-of-house facilities with versatile event, exhibition, and teaching spaces

• Make the building more accessible for disabled visitors

Your support will also help digitise and celebrate our unique archive, preserving the history of the building, organisation, and local area.

The building is beautiful but cold, draughty, and hard to access in many places. It performs poorly on energy efficiency, with significant heat loss through the roof. This makes it difficult and sometimes inhospitable for extended periods. Replacing the roof, estimated at around £560,000 (+ VAT and contractor fees), is a major and essential part of the project. These improvements will make the building welcoming, habitable, and better suited to our community’s needs.

At the same time, we are strengthening our public offer. Working with artists, educators, and cultural partners, we’re committed to expanding and improving programmes - offering more classes, residencies, exhibitions, and community-led events. Most of our offerings are free or low-cost, and we want to keep it that way.

More Than Just Studios

Lewisham Arthouse is more than affordable studios—it’s a vital hub of creativity and community. Our cooperative model promotes traditional handcrafts and contemporary processes, enabling members and visiting practitioners to share skills and develop their practices. The building hosts a wide variety of affordable events, including open studios, exhibitions, music nights, performances, and community activities, ensuring the space remains accessible to all who want to explore and create.

Join Us and Make a Difference

This is an important moment, and we’re confident about the future. If you already know us, you understand how special Lewisham Arthouse is. If you haven’t visited before, please do and discover the energy and creativity here.

Your support, whether a donation or simply sharing our campaign, is vital. Every contribution brings us closer to our goal. With arts funding shrinking and the cost of living crisis impacting spaces like ours, your involvement helps keep our doors open, improve what we do, and keep creativity alive for all.

www.lewishamarthouse.org.uk