Ian, you’re half of the partnership behind the Lofthouse, who are hosting the current WLL course. How did the venue come into being?
My wife and business partner Tricia and I, ran nightclubs (Tricia was a DJ) back in the eighties and nineties, and then were teachers of Art & Design, Fashion and Graphic Design for over ten years. Eventually, we became disillusioned by the constraints of working in schools, so we branched out on our own. We passionately believe in the power of celebration in education and always have an end product to our projects - whether it be a fashion show, musical theatre production, play, film or exhibition. We worked in and out of a range of schools, community groups and other creative arts businesses (notably with Broadway, who are very supportive of us) for about five years, but decided we needed a base of our own to give the young people some ownership for their projects outside of school.
We had a year in a fantastic space at the Vintage Warehouse, for which we had extensive, exciting plans to create a multi-functional Arts space for Nottingham’s artistic community. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a secure lease from the unreasonable landlord, so we had no option but to find another space. Because of the time we spent there, we lost quite a bit of money that we’d invested in the proposal, and had to quickly find somewhere to enable us to carry on and re-establish our business. Luckily we found the lovely space we are now occupying on Warser Gate and are pushing forward with lots of exciting projects.
What kind of events do you host here?
We are open to any ideas to do anything with a creative arts slant or community benefit. It’s great to have the WEA running courses for women at the moment and we’re excited to see if we can get the women’s radio station going. Currently, we’re working with local filmmaker, Sam Derby-Cooper from Rubber Goat Films, as part of our film club. It’s part of a national charity that supports education through film and includes Into Film, which is a project that enables local filmmakers to work with and teach young people to write, star in and produce their own films to enter into national competitions.We’ll be staging performances by spoken word artists from Blackdrop soon, and we’ve just started a community choir, singing modern pop, rock and soul songs.We would love to have monthly artists exhibiting static work on the walls - that’s a shout out to any artists out there.
We have an application in with Heritage Lottery at the moment, to enable us to create a musical with about seventy young people about Nottingham’s lace industry as The Lofthouse building was originally a lace manufacturing factory. We’re also going to be putting bands on every Friday and Saturday night in the space.
You and the chaps from I’m Not From London share the space...
When we were at the Vintage Warehouse, local sound engineer Phil Taylor approached us to rent some space to start a new recording studio facility for Nottingham. When the Warehouse fell through, we asked Phil if he wanted to move with us to our new space. Phil and his business partner Ian Brough have done a brilliant job refurbishing half of the space, turning it into a state-of-the-art studio for local bands to record or practice in.
It made sense for I’m Not From London to record their continually growing roster of artists, so that’s how the connection came about. It’s great for us to collaborate with other local arts businesses, so to work with INFL by putting bands on and using the recording facilities for our young people to produce film soundtracks etc. is fantastic.
What do you hope to use the venue for in the future?
As I say, we’re open to any creative ideas. We’re planning workshops in fashion design and manufacture, as well as computer based graphic design. We’ll continue putting on any interesting events or performances that we can find.
If anyone out there has any ideas they want to discuss with Ian or Trish, or if you want to join the choir, give them a ring on 07887 405264.
The Lofthouse facebook page
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