Support our Creative Community in the Arts Hub

Who Are We?                                                                                                  

MADE in East Lothian C.I.C. founded the MADE Arts Hub in 2016. Our vision was to build a supportive, friendly, and accessible art space in the market town of Haddington in East Lothian, and our Arts Hub has evolved into a community of artists and makers who sell their work through our gallery, a meeting place for our ‘Craft Socials’, a venue for creative workshops and a reuse hub for donated materials.  Over the past seven years, we have generated income through sales and obtained grant funding to support our community art projects. The current cost of living crisis has led to a reduction in sales and grant funding becoming increasingly hard to find. We now need to raise funds to support our creative community over the next twelve months. 

The video shows some of the activities that took place in the Arts Hub when we launched a community project last year.

Craft Socials 

Our community craft groups meet in the Hub on weekday mornings. Following the Covid lockdowns it took some time to build the groups up to previous numbers, but we now have up to twelve people attending each session. Although these groups are untutored, they enable local people to meet with others, share craft skills and participate in community art projects. We have become aware that the £3.00 donation that we have asked these groups to contribute towards Hub running costs is now a problem for people struggling with the cost of living crisis, and we would like to be able to offer them free to everyone who wants to take part for the next twelve months.

Community Art Sessions

MADE works in partnership with other organisations to design and deliver tutored art sessions for vulnerable people in our local community. Some of these sessions are funded, but often they are delivered free by MADE tutors who need to be paid. The groups we support include pupils with additional support needs from a local school, a carers organisation, and a social group for people with physical and mental disabilities. We would like to be able to offer free tutored sessions to our current partners and to offer supported places for our tutored workshops to socially isolated people in our local community who are unable to afford the normal booking fee. 

What do we want to achieve?

In order to continue and develop our community art activities we need to raise funds to pay staff, support refreshment costs and contribute to the building's utilities. Throughout the cost of living crisis, the MADE Arts Hub has been affected by a huge rise in its utility bills, whilst our income from sales has dropped because customers' household outgoings have increased. 

The funds raised by this Creative Community Support project will....

•  Contribute to our running costs for the next twelve months
•  Provide our 'Craft Socials'free to people on low incomes who are struggling   because of the current economic climate
• Offer free places in our tutored workshops to young people who will benefit from learning both creative and social skills