Ground is an unfunded community art space, situated on Beverley Road in Hull, that is used for workshops, support groups, meetings, gigs, studio space, community meals, fires, fundraisers, exhibitions, and endless brews. Ground is a unique place that is hard to describe as it is many things...a counter–cultural space of recovery, wildness, challenging conversations, learning, acceptance, mutual aid, collaborations, and creations!
We opened our doors to the public in 2016 with, our now annual DIY, 3 day festival – MAMMAL JAM, which set the ball rolling for nearly a decade! While Ground has mostly been run on a volunteer basis, bits of funding through the years has made it more accessible for different people to give their time, which in turn, diversified the Ground team.
In recent years, the lack of money, people power, and capacity has meant that we could only open Ground minimally. The building suffered, people left, and the jobs piled up. Thank you to those that have helped to keep Ground going; the facilitators, caretakers and studio holders whose studio-rents pay for the ever increasing bills. Thank you.
Despite it's financial state, Ground feels like it is in a good place – the community is growing again bringing a new lease of life as long-standing members give their advice and support to the newer members who bring their energy and ideas. There's some great sessions happening at Ground (old and new), with a team of people trying to give the building some love. However, all this work is being given for free and we want to be able to pay people for it, so we can carry on and bring even more people in!
The money raised here will act as core-funding for Ground and it will pay the collective to do behind the scenes work; cleaning, publicity, organisation, maintaining the building (for example, transform the front of Ground so it looks more inviting and shows passers by what is on offer), getting projects going, and applying for bigger pots of funding which will allow us to open up to the public on a more regular basis. At the moment we open on average 7 hours per week- it would be great if Ground could be used and shared more!
As it is so difficult to come by core-funding that allows organisations to do the behind the scenes work that keeps them running, regular donations to Ground would be really helpful. It will help us to become sustainable as a project!
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