Making space: how one building houses hope, art and social innovation

Too often arts and cultural spaces can come with a set of terms. A kind of ‘in’ code of behaviours which are presented as cultural norms yet can feel like ways to exclude or at least gate keep.

The Old Fire Station (OFS) in Oxford, however, is changing that. Not just in their diverse programming, whether its stand-up, theatre, dance, or craft workshops, but for the past thirteen years, the arts centre has shared a space with the Oxford branch of Crisis, the national homeless charity.

“It's an interesting model - arts centres are public facing whilst service centres for people experiencing homelessness are not.” Explains Clara Vaughan, CEO of the OFS.

“There's something really interesting that happens when so many different kinds of people coming come the building. You might be coming in to have a cup of coffee, you might be coming to use the loo, to access Crisis services, to come and watch a show, to come and see an exhibition.”

It has changed the space into a far more inclusive, welcoming venue. And this integrated approach has ensured that the partnership is not just one of a joint lease. With Crisis as a service-delivery charity, this partnership has allowed them to provide wider, holistic support to their clients.

“It’s about the idea that this community or group of people who are experiencing this common and very difficult precarity are invited to be a part of the organisation.”

In practice, that means Crisis members are fully integrated into the work that OFS does – from volunteer roles across the organisation, to participating in arts training and programmes. This integration runs through the entire organisation – OFS has had former Crisis members on their Board.

Even the café upholds the OFS’s mission. Run by Syrian women refugees, Damascus Rose Kitchen has quickly become a firm favourite in the city, both as a café and a catering service (with good reason, the food is fantastic). A refugee-run cafe works perfectly with the partnership with Crisis.

“Having to migrate, having to move is another form of being without a home. We're in a time when having a home that you can rely on, that is a stable place, that you're going to spend a life, is not something that is a universal possibility.”

As Vaughan says, having a social enterprise provide the centre’s café was a deliberate choice, to ensure that the OFS’s mission is supported across the entire business.

“It makes for a better society to be thinking from the perspective of the people currently most marginalised by societal structures. That's going to make a better experience of a place for everybody. It's the same argument as when you consider making a space physically accessible for people with disabilities. You're making that space better and more enjoyable for everybody.”

The benefits of arts and natural participation is at the heart of UCL’s Culture Nature Health Research group. One of their key programmes, Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities, in partnership with the National Centre for Creative Health, has taken an interdisciplinary approach to the power of community assets that can positively impact health and wellbeing. Their research explores the power that community assets have in improving health outcomes holistically, and how best to integrate the two.

As Professor Helen Chatterjee MBE, Professor of Human and Ecological Health at UCL and Advisor to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing,  says “Access to arts and culture provides positive social experiences, leading to reduced social isolation, opportunities for learning and acquiring new skills, and increased positive emotions, such as optimism, hope and enjoyment.”

Hope.

It’s an awful lot of responsibility to put on the shoulders of an arts centre. As Vaughan says, there seems to be an increasing demand for arts and cultural centres to provide a wider social purpose, particularly following COVID-19, but funding is stretched. But maybe this kind of hybrid model will open up new doors? Certainly, for OFS it has put them in rooms with local government and council, and made them a major player in the city’s third sector.

I wonder whether there’s something about Oxford as a city that makes this duality of mission possible. It is a City of Sanctuary, yet is home to one of the most exclusive institutions in the world. It is home to a global university but one with an established, local identity. Working in Oxford outside of the university, you become aware of the vibrant world in the town that co-exists with the student population, all united by a strong sense of civic identity and responsibility.

This leads us to the Marmalade Festival, an annual social innovation festival that runs alongside the Skoll World Forum. Free to attend, the festival involves a series of workshops and events, which anyone can apply to host. With administrative and technical support from the OFS, it has become a city-wide occasion for people and organisations both local and international to discuss and debate issues.

“There’s something particularly enlivening about handing over the power of framing the conversation,” says Vaughan, explaining how the festival pitching process works.

This is something that UCL Policy Lab Hon. Prof, James Graham said at the 2024 Labour Conference, that the UK has a crisis of storytelling.

“Have we lost our national narrative? Yes, and who's going to tell this new one? Who do we think we are? The UK has struggled with the question of who is telling these big, sweeping narratives, these cultural imaginations that give a country an identity. To really celebrate where the UK is now, with the incredible diversity of people from around the world who have come here for so many reasons – that is an important part of what art can do.”

It’s a challenge being taken up by those in government and opposition. Driven by an understanding that how we experience culture is a vital part of building the bonds of social cohesion and connection. How politics can understand and support projects like the Old Fire Station will be vital to developing a cultural sector that supports thriving places. 

After all, the Old Fire Station is about innovation, pioneering what’s possible when you bring together culture with service provision. Integrating arts with service provision and support for marginalised groups serves not only as a lifeline for those in need, but as a powerful reminder of the role culture plays in our collective identity. Spaces we create, and the stories we tell, shape our national identity – giving us a shared language and sense of belonging. A sense of home.