Midsummers Day

Those passing the club will have noticed that we have actually done some work. Another 2 or 3 weeks and we should be planting up in the courtyard – not ideal timing but we do have a new water supply now.

The Common Room are readying to open the cafe in August (subject to updating of government guidelines) but we and they may manage sooner. Framlingham Town Council are moving into the northern end of the building and will be up and running there in July. Very exciting to be about to have some occupation.

Access to studios should be feasible within current guidelines as soon as we have finished building works – and so we expect to open studios in mid July. There has been a steady stream of creative folk getting in touch through lockdown, and a number of people questioning their previous assumptions about travel to work and now wanting to work closer to home. This is all for the good, and very much as we had hoped (although we didn’t expect to need a global pandemic as business partner).

Five of our eight upstairs studios are now almost certainly let, and another two in the offing. We have one room identified as a possible shared studio but at present its hard to know if this will be as viable as it might have been four months ago. We are keen to gauge interest so please do get in touch if you think it might suit you, otherwise we might let it as a single space if there seems more demand for that. It can comfortably accommodate 4 desk spaces with 2m distancing.

On the ground floor FAYAP are still all set to take on the old saloon bar, but the timing of their opening will be dependent on how the social distancing guidelines evolve, and what restrictions there are for groups and young people.

We expect to have 3 ground floor rooms for short hire: the old lounge bar will work well as an events room for a medium sized group and is provisionally already booked for a week in August. This room would likely be hired by the week, day or part day. We need to work out the market and demand. There will also probably be two smallish short-hire rooms for e.g. meetings, tutoring, counselling or art work. We want to keep them clean but not be precious about them (i.e. semi-art-school-vibe). They are rooms we have made out of the old ladies and gents loos – surprisingly good and odour free!

We will also be using the entrance hall as a pop-up exhibition space but won’t be rushing in with any of that yet.

We hope to set up a new website in the next month or so which will link to an online booking platform for the short-hire rooms. In the meantime please just email us if you are interested in using these as it helps us to gauge demand and we can explain likely pricing.

Ciao ciao…