There’s still time to save the Horse Hospital
The UK capital’s longest-running independent arts venue, the Horse Hospital, is currently in danger: if its management cannot successfully meet, or contest, a 333% rent increase then it will be forced to close. The campaign to save the Horse Hospital first began in December with a GoFundMe campaign raising £8,977 and the organisation attaining an extension on their lease. However, this runs out at the end of March and is dependent on the Horse Hospital paying their landlord’s legal fees as well as their own; making the situation more financially precarious.
Speaking exclusively to HUNGER, the Horse Hospital’s Artistic Director Roger K. Burton explains that the venue is in a difficult position, regardless of whether they manage to remain in their location or are forced to seek pastures new. “Our lawyers are in negotiations as we speak, trying to agree the terms of the lease and a fair rent,” Burton explains. “The future is uncertain yet again. It’s going to cost us to stay or cost us to move, so either way we lose, but in reality everyone who has ever set foot in the building or supported us loses, as yet another independent art space disappears.”
First opening its doors in 1993, the Bloomsbury cultural hub has supported and platformed progressive work across art, film, fashion, literature and music for over a quarter of a century. Housing The Contemporary Wardrobe Collection, the largest public access archive of post-war street fashion and youth culture in Europe, and hosting exhibitions by the likes of Helen Chadwick, Vivienne Westwood, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Lydia Lunch and Turner Prize winner Tai Shani, the venue has proven itself to be an important feature of London’s cultural landscape.
Founding the arts space whilst he was still in his teens and serving as its Gallery Director for the first years of its operation, Guy Sangster-Adams strongly believes the venue needs to be preserved for future generations. “With independent arts spaces closing across the country and large institutions offsetting funding cuts by playing it safe and showing only what is already known, it is essential for landmark arts organisations like The Horse Hospital to prevail and to show the new, the up-and-coming and the outsider, as well as to celebrate diversity and engender discussion,” Sangster-Adams explains.
Various individuals have come out to speak in support of the venue, including Zowie Browch, Head of Fashion at the RCA; Joe McKenna, former fashion editor at the New York Times; and artist Jamie Reid, whose pioneering work helped define the punk aesthetic. Considering the Horse Hospital’s importance for London’s independent cultural scene, HUNGER reached out to artist, DJ and curator Kat Hudson, founding editor of nightlife and listings magazine Lesley, which has mounted their own campaign to save the arts hub.“The Horse Hospital Gallery represents so much that we, at Lesley Magazine, believe that art should be: uncensored, accessible, community-driven, and not-for-profit,” Hudson says. “Losing this space in central London, the last remaining space of its kind in the area, says a lot about the rapidly changing cultural climate of our capital city.”
As she sees it, the fight to save the Horse Hospital isn’t just about the venue itself but about resisting the wider threat of gentrification. “There is currently nothing effective enough in place to protect our subcultural safe havens, like The Horse Hospital, from gentrification,” she says. “Rising rents and property prices, as well as changes in the law around occupying unused and abandoned buildings across London, make finding and maintaining any long-standing physical space almost impossible for low-income artists, musicians, filmmakers, and art lovers.”
You can become involved in the fight to save this historic venue over at the Horse Hospital’s official website or by signing Lesley Magazine’s letter of support.
