Shop Front Theatre:
a 13 year long project
“Shop Front Theatre anticipated a yet-to-be-written Arts Council strategy, Let’s Create, published a full ten years after it opened.”
Neil Darlison
Director, Theatre – Arts Council England
View the above video on our YouTube channel.
In 2009 Theatre Absolute founded the UK’s first professional Shop Front Theatre, in Coventry’s city centre. Taking over a disused fish and chip shop, and supported by Coventry City Council, they turned it into a thriving lo-fi community space which welcomed and nurtured artists, dancers, writers, poets, activists, film-makers and more. It became a beacon for new performative works, experimentation and dialogue. Visit Youtube to watch a film about it, made in 2017.
After running for over a decade the project closed its doors in 2022 before the building was demolished.
This PDF publication, Shop Front Theatre: Archive 2009 – 2022, captures some of the spirit of radical adventure surrounding the 13 year-long project and hopes to inspire other artists to take chances and be open to opportunities offered by unexpected places, collaborations, and partnerships.
We couldn’t include all the lovely things people said when we asked for their memories, so below you will find longer form pieces of some of the testimonials within the publication, as well as links to various publications.
The Archive publication is available to buy in hardback form, particularly useful for institutional settings such as libraries and universities, at £70 plus p&p. Please email us to enquire.
The Very Revd John Witcombe MA MPhil – Dean of Coventry
Janet Vaughan – Talking Birds
Richard Earl
Charlie Ingram
Alexandra Johnson
Helen Annetts
Professor Helen Wheatley – Co-Founder, Centre for Television Histories (University of Warwick)
Vanessa Pearce
Kim Hackleman
Angela Mhlanga
Sujana Crawford
Raef Boylan
Jonah Russell
Shahnaz Akhter
Jan Malatesta, Coventry Refugee & Migrant Centre
melissandre varin
Laura McMillan
Hope For The Community CIC
Lara J West, Jim Mordue, Renato Belindro
Publications & media
- The Warwick Commission: The Future of Cultural Value (2013/14)
- Theatres should be the new town squares, not monasteries by Lyn Gardner, The Guardian (2015)
- Culture in Crisis: Impacts of Covid-19 on the UK cultural sector and where we go from here published by the Centre for Cultural Value (2022)
- Listen to a BBC CWR radio interview (2022) while it is available, and / or Download a transcript