Updates
Remember over a year ago when you donated to support our creative meanwhile initiative in Kingston? After a year of Not My Beautiful House at Fife Road, the student-led shop, gallery, and event space will be moving into the iconic Grade II listed Ancient Market House for six months! We’d love to invite you to the grand opening on Thursday 26th May from 6pm where we’ll celebrate with the launch of our open call exhibition, music, drinks, and performances. If you are able to join us, please book a free ticket. You are welcome to share this with anyone you know who may like to attend, and you can see more information on our website. The address is: Ancient Market House, Kingston Market Square, KT1 1JS There’s still time to visit and book out the current space at 19-23 Fife Road, KT1 1SB, before we close our doors for the last time at 4pm on Sunday 22nd May. From Friday 27th May, we’ll be open 7 days a week in the market square. Hope to see you there! https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/not-my-beautiful-house-launch-tickets-338530763627
It's been a while since our last message, time truly has flown with this project. We have just celebrated 10,000 visitors over the last six months! Our lease got extended from August to January and we've had so much positivity from the local community, local stakeholders and partners. We have 86 sellers in store and a huge range of products from trainers to jewellery to prints. In the lead up to Christmas we will have markets with vendors in store. We've put on 14 exhibitions since we opened with a flurry of different artists both local and from the art school - we even found a local graffiti artist. If you haven't visited already please do come down and take a look, you won't be able to leave empty handed...
Hi all and happy June! It's been a very busy month for us at Not My Beautiful House as we welcomed 3,400 visitors through the door with an average spend of £22. We have had over 100 applications to sell from students, graduates and the community, and we are stocking around 40 sellers which change very few weeks. Have you managed to make the trip to see us? Fear not all our products are available online but for a limited time only - https://www.notmybeautifulhouse.co.uk/ - We'd love to welcome you for our first private view showing of "William Morris - Wallpaper Man" on 24th June from 6-8pm at the space at 19-23 Fife Road, Kingston KT1 1SB. See you there!
You, our wonderful and amazing supporters, are the first to know we will be opening the doors to the public of Not My Beautiful House for the first time on Friday 7th May at 11am until 6pm. If you are in or around Kingston this week, do keep an eye out for a bustle of activity at 19-23 Fife Road. Yesterday was a very exciting day as we saw our branding applied to the outside by stencil and amazing freehand artwork from our friends at Graffiti Life. Don’t get too close or we may get you helping with installing our first two exhibitions or arranging some of the fantastic products we’ve sourced from our talented students and graduates. Donuts and coffee however are much welcomed for our teams who have been working flat out to get everything ready. Due to current Covid restrictions we aren’t able to plan a huge launch party or opening ceremony just yet, but we will certainly be in touch when we do. We’ll be revealing our branding and custom interior designs on the ground floor and our first floor space will open mid June. We can’t wait to welcome you all! Lots of love The Not My Beautiful House Team
Hi everyone, hope you’ve had a good start to the week? We’re excited to announce the creative meanwhile space’s identity that we have worked together with Claire and Grace since the beginning of January: Not My Beautiful House! With the debut of Not My Beautiful House we want to disrupt the connotations associated with comfort, because let’s be honest, after having spent the majority of the past year and a half inside of our houses, we can all agree that comfort is most definitely overrated. Instead, as a brand, we want to push our visitors outside of their comfort zones - in the best way possible. Last week, we got the opportunity to visit the space and start to visualise our designs coming to life. Our team is in the last stages of finalizing the branding guidelines and wrapping up the space, staff, print and social assets. We’re working with the interior design team to make the space feel alive and add our touches of branding to their designs. We are especially excited about realizing its spectacular shopfront. Ahead of the opening of Not My Beautiful House, why not follow us? Links : https://www.spacehive.com/spaceforkingston Twitter : https://twitter.com/NMBH_KUS Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/notmybeautifulhousekingston/ Studio KT1 : https://www.studiokt1.com/ KUS : https://www.kingstonstudents.net/creative-meanwhile the NMBH Team X
Hello and Happy Thursday! We were up early to appear on Remarkable City's excellent breakfast show "In the Neighbourhood" this morning. You can watch the recording back here https://www.crowdcast.io/e/in-the-neighbourhood-2-- We give you all the detail on our journey so far, our aims, revealing the name of the project and some of the thought behind it! We are also now advertising jobs for students and graduates to get involved here https://www.kingstonstudents.net/studentjobs We'll be sharing more on our progress each week - we have power now - but we will spare you the drama of the loading bays. The wonderful photography is by one of our students Emily Sowerby who was lucky to get an hour or so in the space and her first shoot in many months. Thanks again for all your support Grace and Claire & the Creative Meanwhile Team
Hi everyone - you will have seen we are now overfunding for our creative meanwhile and the project is becoming a reality. A huge thank you so much to all of you who got us so far and supported, pledged or shared. We picked up the keys on Monday and had a look at the space in the flesh for the first time: the fun of dealing with a deep clean, power, lighting, access and loading bays begins. The next stage is to get our students who have been working on the interior designs and identity/branding of the space in there to see how their ideas will translate into reality and really get them to start to take ownership. Next week we'll be appearing on a breakfast show run by our friends at Remarkable City and be interviewed about the project - do tune in and support! https://www.crowdcast.io/e/in-the-neighbourhood-2-- Best Grace, Claire and the Creative Meanwhile Team
