This house is your house; what will you do with it?

Our mission is to fill Storyhouse with activities run by the community for the community! Storyhouse has the space in Chester city centre, and you or your organisation have a passion and the skills/expertise. The Storyhouse community programme is an opportunity for you to share these with others, and build community. If you’d like to run free or low cost public activities (workshops/clubs/groups/classes/etc.) read on to find out about the spaces available in Storyhouse and how to get in touch.

Storyhouse and the community 

Storyhouse is a storytelling organisation. It shares, inspires and creates great stories. It makes work to inspire audiences, bringing people together in order to build existing communities and create new ones. Its work tackles vital social questions about our times and cultural identity, such as ‘Who are we?’ and ‘How shall we live?’

Why is Storyhouse different to other cultural venues?  

Storyhouse aspires to be a community cultural centre. Once open it will be Chester’s largest ever public building. The library, which is spread across the entire building, is made up of open-access spaces containing freely available community resources. It will be a hub for students, encourage intergenerational learning for families and children, introduce independent young adults to creative content and provide a vibrant meeting space for local businesses and residents.  

Storyhouse will be a true success if the community (rather than the books!) becomes the collection because the library is far more than books on shelves.

Take a look at the spaces we have available here.

A few things that you need to know before you express your interest: 

• The activity should be open and welcome people of all backgrounds  
• The activity should be free or very low cost 
• The activity should aim to strengthen an existing community or create a new one
• The activity would ideally provide the space and opportunity for participants to tackle a fundamental question of our time
• The activity could provide the opportunity to express themselves creatively
• You (or your existing community) should take ownership of running the activity/workshop/club/group/class
• The activity can be a one-off or a regular activity 
• The activity can take place in Storyhouse anytime during the 7-day week from 8am to 10pm.  

Storyhouse’s community engagement team will begin by programming for two-month periods. At the beginning of each calendar month, we will review the proposals and requests received, and draw up a two-month programme of community activity that achieves balance between different types of activities/groups, art-forms, fundamental social questions/issues and target audiences as we wish to ensure that there is a good spread of options for people of different ages, abilities, interests and themes/issues.  

Check out our FAQ here for more information.