CELF SPACES

Project Creator & DESIGNER

Celf Spaces is a not-for-profit start-up created by Celf o Gwmpas to open Wales’ empty shops and offices transforming them into community-driven, affordable art-work-space serving Wales' diverse, thriving creative workforce.

art-work-space

Through Celf Spaces, we aim to connect artists and creatives with affordable space to make, create, think, talk, share and work. We do this by situating multidisciplinary creative work in otherwise empty spaces. Whether you need workshop, studio, rehearsal, meeting, co-working, performance and exhibition spaces in your area, our spaces are open to all forms of creative work. 

community-as-practice

Each space holds space for a community identity made up of its members. Celf Spaces invites exploration into how we build, sustain and manage community, as a component part of opening-up and sustaining  affordable art-work-space for Wales-based artists and creatives. We facilitate each group of members connected by a space to develop its own space management framework. Our facilitated programme is informed by human design principles, inviting experiments in holding space in common, and cooperation. We do this to help sustain the communities that will form around each space, embedding a collective practice of making-thinking-creating into the fabric of the wider [space] such as a town or city in which the art-work-space is situated.

meanwhile spaces

The spaces we open are "meanwhile spaces", which means they are temporary leases, usually of empty shops and offices in town and city centres, for a duration of anything from a couple of months to one and a half years. As a not-for-profit start-up, we secure temporary leases from commercial landlords free of business rates, which enables us to keep our creative community membership fees affordable.