SCRUM Theatre Take Over Disused Archive Building in Hammersmith To Create Pop-up Arts Centre

A new multi-disciplinary arts centre, SCRUM Studios, will open in Hammersmith offering training programmes and subsidised creative spaces for theatre makers. Artist collective SCRUM Theatre, is a charity formed by a collective of theatre-makers who transform disused buildings and turn them into pop-up arts hubs, seeking to create a more sustainable culture for UK artists at a time of crisis in the industry. Taking up a two-year residence in the Lilla Huset building on Talgarth Road, which was formerly home to Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s archives, SCRUM Studios includes: three rehearsal rooms; a playwright’s centre; a self-tape studio; a work room for scenic designers, prop makers and costumiers; and a large warehouse space that will be transformed into a performance venue.

From early 2025, SCRUM Theatre plan to begin construction on a modular theatre in the old archive space, in which they will produce their first production in the new venue, Twelfth Night with further plans to tour the show to regions underserved by arts funding with an integrated education programme. Later in the autumn, SCRUM will be hosting their second series of workshops for performance makers, as well as a programme designed for local schools and will also be collaborating on a project with visual artist Murugiah and Compass Collective, a charity that works with refugee youth, to create a mural that will hang in the community space of the building.

Throughout July and August, the studios have already hosted SCRUM’s Artist Development Programme, where industry-leading names including Adrian Lester, Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, and Lyndsey Turner led pay-what-you-can workshops focused on helping theatre makers both enter and sustain a career in the industry. Creatives and theatre companies have been filling the studio spaces with rehearsals and creative outreach programmes. Publishers Nick Hern have also donated a script library to the playwright’s centre.

SCRUM Studios will open on Thursday 19th September with a celebratory launch event featuring live music, food and drinks with patron Adrian Lester cutting the ribbon. Guests will be introduced to the team and trustees from SCRUM  before the building is activated with different experiences which guests can move between including poetry readings, live music, and performances by makers who have developed work in the studios, costume design activities, creation of a community mural, playwrighting activities, and a screening of SCRUM’s new podcast. The evening will culminate with a sneak peak of SCRUM’s upcoming production of Twelfth Night.

Co-leads Lucie Dawkins and Dominic Applewhite said, “The vast majority of UK theatre industry is made up of freelancers - and this can be a brutal environment for creatives. Lack of stability, lack of resources to develop work, lack of a sustainable living wages: all of these things put creatives under stress, and compound barriers to access for under-represented demographics. To create, you need time, space, and people - three ingredients that a freelance system makes it hard to get hold of. SCRUM came together as an organisation to make the kind of creative home that we have found it so hard to find elsewhere. In a time of crisis for the arts, we want to create a space where creatives can find their heat and light, so that we can help safeguard the next generation of makers and audiences in the UK Theatre.”

SCRUM Theatre is all about making better theatre, in better ways, for everyone, and creating hope in the face of an arts crisis.