The Canvas:
vital + safe spaces in London

Update: Monday 15th August

8 years ago, in mid-August, I took over the lease of 42 Hanbury Street, just off Brick Lane in London’s Shoreditch to build a space where humans could be amazing. With the help of friends and family, I transformed a dilapidated + abandoned restaurant, opening The Canvas on 11th October 2014.

The vision was a cafe + creative space that connected a community, that hosted change makers, that promoted positivity, kindness + compassion.

Over 5 years, our cafe became vegan to reflect our commitment to positive social change; our back storage room became our Community Hub to enable the launch + growth of grassroots community ideas that improved the lives of others; our Pay it Forward board, food bank + free meals programmes provided home cooked sustenance to 1000s of people facing food poverty.

And The Canvas became a beacon of hope, a proud example of a better way to do business, and a vital safe space for its community. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, we continued to offer our food bank + free meals, and looked forward to reopening our doors to the public.

Practically, we communicated to our landlord at 42 Hanbury Street that because we were unable to trade, we needed to pause our rent payments and hoped to speak to them about a way to move forward on any covid-rent arrears once the pandemic was over. Across the pandemic months, we sent emails, made phone calls and visited the office of our landlord. We never received a response from any of these attempts.

Post-pandemic, we found our local area much changed, and trade was hard. Comparing July 2019 - March 2020 to July 2021 - March 2022, we’d lost £76k in sales. In the spring of 2022, we launched the Save Our Seats campaign to keep our doors open; determined The Canvas wouldn’t be a victim of the pandemic like so many other vital community spaces. We were astonished at the support we received, and July brought optimism + energetic plans for the future of our beloved social enterprise.

We’d been making payments to our landlord throughout the pandemic + as the world reopened again, but had inevitably built up some arrears because we hadn’t been able to trade for large periods of time. As we’d not been able to engage our landlord in a payment plan, we admit we had assumed we were low on their priority list and they would be in touch soon. We were confident that after Save Our Seats, we could commit to a payment plan to repay any covid arrears + move forward with confidence.

Then, on 29th July, with no advance warning, and no communication at all from our landlord - nothing from the start of the pandemic to this point - we arrived at 42 Hanbury Street to find the locks had been changed + our lease had been forfeited.

In shock, I contacted the landlord to ask them why they had done this, when I had been actively trying to engage them about a payment plan since March 2020. I was surprised to hear a reply, and even more so when they agreed to meet me in person on 1st August. I left that meeting feeling confident; they were open to a payment plan, and the next day I sent them a proposal to clear our debt across monthly payments.

I’m writing this statement on 15th August, and up to today, I have never received a response from the landlord to this proposal. I’ve pressed for a reply, urging them to green light the plan so we can get back into our site and start trading again, reopen the Pay it Forward board, serve our food bank, and distribute our free meals. I’ve made it clear that the longer they delay their response, the harder it becomes for us to get back on our feet as a business.

We haven’t been able to trade now for 18 days, and any trust I felt in the landlord at the meeting on 1st August is completely gone. The landlord’s silence simply shows that they have no interest in seeing The Canvas reopen and start serving our community again. Even if they green lighted the payment plan today, that trust can never be rebuilt. I don’t trust them to not drastically increase our rent without notice or consultation. I don’t believe they have any regard for working with a social business serving its community; even after admitting that many of their residents most likely use our services. This organisation is not one that The Canvas can partner with.

This leaves me with one option, and that is to admit that there can be no future for The Canvas at 42 Hanbury Street. I came to this decision on Friday 12th August 2022, and informed the team.

We are all devastated, as The Canvas team + all our stakeholders have poured their hearts, talents and energies into creating that incredibly special + unique space. I want to take this opportunity to thank with my deepest gratitude everyone at The Canvas, and those working alongside us, for building the magic at 42 Hanbury Street.

But I also want to make it very clear today that the 8 years we spent there were not wasted; The Canvas may not have a future at 42 Hanbury Street, but it does have a future elsewhere, and this is what we now focus on.

Over the summer we actually launched our second ever space, and The Canvas: Sydenham is now open + absolutely beautiful. Check it out here, and give us a visit; maybe at one of our events at the Summer of Change festival.

You’ll hear more about The Canvas: Sydenham as it grows - follow us on instagram at @TheCanvas_Sydenham.

And please trust us that we are also exploring other opportunities to grow The Canvas, including getting back to our beloved community in Shoreditch. It breaks our heart that our Pay it Forward customers, our local families who used the food bank and received our free meals, are now missing that support in their lives. We want to get back to them as soon as possible, and please believe that we’re doing everything to make that happen.

Follow us + subscribe to our newsletter to keep in touch with our updates, and thank you for being part of The Canvas journey.

We will see you soon.

With love and best wishes,

Ruth Rogers,
Founder of The Canvas
And everyone in Team Canvas x