The Canvas:
Why have we closed our spaces?

The Canvas: Shoreditch

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 have never received a response from the landlord to this proposal. I pressed for a reply, urging them to green light the plan so we could 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 made it clear that the longer they delayed their response, the harder it became for us to get back on our feet as a business.

Any trust I felt in the landlord at the meeting on 1st August has now completely gone. The landlord’s continued silence has simply shown me that they have no interest in seeing The Canvas reopen and start serving our community again. This organisation is not one that The Canvas can partner with.

Realising this left me with one option, and that was to admit that there could 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.

The Canvas: Sydenham

Our Sydenham space traded from March-September 2022, and and passionately connected our community through free events and a welcoming space, open to all. The team at Sydenham have all been amazing, and the magic experienced there was down to their passion and commitment to that space and its much-loved community.

When we lost access to our beloved Shoreditch space, we lost vital infrastructure for our Sydenham cafe's business model. We looked at ways to continue and amend the model, which has been our focus for the past few weeks. We haven't been able to find a way forward that means Sydenham's Canvas space can thrive in the way it deserves.

Personally, I’ve really struggled with the events of this year. To push through these challenges whilst continually trading requires positive energy, drive and focus - this is what The Canvas, and The Canvas in Sydenham deserves. Since the devastating situation with our Shoreditch space, I haven't been able to do this; my mental health has suffered greatly, and I've been advised by those closest to me that I need a significant break.

It's very hard, as a founder, to take a break. It feels like you're giving up. But I assure you that this is not how I'm seeing this next step in mine and The Canvas' journey.

When I set up The Canvas, I did so with no business training or experience. I grew my social enterprise whilst learning on the job and the result was a vision built on passion, sweat and tears. Those who've joined me on my journey have all shared the passion, and many have continued working at The Canvas for years, because they've believed in its vision and fallen in love with its magic.

But because of my initial inexperience and naivety, the foundations of The Canvas have never been steady, which has resulted in issues that team members, customers and community members have all experienced.

It's this that I want to change.

This break will be a vital opportunity for me to regroup with key people and assess The Canvas' next steps. I believe in The Canvas' power to rebuild and grow, connecting and supporting more communities; pushing out its roots and opening wide its doors to create thriving community spaces that believe humans are amazing: they just need space to be so.

I can't do that right now. I need this break, before I can rebuild bigger + better.

Will The Canvas reopen, and where?

I absolutely intend The Canvas to reopen, and my hope is that we can return to our beloved original community in Shoreditch and another space South of the river too to continue the magic we started in Sydenham.

What about the funds you raised through the Save Our Seats campaign?

Even though we’d just raised a considerable amount of vital funding from our crowdfunder in June, because our landlord didn’t respond to our payment plan to clear rent arrears built up over Covid, we weren’t able to use any of that to save the Shoreditch site.

Everyone who supported us through Save Our Seats; your support is not gone. It will continue throughout these next steps, as The Canvas forms firmer foundations, forges new partnerships, and starts constructing the path to open doors once again.

With love and best wishes,

Ruth Rogers,
Founder of The Canvas