History

How did it begin?

‘We didn’t have a lot of people.  We didn’t have a lot of money.  What we did have was a large building’….says Revd James Grote (left) who in 1995 became minister of John Bunyan Baptist Church in Oxford. Very soon he realised that there was a vast resource in the buildings and potential to make greater use of the space there.

Ten years on

Ten years on, the Ark T Centre is a registered charity with its own trustees and a budget of £140,000 pa. But, essentially, it is a creative community where everyone of the 900+ people who come through the doors each week matters. The Ark T Centre now has a staff of 5, a resident artist community of 8 and a large group of visiting artists who share in its life which spins around visual arts, music and dance.  It also continues to use its space imaginatively, artists still use the balcony of the church but three more have been accommodated in sheds in the garden which has also been landscaped. What was once a store room is now a sound-proof recording studio, a small hall has become a café and the kitchen refurbished for training and catering and the seating in the church area has been reorganised to allow flexibility for conferences, cabaret and exhibitions. In ten years the Centre has spent less than £20,000 on the building.

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People and space

The Ark T Centre opened with space and people.  Three artists’ studios were set up in the balcony of the main church, another in the old youth club room and a theatre company took over the old crèche room as an office. A disused corridor was transformed into an exhibition space with the lighting and carpeting being given by two local firms. When it opened, the Ark T Centre had no formal structure; there was no committee, no bank account or money but there was a group of people committed to working together creatively. 

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Using the building

Together with the congregation James decided to look for ways in which the buildings could be used to serve the local community.  When James met two local artists who were looking for somewhere to work, the congregation offered them a room in the church as a studio space in exchange for running some art workshops with the church and the local community.

Creating the vision

A year later, in 1997, James met Ernesto Lozada-Uzuriaga (right), an artist and painter and between them the vision of a church building community through the spirit of the creative arts came together. In exchange for his studio space Ernesto worked with James in turning the ideas and vision into reality.  In the autumn of that year, the Ark-T Centre was officially opened by the then Bishop of Oxford, The Right Revd Richard Harries.