Case Study 14: The Old Abbey Taphouse

The Case

This case study was recommended to the present authors by Tim Field, the Citizen Enabler in Case Study 12, because he felt it was an excellent, but very different, kind of project with respect to Citizen Enablement. This STEAM hub-in-a-pub development is led by Craig Thomas a key Citizen Enablers in this project, as its main company Director, alongside Rachele Evaroa who has been a director since the company began and was originally the Landlady of the pub in its earlier use; they’ve also recently taken on two more directors, who are very active now but weren’t there at the start. Craig would say the main things that all the Enablers do is: firstly to provide a rare space locally that enables citizens to become more engaged through taking part in events, and then secondly placing them within networks that facilitate their learning, give them confidence and provide  access to resources that they wouldn’t otherwise have. 

Most importantly, these Enablers managed to re-open one of the last pubs and last standing buildings in the area, connecting residents to larger institutions and providing access to services that have been cut due to austerity.  They are also working with the Trafford & Hulme branch of CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale) to try to secure its future by nominating the pub as an asset of community value; a nomination has been made to the City Council and awaits their feedback. At present they also provide an inclusive space and support everyone. The diverse and inclusive events, and initiatives, the regularly provide include:

• hosting events about the Hostile Environment for students attended by over 100 people
• supporting asylum seekers through our work with Gaskell Garden Project raising in excess of £5,000 to assist with legal costs, advocacy and support
• starting Housing Co-Ops to try and build 40 affordable homes
• remembering the history of the area with local historian Geoff Brown and Shirin Hirsh to uncover the racist history of the pub and how the community came together to fight it and helping local people to start up their own businesses
• promoting and organising arts, cultural, music and performance events across diverse styles and inclusive themes led by the community and nurturing new talent

In the short-term the Taphouse seeks to build the capacity of its staff support, grow new income generation streams and respond to challenges caused by ‘lockdown’, whilst meeting the needs of our community by scaling up its food delivery service. This service has already grown to £6 ,500 per month with minimal marketing and only using one order platform (UberEats), which they are now expanding upon, as well as developing a ‘Meals on Wheels’ service for vulnerable people. Medium-term, they plan to move into a phase of building our business growth plan, which is intended to maximise and grow a range of income generation streams at the pub. This will allow them to realise the financial potential of the multiple spaces within the pub, and to economically support the implementation of its social objectives. Long-term they intend to develop a wider group of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths) hubs and pubs; in this respect they are also looking at places nearer to MMU and Salford University where they hope to open similar spaces. All these developments will represent a key route to generating income in the future, as they take on new hub venues themselves and provide a range of development and consultancy services to a network of wider ‘More than a pub’ partners.  They have identified a need for these services in the business community, and have actively been approached by Housing Associations, local area planners in the public sector and by community spaces themselves requesting our support. 

Their team of directors combines grassroots activists, local entrepreneurs with a keen interest in social ethics and academic researchers, who include the University of Manchester’s Science Engagement Champion. Together they have over 15 year’s experience running independent venues/events. Collectively they have immense skills, professionalism and community networks to support the emerging More-than-a-Pub sector, which transforms and connects communities while bringing redundant and under-utilised venues into community-led ownership.

In order to properly found the Facility they sought independent research and market intelligence to inform their plans and to make sure local citizen’s needs and wants would be met. This included:

• a random survey with 15 responses from across our diverse audiences in spite of the current communication challenges
• a review of our event booking list of 204 bookings  between July 2019 and March 2020
• a review of our online profile, customer feedback and marketing channels
• a series of in-depth interviews with several customers
• analyses of 26 of our 100 Facebook Reviews
• an in-depth competitor analysis of a broad range of 24 competitors

This research was undertaken during March and April 2020 in spite of the challenges of COVID-19 and the ongoing lockdown. They have used analysis of the research to inform and strengthen their case, advise their planning, outline how they differ from our competitors and to help communicate the social, economic, environmental and community value that they want to create. Based on these findings a summary of unique selling points for The Old Abbey and Steam Hubs and Pubs are:

• relaxed, welcoming and friendly venue;
• engaging a very diverse group of people who often excluded or feel unsafe in other venues – they value the non-judgemental, friendly, creative and positive atmosphere as well as the affordability;
• free live music, open to all and promoting independent and highly creative artists and new talent;
• outdoor space to relax and socialise in;
• the community impact and ethos is a massive draw for all segments of their audience;
• affordable high quality food and drink including a wide range of vegan and vegetarian options;
• a safe and non-judgemental space where there have been no police or anti-social incidents, in spite of being located in an area of high crime and operating within a sector where these incidents can be prevalent for venues in Manchester City Centre;;
• an experienced team whose expertise spans event management, live music promotion and production, hospitality management, community development and regeneration, social and community enterprise development.

They are an incredibly resilient social enterprise, which has the skills and tenacity to withstand a wide range of challenges whilst creating hope, income and surpluses in spite of the current economic climate. In 2018 The Old Abbey was threatened with closure due to what’s called landlord (or more properly landowner) redevelopment.  Their support, tenacity, negotiations and methods secured the future for this community hub-in-a-pub, as they brought in a spectrum of community stakeholders, that included local residents, the MEP for Culture, and former residents and local businesses, who backed and endorsed our approach; this clearly showed how important handling political issues in these Citizens Enablement situations can become so important.

Currently, they remain open during the Coronavirus pandemic and have adapted their business model to scale up their delivery/takeaway service, create a community radio station (TOAT radio) and working in partnership with three community organisations, providing a ‘Meals on Wheels’ service backed by Manchester City Council and several Housing Associations.  Collectively this shows the Facility is fully sustainable. So, in order to survive and flourish one successful development is called tvdinners (see below). Through these ideas they show that a community venue can be run without depending on external funding, which is an increasingly unreliable economic model for many

By now readers will hopefully understand how the project Enables Citizens to learn new skills and ways of working and living, but it also Empowers them. A couple of examples will show how it does this: the first is the aforementioned TV dinners, which is staffed by local volunteers and focused on the neighbouring estates. This service runs in parallel to a much larger service run by the Council, who are keen that people who are in need, self-isolating or shielding use their service, and they also claim to be reaching all people in need. However, the Council’s system suffers from problems of scale and detail, as they definitely are not reaching everyone in need on our estates. The Taphouse Enablers know this because their Councillor has told them that there are many more people in need (e.g evident in the numbers at food banks) than the council has identified. They also know it because many of the people they are serving food to, have, for different reasons, been missed by the Council’s system. Because TVdinners is made by local people, for local people, it is a friendly service that provides food people want (e.g. pie and mash, or shepherd’s pie), and from what they have heard from the other service, they focus more on salads and vegan dishes, that many people in the area simply don’t want; a further example is Taphouses work with the Geography department in the University with students who write projects for companies in place of consultants, on topics suggested by Taphouse. One of these provides some case studies which are example of citizens taking power for themselves through activist-related projects. A key example is Gaskell Garden Project, who work from Taphouse kitchen. They work with asylum seekers, helping them with their legal fees and contesting the government where they seek to deport people at short notice. In both these ways Citizens have been able to ceed power from the normal authorities, using the facilities Taphouse provides.

Taphouse has found that during Covid-19 crises, the importance of the pub as a space for citizen enablement comes to the fore, for example they worked with local groups and families, who were losing loved ones, to stop deportations during Windrush, and more recently during the lockdown the pub’s community roles have become accentuated. So, in short Taphouse invites Citizens to become involved in all developments through their online advertising via Facebook events, they also use their website, posters in the pub and word-of-mouth. When people put on events (e.g. John Piprani a local archaeologist) they advertise through their own networks as well.

As mentioned earlier one of the main things Taphouse does is to make the facility work by providing a space to facilitate community engagement, learning and interactions. An important part of this is the overlap between groups, for example they might have a business presentation in the front room, a games night in the upstairs room, a Councillor’s meeting in the back room and all that is followed by a live music event. Or another example is a University event outside and a punk night inside. They find that creating these ‘clashes’ between groups enables people to come together and cross divides between different communities, and that new and exciting interactions and networks come from that.

Their business plan also gives a more complete and up-to-date review of where they are at and the detail of why they are such a successful community enterprise. A final point is that they’ve also sought to create a living lab, and to encourage citizens to do their own research with the help of academics. A good example of this is a blog by the aforementioned John Piprani – a key example of people learning about the history of the area that they live, which also shows three total demolition/rebuilding projects in the 20th century. There is an excellent video on the local history which explains why work like this is so vital where we are based https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK9UWW9ilhs  Pause the video at 9:07, you can see Taphouse as an end terrace, before the Greenheys estate was demolished as slum housing.  Shown below is a photo of the pub in the 1970’s before the science park was built; the area has had 2 demolitions but three phases of housing: terrace housing, the Crescents and now housing association plus the science park.