Your Invitation to our Little Ale Festival
As part of St. Botolph’s BIG Sunday this weekend (17th - 19th June) the Waiting Room is hosting a Mini Ale Festival. Three diverse cultural experiences over three days with suppport from Colchester and North East Essex Camra
Get involved this Autumn!
The Waiting Room injects a breath of fresh air into how social events and creative activities can be done. It promotes exploring ideas and concepts with an element of risk taking and experimentation, without the confines of normal commercial limitations and expectations. (Will Wright)
As Autumn kicks in, we edge toward the end of the year. We are now on the look-out to grow our Bar and Café team – the heartbeat that financially sustains our DIY Venue.
If you have a few hours once a fortnight and want to give something back to your community while having fun and feeling creative, we want to hear from you! Read more
RUPTURE - Work in Progress
FREE EVENTS and WORKSHOPS starting May 2016
Hello, I’m Stefanie and I’m organizing four artist residencies at the Waiting Room over the coming months. The artists taking part share a few things in common- they are highly talented and show immense commitment in their artistic practices. They push themselves hard and create innovative work. Read more
GET INVOLVED - Saturday Evenings at The Waiting Room
Saturday evenings at the Waiting Room are all about live performances; encompassing everything from standup comedy with the absolutley bonkers USOL to Paper Champion‘s off-beat indie, to Shallow Leisure‘s monthly offering of heavy stuff and everything else in between. Read more
Calling Young People – Swarm with us
You are invited to help ‘prototype’ new ideas with Boots Pharmacy to grow a healthier and happier community of young people in Colchester.
Who?
Dan Burgess and Tom Farrand from Swarm who are working with Boots are keen to gather a group of 16-20 young people (aged around 12-15) to work with Boots staff, local community leaders and expert innovators and designers in small teams.
Repair Reuse Recycle – Chris needs your vote!
Last year I noticed there was an increasing amount of unwanted household goods going to landfill. So I decided to start a new enterprise to tackle the challenge… Read more
JOB ALERT!
Vacancy for part time assistant grower at Bennison Farm to start March 2016.
Bennison are a small Community Supported Agriculture scheme supplying weekly Organic veg bags to their local members – this includes using the Waiting Room as a weekly drop off and collection point.
Bennison are looking for a part time assistant grower to work alongside the main grower and with their volunteers at regular workdays. The job will involve all aspects of growing, harvesting and packing the produce to provide our members with their share of the harvest throughout the year.
Previous experience and drivers licence strongly desirable. More importantly the applicant needs: the strength, stamina and motivation required for this physical job where much of the work done by hand; a commitment to Organic and sustainable agriculture; and a friendly, approachable manner and willingness to work with our community of volunteers.
Hours are 2.5 - 3 days p/w March to October and 1.5 - 2 days p/w from November - February based on an 8hr day. Pay is starting at £7.50/hr rising to £8/hr.
Please send your CV and covering letter and provide two references. Apply to Danny Steele, [email protected].
Plans for 2016
Happy New Year to our local community and customers.
As we move into 2016 and reopen this Friday, we’d like to update you with our plans for the year ahead. Read more
Join the Bazaar Collective
The Waiting Room is hosting a new monthly Bazaar self-organised by a collective of local makers, producers, designers, artists, hackers, menders, craft people and artisans. Read more
Learning as we go
If you are a regular, each time you come to the Waiting Room, you’ll probably notice things often change. That’s because we started the project as a prototype, an experiment, where we learn and iterate as we go.
We didn’t startup with big funding but instead, an investment of time, passion, love and commitment. Ultimately we are testing how a community can run a cultural facility – DIY style – for themselves. Not on a volunteer basis or 100% reliant on funding but on a cooperative enterprising footing.
We want to be resilient and independent with the freedom to run alternative events and take risks on supporting new ventures and ideas.
Yesterday our team got together to train each other on how to serve the best beer and coffee in town. We’re the first to admit, we’ve got a way to go before we reach that aim, but we’re working with some of the best producers from our surrounding community.
We’ve started in the right place – the rest is down to us.
We’ve recruited resident ‘experts’ who have stepped forward and taken the lead to research different products. Yesterday Mike (pictured below, with a bit of help from Martin from CAMRA) shared what he’s learned on the subject of Beer, while he has been developing relationships with our suppliers and other local experts. Gabriella (pictured above) shared her newly acquired Coffee expertise from the lovely people at The Coffee Officina.
Our approach does mean we don’t always get things right. After all, none of us have run a venue like this before. However, it does mean we learn fast, react quickly and you should see us improve each time you visit. We’re still trying to perfect our milk frothing technique!
Next time you visit, do feedback if we don’t get things quite right and talk to our team about the products we sell, the events we organise and whats it’s like to be involved. We’re all equally passionate about different aspects of the project and who knows, maybe we can convince you to join us in our grand experiment too!
Big thanks to Clare Marsh for the photos