THE CAMPAIGN CLICK HERE TO DONATE HERE
On the 13th of May 2014 the owners of the Horse Hospital announced that the building was going to be put up for sale for the sum of £2.5 million. This untimely decision has caused serious repercussions, and although as tenants we are protected by the terms of the original lease, the last 18 months have proved to be an extremely testing time, both physically and emotionally with aborted attempts to negotiate and secure a future for the Horse Hospital and its activities, but one thing is certain with your support we shall fight to the last for what we have created here.
So far the response to our plight has been incredible, offers of help, advice and support have come from far and wide, and earlier this year we were successfully listed as a Community Asset with Camden Council. This astounding result had the positive effect of forming an indefinite halt to any future sale of the building.
However, this stressful journey has also been financially crippling, with hefty lawyers fees and a series of on going mandatory building works, and as a 100% independent, unfunded organisation now in its 21st year, we have been left with virtually no budget to put towards the programming in 2016.
So after much thought and careful planning we have devised a scheme to put all this offered kindness and generosity to its best possible use, and now we are proud to announce ‘The 2016 Horse Hospital Fighting Fund and Support Program’. This unique crowd-funding plan offers everyone the opportunity to help continue our fight, and also fund an ambitious program that actually celebrates independent & community forming culture.
This recurring narrative is destroying huge sections of life in London, which is devolving rapidly into a culturally bereft corporate wasteland. It is being systematically cleansed of its cultural vitality, diversity and energy.
We define ourselves by the culture we produce, we all participate in different ways and are all ultimately accountable and responsible to protect it and protect the right of having physical spaces where cultural exchanges and community forming experiences can happen. Transformation of all kinds relies on the possibility for the most coherent and powerful radical ideas to become tradition, there needs to be room for those ideas to have a chance to be played out.
We believe the only way to respond to all of this uncertainty and threat, is put together an exciting and ambitious program of exhibitions and events that joyously celebrates an ethos of cultural multiplicity and rejects a homogenous, thin layer of sanctioned and carefully monitored culture as a defining engine, we want to address the seismic changes London and independent culture as a whole are undergoing, and what is being lost in this violent transformation.
We are aiming to try and raise £30,000 to help cover our program of contributing artists shipping, fees, travel, accommodation and build a fighting fund to assist with any future unforeseen expenditure. By helping us make this happen you will all not only be supporting our cause, but also highlighting the difficulty of every organisation that is struggling to stay afloat.
Together let’s celebrate irreverence, anti-conformism and integrity. Champion the outsider, the unfashionable, the other. Embrace the DIY, the independent, the difficult, the intuitive, the romantic and the life affirming.
We have been inundated with amazing rewards in exchange for your donations, from rare and original artworks, to signed records, limited editions and much more, all the work has been generously contributed by artists and organizations who have worked with us over the last glorious 21 years. LOOK CAREFULLY!
THE PROGRAM
This program will run over the course of 2016 and will celebrate work that is embedded within broader cultural narratives, work that has a profound emotional and identity-forming significance on our lives, collaborative collectives, community forming practices, work that embodies the importance of the broadest possible access to culture across a diverse range of activity and practice.
The program will include amongst many other things:
The Detroit Artist Workshop + talks
The Detroit Artists Workshop was an arts collective founded on Nov. 1st, 1964 on the campus of Wayne State University in 1964 by John Sinclair, Robin Eichele, George Tysh, and Charles Moore. The Red Door was the first avant-garde and cooperative gallery in Detroit and was closely linked to the Artists’ Workshop.
Plastique Fantastique Residency
Plastique Fantastique, a collaboration between David Burrows and Simon O’Sullivan (sometimes with others, including Alex Marzeta, Vanessa Page, Harriet Skully, Ana Benlloch, Stuart Tait, Mark Jackson, Tom Clark, Simon Davenport, Joe Murray, Lawrence Leaman, Samudradaka and Aryapala), is a mythopoetic fiction - an investigation of aesthetics, the sacred, popular culture and politics - produced through comics, performances, text, installations and shrines and assemblages.
Destroy All Monsters Film Archive + talks
Formed in 1973, the first edition of Destroy All Monsters was formed by University of Michigan art students Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Niagara (Lynn Rovner) and filmmaker Cary Loren.
Welcome, Space Brothers: The Films Of The Unarius Academy Of Science + exhibition and talks
The Unarius Brotherhood were on a radical mission from the late-‘70s to the mid-‘80s: to spread their “interdimensional science of life” and the principles of reincarnation to the masses via some of most wildly inventive, waaaaay outside-the-box public access TV programming in America.
Events, talks and screenings:
The Zanzibar Group, NSK, The Neo-Naturists, The Source, Athena Squatted amongst many others.
THE REWARDS
There are seriously amazing rewards on offer for your donations, from rare and original artworks, to signed records, limited editions and much more, we have been inundated by work generously contributed by artists and organizations who have worked with us over the last glorious 22 years. LOOK CAREFULLY as we will be refreshing the offers every week as well as replacing works which has been claimed.
INCLUDED ARE: BFI, Billy Chainsaw, Buried, Cathi Unsworth, Cathy Ward, Charlemagne PALESTINE & GRUMBLING FUR, Club des Femmes, Daniel O’Sullivan, Gee Vaucher, Guapo, Jem Finer, Jennet Thomas, Jeremy Reed, John Balance, John Russell, Ken Hollings, Kitty Finer, Little Annie Bandez, Marcia Farquhar, Mark Pawson, Max Decharne, Melinda Gebbie, Miron Zownir, Mothlite, Nick Abrahams, Penny Rimbaud, Pil & Galia Kollectiv, Rob Ryan, Sandow Birk, Stephen Holman, Strange Attractor, Stu Mead, Tatty Devine, Tav Falco, The Stargazer’s assistant, William Basinski, X-Ray audio and Æthenor.