Wolstenholme Creative Space (abbreviated as WCS) was an independent not-for-profitcontemporary artgallery, music venue and artists' studio complex housed in the last surviving Georgian buildings in Wolstenholme Square, Liverpool.
It developed in late 2009 from an earlier artist-run space, when the space's coordinators, Priya Sharma and Caroline Smith, assumed responsibility for the premises under the Wolstenholme Creative Space name and became its directors.
WCS worked with external artists, collectives and organisations, while also producing its own programme of exhibitions and events. Its programme focused on emerging artists across a range of art forms, often drawing on DIY practices and responding creatively to the building and its deteriorated condition.
The organisation also provided affordable studio space for more than 30 artists. In 2011, rents were reported to be "as little as £35 per month", with the studios spread across "several dilapidated floors".
Wolstenholme Creative Space held a significant place within Liverpool's alternative arts scene. In 2012, The Double Negative described WCS, together with Red Wire and The Royal Standard, as three key artist-led spaces established after 2005, largely by graduates of Liverpool John Moores University.
Around Wolstenholme Square, WCS formed part of a wider artistic shift alongside The Kazimier and MelloMello, as disused buildings were repurposed for music, performance and visual art.
Its connection to Liverpool's independent music scene was further reinforced by Bido Lito! describing WCS as a "second home" for bands, artists and independent promoters.
Having operated for "a little over three years", the Wolstenholme venue closed at the end of 2012 after the building was "deemed structurally unsound".
The loss of WCS and other artistic spaces around Wolstenholme Square drew criticism in The Skinny, Liverpool Echo, The Post, and from Gabrielle de la Puente of The White Pube.
Background
Buildings
Numbers 11-13 Wolstenholme Square date from 1765, when the south side of the square was developed for prosperous merchants.:7
As Liverpool's wealthier residents moved farther afield, the square lost its fashionable residential character and was increasingly occupied by tradespeople, workshops and warehouses.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the premises were in mixed commercial and residential use, accommodating trades and lodging.
Several sources discussing the gallery state that the property was once the residence of the first Mayor of the City of Liverpool, although this has not been independently confirmed.
From at least 1873, numbers 11-13 were occupied by John Hall & Sons, a firm of wool merchants, which was still listed there in 1904.:13 By 1947, the firm's former premises were being used by the Customs and Excise Department as a King's warehouse.
By the late 1980s, amid Liverpool's wider post-industrial decline, many of the square's buildings were run-down or abandoned.
The ownership of property in the surrounding Ropewalks district also changed during this period. At the end of March 1988, Liverpool City Council sold a group of properties to Charterhouse. After Charterhouse entered receivership in 1992, the properties were acquired by Frenson Properties, which remained a major landowner in the Ropewalks into the early 2010s.
Wolstenholme Projects
In 2006, The Art Organisation (TAO), an arts initiative that worked with landlords to bring disused buildings into temporary cultural use, secured the use of premises at Wolstenholme Square from Frenson Properties. During that year's Liverpool Biennial, TAO operated them as The Re-Evolutionary Gallery.
The premises subsequently became the base of Wolstenholme Projects, an artist-run space that began providing exhibition, studio and workshop space, particularly for recent graduates of Liverpool John Moores University. The group also carried out improvements to the neglected premises. By late 2009, the building required further investment and redevelopment. Its then-coordinators, Priya Sharma and Caroline Smith, took over its management under the name Wolstenholme Creative Space and became the organisation's directors.
The space hosted screenings of cult and experimental films, including L.A. Zombie followed by a Q&A with Bruce LaBruce, and Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers preceded by a recorded introduction in which Korine dedicated the screening to "the scum, the lowlife of Liverpool, people on the street".
Notes
12Although its Wolstenholme Square premises closed in December 2012, WCS continued operating as an organisation. In May 2013, it presented Rob Bremner's exhibition Liverpool, Unfinished at Drop the Dumbells as part of the LOOK/13 photography festival. Wolstenholme Creative Space Limited has not been formally dissolved until 4 March 2014.
12Pollard, Richard; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2006). Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West. Pevsner Architectural Guides: The Buildings of England. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. p.343. ISBN978-0-300-10910-8.
↑Foulds, Andrew (17 January 2012). "Liverpool Reawakened". The Double Negative. Retrieved 29 July 2026.
↑Strachan, Robert; Leonard, Marion (2010). "Introduction: Creativity, Representation and Place". In Leonard, Marion; Strachan, Robert (eds.). The Beat Goes On: Liverpool, Popular Music and the Changing City. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p.9. ISBN9781846311901.
↑Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad (22 September 2020). AMC Ask The Artist The White Pube (YouTube video). AirSpace Gallery. Event occurs at 46:08. Retrieved 29 July 2026.
↑Biggs, Lewis (2009). "Individuals and Institutions in Dialogue". In Biggs, Bryan; Sheldon, Julie (eds.). Art in a City Revisited. Liverpool: Bluecoat and Liverpool University Press. p.31. ISBN978-1-84631-083-6.
↑Withers, Rachel. "Liverpool". Simon Schama's Power of Art. BBC. Retrieved 28 July 2026.
