Founded in 2019 by four friends from the arts, the Arts Bar on Hope Street is a creative hub in Liverpool's Georgian Quarter, set up to give local artists a platform to showcase their work. Its founders, a musician, an actor, a ballroom dancer and a theatre technician, built it as a space combining a bar with performance and studio facilities. On the ground floor, the bar serves coffee, cocktails, beers, wines and spirits in a welcoming room hung with local artwork that is also for sale. Beyond drinks, the venue hosts a varied programme of live music, art classes, single launches, film screenings and open-mic nights. Upstairs and below, the building holds a series of performance and creative spaces: a 40-seat black-box room in a former stockroom used for comedy, poetry, sketch theatre and script readings, and an 80-seat space on the top floor for larger productions, gigs and events. The second floor also holds rehearsal studios, band practice rooms, offices and a podcast studio. That mix of bar, gallery, performance rooms and rehearsal space reflects the venue's grassroots, artist-led ethos, supporting creatives across the region both in person and online. Studio hire makes it a working base for musicians, dancers and theatre-makers as well as a place to drink and watch shows. Sitting on Hope Street, between the city's two cathedrals and among its cultural institutions, the Arts Bar has become part of the creative fabric of the Georgian Quarter. A sister venue in the Baltic Triangle extends the brand, but the Hope Street site remains its original home of grassroots art and live performance. The founders set the bar up as a response to a perceived shortage of affordable, supportive spaces for emerging artists in the city, and its model of pairing a commercial bar with subsidised studio and performance rooms is intended to make it self-sustaining. Its place on Hope Street, the spine of Liverpool's Georgian cultural quarter, puts it among universities, galleries and the two cathedrals that anchor the area.

Type: Bar / Pub

Address: 22 Hope Street, Liverpool, United Kingdom, L1 9BY

Website: https://www.liverpoolartsbar.com

Opening Date: 01/07/2019