Can you brighten up this wall?

Worthing’s Cellar Arts Club – a volunteer-run venue focused on providing a creative space for local artists and musicians – is offering artists the chance to create a mural on their exterior wall in Prospect Place.
Can you bring some colour to this wall?Can you bring some colour to this wall?
Can you bring some colour to this wall?

The venue has recently started up again since lockdown – and is aiming to add some colour to the premises.

Maria Knox, who is on the Cellar Arts Club committee, said they are hoping the mural could be unveiled over Christmas/New Year “to say that hopefully the New Year is going to be a lot better than this one!”

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Maria added: “We have been there four years this December. We are a volunteer-run venue, run by a committee of about ten people, all volunteering to put on stuff and run events. We were previously open Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, but in recent times we have just been open Saturday and Sunday.

“We are just trying still to get used to all the different restrictions about what we can do. But it is good to be open again. We were shut for a long time and have just recently reopened. We are still testing the water.

“We used to do spoken word events mainly on Thursdays or film nights or poetry nights. Because we are based in a cellar, we used to put on speak-easy events where people would talk about a hobby or project that they are passionate about. And we used to do DJ nights on Fridays and Saturdays and also live music events which were very popular.”

They are still finding their feet in the new world and working out what is possible: “We are not able to do the live performance events at the moment because you would have to have three-metre restrictions and that wouldn’t work. We can do DJ nights at the moment but we have to be party-poopers and say to people that they can’t dance, just sit at their tables.

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“But we can still do audio-visual nights, and we can still do poetry. But comedy is quite limited because people can’t be too loud or laugh too loudly. They are changing the restrictions every five minutes!”

So in a tough year, it seems all the more important to do something special.

“We are looking for submissions, and we want the submissions before December 1. We want to give people a proper amount of time to think about it. We don’t want people to rush.”

As for what the mural might depict, the team are very open: “We just want something that is safe for the public, that isn’t lewd or crude.

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“We are quite liberal at the club. We just want to offer a space for anybody that is wanting to express their work or give them a platform, for someone who wants something bigger to work on.”

The mural itself does not have to be specific to the club or Worthing ie refer in some way to the club or Worthing.

Maria is talking about an outside wall measuring approximately three metres long by two metres high, though extra space is available if needed.

People can submit a little draft of what they are thinking, as close to the finished idea as possible. They can email it over to us ([email protected]), and we will decide it as a committee.

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“We will narrow it down to a shortlist to see what works best. If we can make our decision that first week in December, we would be hoping for a Christmas/New Year reveal.”

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