Arcola Theatre

After ten successful years in cramped surroundings in a converted building in Arcola Street, the company moved to new premises in Ashwin Street in January 2011 but retained the name Arcola Theatre. Their new home was a brick industrial building with steel windows and an iron structural frame built in 1868 for the artists’ supplies company, Reeves & Sons, which moved out in 1948. The entrance elevation still shows the words Reeve's Artists' Colour Works in glazed brick detail. The theatre occupies the basement and two floors of the four storey building. There are two studio theatres, a cafe-bar and the Bloomberg Arts Lab which comprises a suite of rehearsal spaces on the first floor that are used to support the youth and community creative learning programme. The main theatre space is Studio 1 with seating for up to 180 on three sides with a balcony and two large dressing rooms. Studio 2 is a black box theatre that can be used end on or in the round. It seats up to 100 and has a single dressing room. Further refurbishment in 2012 made spaces more accessible, installed innovative sustainable technologies, and made a feature of reusing materials to maintain an industrial aesthetic. Aiming to be the first carbon neutral theatre in the world, Arcola Theatre leads the way in clean technologies and sustainable practices within the arts community including the installation of a waste wood biomass boiler, water usage saving, a natural ventilation system and an innovative LED lighting system powered by solar photovoltaics. The experience gained in employing low carbon technologies to power the building and the development of the first energy incubator based in an arts setting, resulted in the creation of Arcola Energy in 2011, a company that develops, manufactures and sells new energy technologies.