Vacant Property Toolkit

A free how-to guide for creatives and communities looking to take on empty properties.

It feels timely that the launch of our Vacant Property Toolkit coincides with the announcement of a new £61 million Community Right to Buy Fund. The initiative is intended to empower local residents in England to take ownership of assets such as pubs, shops, and community centres, as part of a set of reforms to put more power in the hands of communities.

As an organisation with a reputation for taking on often difficult spaces and transforming them with creative uses, Artspace is frequently asked by other organisations for support to help them take on space or consider new uses. We are regularly contacted by artists, local authorities nationally, and even contracted consultants wanting pro-bono support.

Following the launch of Sparks Bristol, we were also contacted by people wanting us to create a Sparks in their own town or city.

We believe that culture, creativity and community are inherent to the reinvention of the high street – or the civic street. We wanted to be able to provide more support and resources to others to spark this change in their own city.

We were frequently asked by organisations who wanted us to come in and activate spaces in order to regenerate their area (with no financial support and with our charity taking on all the risk). But we also believe that local communities are best placed to create spaces that their communities genuinely need. 

Managing an arts centre requires balancing creative programming with heavy regulatory requirements. When Artspace first started taking on buildings to manage, it was because our founders at The Invisible Circus were looking for interesting and affordable spaces to make shows. Most artists take on buildings because they want to make art, not to become building surveyors, financial modellers, health and safety officers, or landlords. With this toolkit, we have tried to address as many of the barriers and unknowns artists might face as possible.

Our work on the toolkit expanded on work originally carried out by our founders Wim Penhaul and Doug Francis, working with Ruth Essex, who was the Capacity Officer at Bristol City Council. That earlier work contained a lot of useful information, but over the years much of it became obsolete, and the UK built environment has also been undergoing rapid shifts in compliance.

One of the case studies in our Toolkit appendices is Bricks in Bristol, who used an early version of our statutory compliance toolkit when setting up St Anne’s House. “When setting up St Anne’s House, we cobbled together learning and resources from many peers and organisations across the sector, including Artspace Lifespace. There is no guide or rule book to this work — each space is different, each community needs an individual response built by them — but there is also no need for us all to start from scratch. I am really excited to see the new resources from ASLS and what they will unlock for artists and communities in our city,” says Jack Gibbon, CEO at Bricks.

What the toolkit includes

• Section One – The Civic Street: Why the high street is changing — covering the decline of traditional high streets, the role of culture as civic infrastructure, and the value of third spaces such as cafés, libraries, studios, venues, and community hubs.
• Section Two – A Guide for Owners: For property owners considering how to bring vacant buildings back into use.
• Section Three – A Guide for Occupiers: Aimed at creatives, community groups, and organisations looking to take on space. It covers how to define a project, search for suitable vacant properties, and use channels like agents, council asset registers, heritage lists, brokers, and rental auctions. It also sets out the practical checks occupiers need to make.
• Section Four – Appendices: Case studies, interviews, and examples of meanwhile-use projects that show what has worked in practice. The toolkit also offers downloadable tools such as budget templates, risk assessment templates, and a statutory building health and safety compliance checklist.
• Section Five – Resources: Extra information to help readers continue their vacant-property journey.

Thanks to those who we interviewed for this toolkit including Bricks (St Anne’s House); Lambert Smith Hampton (LSH); Hammond Associates; MAKE Liverpool; Makespace Oxford; and Bristol City Council.

In 2026, Artspace Lifespace celebrates 20 years of transforming vacant properties into thriving creative spaces. Despite this achievement, operating on short-term leases has meant we have been unable to plan financially for more than a year or to invest in properties. And yet, through our work at The Island –  which provides essential space for 100+ artists and musicians and 50+ circus space members and at Sparks Bristol, our partner project with Global Goals Centre, which provides creative space for 60+ people and 30 independent sustainable traders, with over half a million individual visits annually, we have demonstrated what is possible. Despite this, our organisation remains precarious due to the short-term and meanwhile nature of our leases. In the past five years in Bristol, key arts providers such as Theatre Bristol, Bristol Ideas, and Mayk have all closed. The knowledge and networks held within organisations like ours are irreplaceable, and without buildings or funding to continue our work, they are at risk of being lost.

Special thanks to our funders and supporters at Power to Change, for funding this work and taking us down the rabbit hole of the complexities facing vacant high streets.

Huge thanks also to Laura Welsman and Futureground for their input on this toolkit, Rosie Bond for the lovely design, and the following for pro-bono support: Ben Stephenson (BAS Consultancy & Artspace Lifespace Trustee); Platform Places; Sara Jones at Womble Bond Dickinson; and Alun Griffiths.

Thanks also to Bristol’s Vacant Property Taskforce, led by Jamie Burman at Bristol City Council, including Bristol BID (Vivienne Kennedy, Paula Ratcliffe, Anna Farthing); Bristol City Council Arts and Events Team (Joanna Plimmer, Seth Richardson); Cabot Circus (Laura Reynolds); Womble Bond Dickinson (Sara Jones); Savills (Robert Palmer); UWE (Elahe Karimnia); The Ethical Gift Shop (Al Horton); One Green Kitchen (Anne-Su); and the other VPT members who have supported work carried out by Artspace Lifespace.

Our vision moving forward is for Artspace to be less like a leaf on the wind and to set down deep roots in Bristol –  we hope in Broadmead –  providing a cultural home in a challenging high street. Thanks to further funding from the West of England Combined Authority, we have developed a new consultation concept working with Invisible Circus and Play Disrupt, building on our 2019/2020 Arts Council-funded Futurville project, asking: “Who Builds This City?”

The skyrocketing cost of real estate is heavily squeezing Bristol’s renowned creative ecosystem. Unlike the Community Ownership Fund, the new Community Right to Buy Fund targets designated Pride of Place areas suffering from severe deprivation and weak social infrastructure. Our hope is that these funds will reach places like Bristol to support Community Wealth Building,  where regeneration benefits don’t simply “leak” out of an area, but instead create sustained local employment and wealth for the artists on whose reputation the city’s cultural standing is built.

In the meantime, we hope that creatives and owners across the country will be able to use this toolkit to empower communities to step in and save these high street gems.

Download the Toolkit for free: artspace.uk/vacant-property-toolkit