The Hive [Winsford]

The Hive… Winsford Music and arts venue The Hive is the new community owned venue in Winsford, Cheshire that was formerly the iconic de bees music bar. Winsford is nestled in between Liverpool and Manchester and absorbed their musical cultures when many hundreds of families from the cities moved into town as part of the 1960’s overspill. For a small town Winsford has an envious music scene which was germinated and grew in de bees over 20 odd years. As a valuable grass roots music venue de bees staged the likes of Tom Walker, The Luka State, Deja Vega, Catfish and the Bottlemen in their formative years, to name but a few! The venue hosted thousands of gigs and concerts over the years including bands like the Levellers, Cage The Elephant and China Crisis and comedians such as Alan Carr, John Bishop and Jason Manford. In 2019 the property owners Enterprise Inns decided to offload the building for redevelopment, refusing to issue a new lease with de bees long term operators. Four other local pubs had been offloaded similarly in recent years, by the same company, none traded again. But on this occasion the people of Winsford (a small town with a big heart) decided to get together and crowdfund to make sure that this Iconic venue continued to be at the heart of the local music scene and community life generally forever. History has it that The Hive was actually formed in de bees in 2009 as a not for profit to stage community festivals. It’s artist development record label Pollen8 had it’s studios based on the 1st floor. In 2019 The Hive became a charitable community benefit society and the vehicle to raise the funds to save de bees from the bulldozers. The society released a successful community share offer and secured grants and loans sufficient to buy the venue into common ownership and to renovate throughout. The venue was saved!! One of only a few music venues ever to be bought into community ownership in the UK. Now and forever the venue must be used as the local community sees fit and any value created must be for the benefit of the local community alone. With a strong asset lock now in place the building will never again be in danger of being sold off to the highest bidder, it has a sustainable secured future unlike many still threatened grass roots venues in the UK. Profits will be able to fund music and arts projects for years to come ensuring the local scene grows from strength to strength and the bands keep coming through. The Hive now runs as a charitable society with multiple volunteers and a board of trustees in place to ensure that this building is being used to its fullest potential and delivers the greatest community benefit.. The Hive prides itself on bringing the community together and giving back the value we create together, the venue is now very diverse with events covering a wide range of genres. Whether it’s a Rock night, hip hop, open mic, dance, cinema, quizzes, karaoke or children’s entertainment we guarantee there will be something for every member of the community to enjoy with us at some point.