19/06/2026
Grab a cup of tea or coffee and sit down for this one. In a world of social media where everything gets consumed like fast food, we wanted to take the time to tell a proper story today.
This story starts with Tamara, our Chair, an artist who exhibits as TG Freeson. Since 2017, her health has made it increasingly difficult for her to do the things most artists take for granted: turning up to galleries, standing at a market stall, even just talking to people in the art world about her own work. So I started doing it for her. Then came more hospital stays, then Covid, and any thought of going back to the old way of doing things stopped being an option at all.
We didn't stop. We moved everything online, into virtual exhibitions, and along the way realised other artists were facing versions of the same problem; not always health, but something that kept them from being seen. Once the worst of the pandemic had passed, we started asking whether what we'd built online could exist in the physical world too, somewhere people could actually walk in.
Back in January 2023, we had an idea and very little else. No track record, no guarantees we could offer, just a small CIC and a determination to bring an art gallery to Fishponds, somewhere that didn't have one. We had been turned away, again and again, by the simple economics of renting a space: business rates and rent that we could never have asked our artists to cover.
Then we met Ben, owner of The Crafty Egg. He was already planning to install shipping containers in his yard for community use, and we asked if we could be part of it. He said yes, with nothing to go on but our word.
Months went by. When the council process stalled, we went back to Ben with a different idea: what if, instead of a container, it was a double-decker bus? He didn't hesitate. He spent his own money on a vehicle for a project he had no way of knowing would work, and leased it to us at a rent we could sustain.
After years of being turned away, that bus felt like a harbour at the end of a long and difficult crossing. It became our gallery. Since opening in November 2023, it has hosted over 850 artists, many of whom had never had a space to show their work before.
Three weeks ago, Ben made an even bigger gesture: he gave us the bus outright. Circular ArtSpace CIC is now the legal owner of the vehicle we've called home for over two years.
Ben is the kind of person who would rather this all went unnoticed. But gestures like his too often slip by unmarked, and we didn't want that to happen here. We wanted there to be a record, a proper thank you, for what he's done.
None of what we've built, and none of what's still to come, would exist without the trust Ben placed in us when he had every reason not to. Thank you, Ben. We owe you more than we can say.
780 Fishponds Road, Fishponds, BS163TT, Bristol
