After a period of disuse following the closing of the brewery in 1937, the old remaining Cirencester Brewery buildings were earmarked for demolition. However, a local group, proposed repair and conversion of two of the remaining buildings into craft workshops and Cirencester Workshops opened in 1978.

The aims of the Cirencester Workshops was to ‘give the public good quality crafts, provide craftspeople with a fair rent and encourage them to produce creative work of a high standard, and to put the enterprise on a sound financial basis’. Today some 40 years later our mission reflects the same aims. 

The adjoining Niccol Centre also breathed new life into the semi-derelict Cirencester Brewery barrel store, Throughout the 1980s it was a space for the elderly, it provided classes and courses and had its own theatre space. In 1990 The Niccol Centre and The Cirencester Workshops joined and became Brewery Arts.

New Brewery Arts has much to thank these two preceding organisations for, not only did they both save the buildings from the bulldozer, but their aspirations for both the community of Cirencester and to provide a space for the making and selling of craft have become our legacy.

Following extensive redesign and refurbishment, our current galleries, shop, workshops and café opened in 2008. In 2016 New Brewery Arts opened The Barrel Store, another chapter in the history of the Cirencester Brewery buildings. The Barrel Store offers affordable, stylish accommodation for visitors to Cirencester and New Brewery Arts.

Today New Brewery Arts is a charity focused on craft and creativity and comprises galleries, artists’ studios, café and shop, and guest accommodation, in addition to an extensive programme of courses and workshops (over 200 each year). We welcome over 150,000 visitors every year.

We support our local community by working with groups who find arts and creativity either difficult to access. Recently this has seen us work with care-home residents, military families, those with experience of domestic abuse and dementia sufferers and their carers.

You can read our charitable aims and mission here. 

WHAT'S ON

New Brewery Arts is the place to come and explore the best of British craft and creativity. We have over 100 weekly courses and short workshops on offer each term and regularly changing exhibitions.

STAY

Make a break of it and turn your workshop into a UK short break in the heart of the beautiful Cotswolds. You can stay overnight with us in our new guest accommodation – just select ‘residential’ when you book.