Cookie Settings

About The Collective Sharehouse

The Collective Sharehouse is a volunteer-led, ‘give as you can, take as you need’ community food support and café based at Clements Hall. We primarily support residents and families in the Micklegate Ward of the city and offer a range of cupboard foods, hygiene products, fresh fruit and vegetables, and bakery items.

Over the past four years, we’ve shared food with the community on more than 16,000 occasions, regularly supporting around 70 families each week.

Increasingly, our ambition is for people to ‘come for the food but stay for everything else’. This ‘everything else’ includes simple pleasures such as coffee, conversation, and company, as well as engaging activities, tickets to local attractions and events, and support or guidance on vital issues beyond food, such as benefits, debt, and addiction.

Community Bunting Making

This is why we eagerly partnered with York Theatre Royal’s Sweet Legacies project.

Becky and Gracie from the project worked with clients over four sessions in March and April. While the initial plan was to create bunting using lino printing, the sessions evolved into much more. Thanks to Becky and Gracie’s engaging approach, the workshops fostered laughter, meaningful conversation, reminiscences, rediscovered creativity, skills, a love of learning, and much-needed respite from daily anxieties and cares.

The collaboration was a real joy, demonstrating how a simple but powerful concept can have a profound impact on the lives of those involved.

Lino printing workshop

Testimonials