"Making cities more inclusive: Our overall aim is to create places shared between people of all ages, abilities, attitudes and occupations" (PRAXIS) 

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The Stretford Community Arts Hub (aka Essoldo Studios Stretford) seeks to deliver a scheme that goes to the heart of the PRAXIS ethos.

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The proposed retail, studio and performance spaces provide a meaningful opportunity to deliver the core objectives of PRAXIS, challenging more mainstream commercially led forms of regeneration by:

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• Fostering collective and co-operative ownership; 

• Promoting opportunities for a co-operative model of free exchange; 

• Challenging the spatial effects of the mass commercialisation of ordinary human life by providing an alternative to the privatised town centre;

• Maximising opportunities for community engagement through a "network" (horizontal, interpersonal connections organically forming in society) based model of operation rather than a hierarchical (vertical based) model where social and recreational facilities are determined for rather than by the community.

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The proposals provide a host of opportunities to generate synergies between arts, media, recording, performance, food and drink and retail uses along with informal indoor and outdoor meeting spaces as a counterweight to what might be described as the privatised town centre.  The potential for the organic growth of a cluster of mutually supportive activies and uses around the former Essoldo Cinema are seen as the driver to the ultimate re-use of the Essoldo as a community led performance space bringing back to life one of Stretford's most important heritage assets.