Monkton Arts is open TUE - FRI - 10.30am - 4pm SAT - 11am-4pm SUN - CLOSED apart from advertised events

Friends Of Monkton Arts

Become a Friend of Monkton Arts

Mission Statement of Monkton Arts & Friends of Monkton Arts

The family business of Monkton Arts strives to widen its reach out to individuals and groups to authentically bring connections and togetherness to the community around us. We aim to foster and promote the 9 biosphere principles to organically strengthen the connections between people and place and build a stronger and more resilient community through services, projects and events.

FOMA is a not-for-profit constituted group which aims to assist and enable Monkton Arts to achieve its community aims as laid out in their mission statement. FOMA will endeavor to relieve the financial and time pressures of delivering not-for-profit community beneficial events and activities to enable the business of Monkton Arts to remain an asset to the community.

To have a read of our constitution click here FOMA constitution

The main reason to join FOMA is to help keep this local family run arts center open as a community hub. The Monkton Arts mission statement, states our aims to deliver community interest events and projects. In the past we have learnt the hard way that the financial and time commitment to delivering these not for profit endeavors, for the benefit of the community, have a negative impact on keeping a sustainable business afloat. To keep being able to deliver on not- for-profit projects, and events, we need additional funding. As grant funding is not a sustainable source, we look to our community and those who can afford to subscribe to £10 a month membership fee, to enable us to continue what we can offer. Below is a list of benefits and outcomes of your membership, but the real value is in keeping Monkton Arts a community hub and enabling us to deliver the projects and events which benefit the individuals, groups and environment around us.

What you get for
£10 a month

(less than a coffee a week)

4 Seasonal socials exclusive to members only. Free to come, with meal and drink offers at the bar.

Loyalty card on hot drinks

4 seasonal members letters giving updates on the community projects they help to fund

Added to the monthly mailing list for regular updates on projects, events and Monkton News

A 20% discount on Acons and Sara K gallery bookings and venue hire.

What you help to enable for £10 a month

Monkton Arts Prize
Children’s Monkton Arts Prize
John Ackroyd Award for young engineer of the year
The Ryde Gypsy Jazz Festival
Ryde Bandstands
Word Fest
Biosphere Festival
Mardi Gras
Aspirational island engineering project
Fifty Familiar Faces community project
Surfers against sewage campaign

To deliver these not- for-profit projects and events we need approximately £30,000 for this list over the next 2 years. Some rely on applying to outside awarding bodies and with the help of Creative Island and the funding they have attracted to the island we have already secured £1000 towards planned music events, and being helped to apply for a £10,000 grant for our engineering project. I have been accepted onto the cultural leadership programme funded by them, in the hope I will be upskilled to apply for more funding and better equipped to manage these projects in a sustainable way. We are using our networking links to team up with businesses and organisations. We are in discussions regarding legacy funding for our engineering project and crowd funding for bandstands with the local brass band groups to bring back bandstands in Ryde. So as you can see we do not expect subscriptions to cover it all, we rely on business services, grants, networking and volunteering a lot of unpaid time but this new membership initiative will go a long way to delivering our goals.
We are not a big team, just a small honest family who, for the last 7 years have proved that we work hard and give our all, and if you can help contribute towards our community vision then please sign up and become a Friend of Monkton Arts, a FOMA and together we can make this list for projects and events a reality with a big community impact!