Melbourne LGBT Arts Venue Harehole Announces It Is Closing In March 2023
Harehole, one of Melbourne’s beloved LGBTQI community arts venues, has announced it is closing its doors permanently in early March after the Midsumma Festival.
Harehole, the performance and retail space, operates out of the erstwhile Hares and Hyenas bookshop run by Crusader Hillis and Rowland Thomson on Johnston Street in Fitzroy, North Melbourne. The bookshop moved to its new space at the Victorian Pride Centre in St Kilda in December 2021, and the Johnston Street venue was renamed Harehole Melbourne.
“The arts environment of 2021 had greatly changed from before the pandemic when the Harehole venue at Hares & Hyenas typically presented at least four events a week,” the venue said in a post on Facebook on Wednesday.
“Coming out of Covid the venue failed to attract significant new business and the place struggled to find its identity and purpose in the post-Covid arts environment.”
COVID-19 Impacts Venue
Post-covid revitalisation funds as well as some events helped it to remain open and a silent partner stepped in to upgrade the venue’s facilities.
In April 2022, a crowdfunding campaign was started to raised $10,000. The venue said it hoped to raise enough money to help it sign a five-year lease on the building. As of January 19, the campaign managed to raise $6840.
In May 2022, owner Crusader Hillis provided an update on the GoFundMe page.
“In the past few months, Harehole has seen it all: postponements, cancellations, Covid infections and their effects, and the lack of surety about when things are going to change—or indeed if they will. At Harehole we work to a post-Covid beat but we still feel the worst effects of a lack of activity. Our rent is still the same as pre-Covid with less than a quarter of the activity to pay for the things we need, and working with a skeletal staff means that we never get to the bottom of the list,” said Hillis.
Recently, Harehole announced it was struggling, but was aiming to deliver its summer arts program through February. It also announced a total clearance sale and invited stakeholders to present works at Harehole, which it hoped would raise enough funds to pay off its debts.
Supporting Queer Artists
“For 31 years Harehole Melbourne has worked to develop the art and skills of mostly queer artists. Founders of Hares & Hyenas, Crusader Hillis and Rowland Thomson, articulated a need to support those artists and communities who had been least well served by the arts environment of the time,” said the post on Facebook.
“Their visionary and inclusive practice gave women with HIV, the trans and gender diverse community, First Nations artists, Deaf artists and Auslan interpreters, queer people of colour, disabled artists and artists and performers with neurodiversity a genuine community-controlled platform where they could be heard on their own terms, learn new skills, and build confidence and competence in performance and arts management.”
“Harehole Melbourne continued this tradition with a focus on trans and gender diverse arts practice as its first primary community focus, with plans to further engage all the other communities who made Hares & Hyenas their home.”
The post revealed said that the owners were inviting expressions of interest from anyone who wanted to develop an enterprise at the Johnston Street venue. “Significant resources and assistance are available for those seeking to continue the centre as a venue or community incubator,” the post added.
