About the venue

The Engine Room is a church and community centre in Haringey, North London. This Church of England venue welcomes all and hosts Londoners of all different backgrounds and religions. They strive to enable their residents to achieve their goals and to become a place “where community meets”. They offer dozens of weekly activities, as well as host six major community events a year, such as an Easter and Summer Festival, and a Christmas Fayre in the winter. 

‍

The Engine Room offers three spaces to bookers; a main hall, a smaller hall, and a workshop space. 

‍

Before Sharesy

Before The Engine Room joined Sharesy in 2022, they knew that they were doing well in their community, but they had a feeling that there was even more they could be doing. Here are some areas that were identified:

‍

Limited range: Marketing beyond their neighbourhood required more time and effort than just in their neighbourhood, which made visibility across London difficult.

‍

Struggling revenue: As 50% of their profits come from room hire, having irregular bookings made it harder for them to provide services back to their community. 

‍

Hard to make connections: Using other platforms to hire out their spaces that didn’t care about the venue left the Engine Room feeling like it was harder to find new customers. 

‍

After Sharesy

After joining Sharesy, The Engine Room was glad to see that many of the struggles they had found when doing self-promotion or working with other platforms were no longer an issue. 

‍

More bookers: With Sharesy’s easy-to-use website, finding bookers outside of The Engine Rooms area was easier than before. Sharesy has enabled The Engine Room to reach a much wider audience of bookers. This allows them to continue to create more regular bookings in their spaces, which creates a more steady flow of income that has allowed them to offer more and more programs for their community. 

‍

Friendly and sociable team: Unlike other platforms, The Engine Room has previously worked with, Sharesy is first and foremost community-focused. The Sharesy team believes people need a community to thrive. With support always at hand and ready to help, customers never feel out of the loop.

“We used to use other platforms which weren't very caring in their attitudes to either customers or venues but in Sharesy we have found a platform which cares about us and our customers yet enables us to reach a wider audience.”

‍

Focusing on the Future

Since they joined, The Engine Room has been able to support all kinds of arts programs. Thanks to the extra income from Sharesy, they were able to grant the Legal Aliens Theatre Group the status of Theatre Ensemble in Residence. Since the group works with refugees and asylum seekers who may be new to the UK, this status no longer means that they have to pay to rent space. Many people in the program now feel connected to The Engine Room, and have begun to consider it ‘home’.

‍

“We are now delighted to be part of the Sharesy family and we are keen to see more people from across London and beyond find out about The Engine Room thanks to Sharesy.”

‍

Using the extra income generated through Sharesy, they’ve been able to support bringing a volunteer from overseas to help them work towards achieving Silver accreditation status from the Eco Church network. Heading into 2025, the team at The Engine Room seeks to focus their attention even more on sustainability and environmental awareness.