This financial year saw some big changes and challenges for Fabrication. Our York pop up also came to an end at the beginning of 2025, and in November 2024 we took on a 10 year lease on a property in Stonegate York.
This building gives us huge scope for growth, converting upper floors to workspaces and also a garden area which is being turned into a community garden. We will also be able to build our other community projects into it.
We also took on as popups, at the same time, 2 other buildings in the city centre as short term studio and gallery space. To be used until we could get works on the upper floors completed on the Stonegate shop. This also meant that once again we had a crossover period of leases increasing costs at the end of the financial year, which is reflected in the accounts as we didn’t take on overdrafts or loans to do this.
This wasn’t without its challenges as we quickly discovered some areas of the workspaces didn’t have electricity and there were numerous leaks in the retail building. Meaning we had to hold off taking on exhibitions, new tenants and maximising each space for over 6 months. Our accounts reflect this with the extra costs at the start of the year. We were lucky enough to obtain a small grant from the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority Vibrant High Streets Fund, which enabled us to do some of the works and then begin to fill the workspaces, although not as quickly as we’d like to
The financial turnaround of the economy also had a major impact. We quickly learned that Stonegate is a tourist not local shopping street and global economics might that many of those normally visiting from the US and Asia didn’t arrive. We weren’t the only businesses impacted by this as both York and Leeds felt the brunt of this.
Leeds also now suffers from the displacement of office staff to the new build area on the outskirts of the city, as well as those still working from home who are still based closer to the city centre
Our Fabrication2 workspace continued to thrive to capacity, with our workspace tenant Amy Stringer continuing to take the helm and repositioning us amongst the arts community in Leeds instigating city wide events such as Leeds Open Studios
As before the leadership of our directors and the work done by our tenants continue our commitment to our missions and values. They have been critical to our survival and recovery through the last few years and continue to be so. With our plans for the future to build on the work being done for post covid recovery and sustainability
A note on our accounts.
Our income is derived from the space fees and commission of our buildings and shop sales; it doesn’t reflect the sales income of those shops. We act as an agent for our makers and sales income belongs to them, unless direct sales of our own products, and is zeroed out of the accounts. Most of our year end creditors is the sales income for November payable to those makers in December. This is left in reserves so isn’t counted as profit nor is it a long-standing debt
Dawn Clark CEO Fabrication Crafts Ltd 28 August 2026