This latest news from Southsea may be of interest to Isle of Wight makers and lovers of quality items. Ed
For the past two years, Love Southsea have been giving Portsmouth’s independent trading scene opportunities for employment through their monthly weekend street markets in Palmerston Road. Now, we’re unveiling plans to reach out to the artists and creators of the city through a new ‘Makers Row’ scheme.
The idea behind Makers Row is to give local creatives such as illustrators, textiles artists, and graphic designers the chance to sell their work in a friendly community environment with none of the overheads of brick-and-mortar stores, whilst also promoting the services they can offer people through their creative talents.
Love Southsea Street Market
Makers Row will run alongside the regular stretch of the Love Southsea Street Market — which usually encompasses 50 stallholders selling everything from giftware and collectables to clothing and food — on the first Saturday and Sunday of each month, in a dedicated space between flagship stores Debenhams and Knight & Lee.
Each Makers Row trader will be welcome to set-up and configure their space as they wish, using their own tables, shelving, rails, and other display equipment. Marquees will be provided by us.
Creatives who book into the Makers Row will also receive extensive social media promotion.
On average, our markets attract a daily footfall of 13,000 individual shoppers — a strong mix of natural footfall and promotion-generated visitors. A weekly reach of over 90,000 people on social media streams boosts this footfall multifold.
Share your passion for art
Lulu Whitmore, founder of Love Southsea, said,
“Every other person you meet in Portsmouth nowadays is passionate about one art form or another!
“Through Love Southsea we’ve been lucky enough to work with hundreds of creative locals, and now we want to help them by providing a public outdoor trading infrastructure they can profit from.
“We’re very well-known locally for our wide social media reach, and look forward to using that to promote the artists we meet on Makers Row, letting our audience know all about them.
“Supporting arts in our city has never been more important. Portsmouth and Southsea have undergone astounding cultural booms in the past five years, and we love contributing to that artistic explosion through our markets.”
Makers Row is now open for bookings starting with the first Love Southsea Market in November. Pitches can be booked through the Love Southsea Website.
