Welcome to Hotel Elephant
Flexible, Affordable Creative Workspaces in Elephant & Castle.
Hotel Elephant is a not-for-profit workspace provider, based in Southwark with over 14 years of experience delivering workspace, exhibitions, events, and education spaces in the Elephant and Castle. Our goal is to provide and safeguard long-term space for arts, culture, and creative enterprise in London.
Spaces Available Now
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Book A Day Pass
Rent a desk for the day at Spare Street Works. Ideal for those looking for an ad hoc desk space to work from.
Discounts are available for blocks of 5 & 10 passes.
Available Monday - Friday 9 am- 5:30 pm. Book by 8 am for same-day bookings. Each day pass gives you access to one desk for the day, high-speed wifi and free tea & coffee.
Click the button below to book a day pass at Spare Street Works.
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Office & Desk Space
Spare Street Works is your local coworking space, by Hotel Elephant.
Flexible desk and office spaces for individuals and small teams. Our 4 and 6-person office units are a great option for start-ups and small teams. For larger teams, we have one 26-desk space available.
All spaces come fully furnished, with high-speed wifi, utilities, and perks like unlimited tea and coffee.
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Studio Space
Explore our available studio spaces in Southwark. Ideal for artists, makers, and those in the creative industries.
We have five studio locations in Elephant & Castle, SE17 and Borough, SE1.
Studio Spaces are advertised as a total monthly price, including utilities and communal services. Different contracts are available including one-month, three-month and 12-month options.
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Meeting & Event Spaces
See a list of our available hire spaces in Elephant and Castle, SE17. We have three spaces available including our mezzanine meeting space, our hall project space and our cafe/bar, Sidecar Coffee Bar.
Spare Street Works, SE17
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Spare Street Works is your local coworking space, by Hotel Elephant. Based in Elephant and Castle, South London, Spare Street Works provides flexible desk and office space for individuals and small teams.
Fed up of working from home? Our day passes and dedicated desks are ideal for freelancers and remote workers looking for a productive workplace close to home. Our 4 and 6-person office units are a great option for start-ups and small teams. For larger teams, we have one 26-desk space available.
All our desk and office units are provided fully furnished, on flexible contracts with high-speed wifi, utilities and a postal address included. All members benefit from great perks such as unlimited free tea and coffee, a free bookable meeting space, plus 10% off in our cafe.
Located on the edge of Zone 1, we are just a 5-minute walk from Elephant and Castle station, which is served by the Bakerloo and Northern lines, plus the overground. London Bridge and Waterloo Stations are less than 15 minutes away by public transport, with Central London easily accessible on many bus and tube routes.
Locations
Spare Street Studios, SE17
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Spare Street is made up of five newly refurbished, glazed-fronted railway arches. Providing 24 studio spaces for recent graduates and local creatives, we are pleased to be able to offer a permanent creative enterprise hub in the Elephant & Castle.
Arch 4 is dedicated to ‘noisy & messy’ work and Arch is dedicated to ‘quiet & clean’ work. Studio members get 24/7 access and high-speed Wifi. The studios host a wide range of practices from fine artists, costume makers, jewellers and digital creatives.
St Johns School, SE17
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We are pleased to be able to offer high-quality spaces in this historic, former school building. St Johns provides workspaces for artists, makers, and small creative businesses.
All our spaces have lots of natural light, heating, wifi, and access to communal facilities such as kitchens, wash-out sinks, and a bookable project space for our members.
Find Your New Space
Meet Our Members
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Xenia Busalova
Xenia Busalova lives and works in London where she graduated from the Royal College of Art and InnovationRCA. After many years of independent art practice, numerous exhibitions including, but not limited, Royal Academy of Arts, fine art galleries and two international biennales she founded her brand of porcelain jewellery FARPHPORIA.
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Ben Blease
Ben is an accomplished motion designer and graphic artist who has been honoured with a BAFTA nomination for their work. With extensive experience in both broadcast and agency environments, Ben is well-equipped to tackle any creative challenge
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Marcus Hessenberg
Marcus is a photographer and documentary maker working in London. A creative, colourful and experienced visual creative working in both still photography and video production. Marcus has over eight years of experience working on projects for branded content and creative editorial imagery.
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Isabel Otten
Isabel Otten is an illustrator and maker who lives in London. She graduated with a BA in Illustration from the University of Brighton in 2017 and has been pursuing a career in the arts industry ever since. Her work revolves around creating a distinct visual universe of characters and creatures that come to life through prints, cards, and comics.
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Viola Wang
Viola Wang is a children's book author and illustrator. Born in China, Viola graduated from Tsinghua University with a major in oil painting. She then moved to London, where she completed her master’s in animation and illustration while working as a graphic designer. Viola is also a graduate of the Children's Book Illustration MA at Cambridge School of Art, and a winner of the Sebastian Walker Award.
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Qrystal Pharmacy
The space launch in May 2023, with its first exhibition Small Paintings, by Indian-born British painter Jai Chunhan. Their next exhibition, opening soon, is co-curated with Parinaz Mogadassi, owner of the New York and London-based gallery Tramps. This exhibition will “probe the allegorical positions that artists use to characterise modern existence, with works by Satoshi Kojima, Peter Doig and Edward Burra pointing to ways one can be moved by environments, yet never feel fully integrated in time and space.”
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Liberty Antonia Sadler
Liberty Antonia Sadler is an artist & filmmaker based in London, working with mediums of drawing, text and moving images to explore issues of body politics. Working within a socio-political context, she uses characters, radical softness & raw playfulness to discuss themes of abjection, vulnerability, queerness, femininity, food, the erotic & the psycho-sexual. Alongside her fine art practice, Liberty Antonia creates collections of affordable prints and zines, with a focus on fat femmes & queer figures, that aim to affirm & celebrate through drawings and poetry.
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Remi Rough
Remi is a London-based abstract painter, his colourful geometric paintings span small canvas to large striking murals.
FAQ’s
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No, despite the name, we’re not a Hotel! Hotel Elephant is a not-for-profit company established in 2009 to provide space for Arts, Culture & Creative Enterprise in Southwark. Hotel Elephant started life as our co-founder, Reuben’s studio and education space. The name, Hotel Elephant, was the title of an exhibition of large-scale drawings of the Elephant & Castle demolition sites. The name was inspired by a set of large red neon letters from the top of the old London Park Hotel, one of the demolition sites Reuben had been drawing. Reuben had been given some of these letters, which were featured as part of the exhibition and have formed part of our signage ever since. Some of the letters can be seen illuminated at the front of our arches on Spare Street.
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We are spread across a few locations in the Elephant and Castle area. Our primary location is Spare Street (SE17) where we offer both studio spaces and coworking space. In the Summer of 2022 we opened a new workspace building in a former primary school, St Johns Walworth, both our SE17 spaces are a short 5-7 minute walk from Elephant and Castle tube station.
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You can make an enquiry about our studio spaces here, and we can discuss which of our studios might best suit your needs, and then we can organize a tour. For our office spaces, you can book a tour here and we can discuss which of our workspaces will suit you and your business.
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We have a broad remit to provide studio spaces for people working within the arts and creative industries. This includes fine artists and makers, as well as people working in the design and digital creative industries. Our members include painters, costume designers, photographers, filmmakers, jewellery designers, animators and ceramicists.
We understand that creative practices can be varied and would always encourage potential studio members to send us an enquiry to let us know what your requirements are. We’re always happy to help!
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We have several different workspace offers, including studio, desk and office spaces.
Our studio spaces are for artists and makers looking for a full-time space to make their work. Studio members include painters, costume makers, jewellers, ceramics and digital creatives.
Our coworking space, Spare Street Works provides day passes, dedicated desks and offices for small teams (4 & 6 person spaces). We also have one large 26-desk space. Our coworking space is ideal for freelancers, remote workers, start-ups and growing businesses.