Definition

xhurch /pronounced: church/ noun. 1.: a former religious building, one which has been adapted to a new use. 2.: an "ex" churchXhurches promotes the adaptive reuse of former religious spaces for culture and community.Artists, cultural organizations, other non-profits, communities can face great challenges to find something to call home in our rapidly changing cities. In these conditions, cultural producers and communities have often had to find makeshift solutions that aren’t always ideal, reliable, or even safe.Recognizing the abundance of vacant religious buildings, we see an opportunity for artists, activists, makers, community groups, social entrepreneurs, and more, to adopt these often beautiful, inspiring spaces and reuse them in ways which continue to serve the surrounding community, to reclaim common space, and to encourage collaborations.–Profiling and mapping existing religious building adaptive reuse all over the world, using blog and video profiles to tell the stories of these re-imagined spaces and the people and communities that make them, to inspire future reuse.–Building a toolkit to share knowledge among artists and cultural workers, community organizers, developers, planners, cities, and more – making policy, research, and practice available to empower communities to become more active in shaping the destiny of these buildings.–Working with communities and our network of collaborators and partners to co-produce events, meetings, tours, concerts, and more to activate disused religious spaces with diverse programming.Our passion for the arts, culture, and church conversion stems from our experiences as artists, musicians, writers, curators, administrators, and inhabitants of former churches. Since moving into a former church in NE Portland in 2010 and founding the arts venue 'Xhurch' (a precursor to Xhurches) our small artist consort has grown to encompass an expanding community of talented musicians, painters, dancers, performance artists, and community builders. In 2013, we conducted a tour of over 30 converted churches and religious sites along the West Coast of the United States. A series of documentaries from this footage is in production.Matthew Henderson, Founder, Co-DirectorVan Pham, Co-DirectorKole Galbraith, writerXhurches has been supported by the Regional Arts & Culture Council , National Arts Strategies’ Creative Community Fellowship Program , and The Trampery Republic ’s Creative Pioneers programme.