Electric PictureHouse

The Electric Picture House on Cross Street began life as a textile mill before becoming Congleton's first cinema, opening in 1911 and closing not long after when the town's Premier Cinema opened. The building then passed through decades of other uses, including an ambulance station and a garage. Mike Von Nixon took on the lease in 2011 and formed an artists' co-operative to convert the space into studios and a gallery. Eleven member artists now work from the building, producing painting, printmaking, sculpture, glass and new media, with changing exhibitions open to the public alongside workshops and community projects. The co-operative runs as a non-profit, its members sharing studio costs and gallery duties between them. The building's original cinema screen is long gone, though the name has stuck.