A Place for Life's Big Moments at the Boathouse

I have been noticing something I find really powerful and I have been curious about it for a while.

Even in the middle of a cost of living crisis, when people are cutting back on almost everything, they are still finding the money for weddings, engagements, funerals, milestone birthdays, naming days, memorials, leaving dos, anniversaries, wakes, celebrations of life, gathering and shared meals.

There is definitely a trend to spend more carefully. But people still make room to mark significant life events. These are the rites of passage and threshold moments in our lives. The times when one chapter closes and another one opens. When a baby is born. When two people commit their lives to one another. When a relationship changes. When someone dies. When we leave a job, a home, a town, a marriage, a community, or even a version of ourselves.

There are moments when something changes so deeply that your nervous system knows it before your head does. Who you were no longer fits. Who you are becoming is not yet fully formed. These moments feel tender, emotional, dreamlike, and often loud.

Across every culture, this is where ceremony and ritual lives.

Ceremony is not about doing something nice.It is how we cross from one chapter of life into another without doing it by ourselves.

The arts have always lived here too. Theatre, music, poetry, storytelling, dance and ritual are the original ways human beings have helped each other through change. We sing at weddings. We tell stories at funerals. We light candles, share photographs, read poems, eat together, cry together, laugh together.

The arts give shape to change.

At The Boathouse, I have been slowly coming to understand that this is what we have been building over the past 11 years. Not just a venue, a cinema or a studio, but a threshold house. A place where people come when something in their life is shifting and needs to be witnessed.

People don’t come here because they are “going out”. They come because they are re-orienting their lives.

That is why, even now, people protect these moments. They may spend more carefully, but they hold onto the gatherings that make their lives make sense.They are not just paying for an event.They are making space for a chapter change.

The arts are not a luxury here. They are the language of transition. They are how grief is held, joy is anchored, memory is carried, and new beginnings are named into being.

This is why community arts spaces matter so much right now. Not just because they are nice to have, but because they are part of our life infrastructure.

They hold the doorways.And in times like these, doorways matter more than ever.

I also know this work from the inside.

My own life has been shaped by thresholds. By leaving and beginning again. By loss and by rebuilding. By standing at doorways where the future was not yet clear and learning to keep walking anyway. Over time I found myself drawn to people who were doing the same. To those who were grieving, becoming, arriving, letting go. To theatre. To ceremony. To community. To creating a place where these moments could be held with care.

I didn’t have this language when I began, but I recognise it now. The Boathouse has never been just a business idea. It was a response to life itself. A place shaped by crossing points. A place for people who are in between chapters. A place where stories can be spoken, tears can fall, laughter can return, and new beginnings can quietly take root.This is what we are really here for.

And I feel more certain of that now than ever. And I am also seeing this pattern echoed in quieter ways.

We hold conferences, training days, away days, strategy sessions and leadership gatherings at the Boathouse too. On the surface, they can look more transactional. But very often they arrive at moments when organisations themselves are crossing thresholds. When a team is reorganising. When a new direction is being shaped. When a culture is being reset. When people are being asked to step into something new together.

These are collective thresholds. And they need witness, care and space just as much as personal ones do.

Welcome to 2026 and the many thresholds and special gathering times together.

Carole Pluckrose (CEO/Artistic Director)