Cafe Sobar Nottingham

Established in January 2013 by local drug and alcohol recovery charity Double Impact, the café acts as a safe social space for people in recovery from addictions to socialise as well as voluntary employment opportunities for them to gain a foothold in the job market. As the venue is a social enterprise, all profits are ploughed back into the café and Double Impact’s charitable services.

Our vision is to provide Nottingham’s public with an alternative to the mainstream restaurants and bars, offering a convivial and creative space open to everyone who wants the choice to socialise and enjoy live entertainment without a focus on alcohol.

The building Café Sobar is housed in what was originally the headquarters of the Nottingham Building Society, officially opened in 1929. Through working closely with the Nottingham Building Society and local design company Constellations, https://constellations.uk.com/commercial-projects/, we have been able to sympathetically transform the space while retaining a lot of its original features, for example the ornate stucco ceilings, wooden entrance doors, original safe door behind the door and the marble panels (concealed behind the colourful wall panes which also serve to improve the acoustics.

The café provides live entertainment in the evenings, so the seating area in front of the bar transforms into a performance area and can also easily be cleared to create space for dancing. There is a projector and which projects onto the back wall for larger meetings or visuals for events. The two banquette areas can be reserved for meetings and meet-ups, making the space flexible for a wide range of purposes.