Hope Mill Theatre grows in Ancoats as it celebrates ten years

In 2015, Joseph Houston and William Whelton were trained musical theatre performers working as waiters in London. They moved to Manchester, spotted the ground floor of a disused mill in Ancoats listed as storage space on Gumtree, and turned it into Hope Mill Theatre, which opened in November that year.

The intimate venue quickly made a name for itself. In 2016 the founders won the theatre and performance category of The Hospital Club's h.Club 100 awards, with Kenneth Branagh among the other finalists, a sign of how quickly word had spread about the new venue, and in 2017 the theatre was nominated for the Empty Space Peter Brook Award.

The big breakthrough came in 2018, when Hope Mill was named Fringe Theatre of the Year at The Stage Awards, collected by Houston, Whelton and producer Katy Lipson. The Manchester Theatre Awards also honoured the pair with a Special Achievement Award.

The theatre's tenth anniversary in 2025 has been about growth. In June it announced plans to take over the front of the ground floor of the Hope Mill building, roughly doubling its space, with the new area to be shared with AWOL Studios.

The expansion is designed to bring back the theatre's community hub, which had to close in 2024 because of the cost of running it. A fundraising campaign was launched to help make it happen, inviting audiences to be part of the next chapter of a theatre that has always depended on the goodwill of the people who love it.

Celebrations on stage matched the occasion. The anniversary production was an all-new staging of Mel Brooks' musical comedy Young Frankenstein, directed and choreographed by Nick Winston, which ran from October to November 2025.

There was also a concert of Victoria Wood's Acorn Antiques, with all box office takings going to the theatre's outreach programme, and a tribute evening featuring performances from the two co-founders themselves.

Hope Mill sits among the converted mills and canals of Ancoats, a short walk from the Northern Quarter, and its size means every seat feels close to the performers. Current productions and ways to support the theatre are listed on its website and social channels.