ABOUT US

Stimulating social inclusion, health and well-being

CHAMPIONING CREATIVITY TO ENHANCE PEOPLE’S LIVES.

INSPIRE – Affordable, dynamic and innovative space to create, showcase and retail

CREATE – Inspiring creativity, encouraging diversity, creating inclusivity

SHOWCASE – Providing affordable space to exhibit in Chatham & Rochester

SUPPORT – Promoting access to the Arts for over 20 years throughout Medway & Kent

Nucleus Arts is the Award Winning flagship arts organisation founded by the Halpern Charitable Foundation. The Foundation was the brainchild of the late Hilary Halpern and it was his dream to promote the Arts in Medway and Kent. Nucleus Arts has become the cultural and creative heart of Kent & Medway since it was founded in 2002, and focuses on affordability, accessibility and excellence in the Arts.

Featuring a wide variety of works by local artists, Nucleus Arts aims to prove that beautiful, original and unique works of art can be both attainable and affordable, whilst at the same time providing low-cost studio space to artists in order to enable them to be able to practice their Art.

Now in our 21st year, Nucleus Arts has sites in Chatham and Rochester where artists can create and display their work. Open to the public (and free to enter), constantly updated, the Halpern Galleries are a haven for local art lovers and a wonderful retreat for those who want a little something different from their shopping trip.

We are proud to have achieved a Bronze Level Kent & Medway Workplace Wellbeing Award! Find out more here.

The Halpern Charitable Foundation exists to inspire and transform the lives of the broad and diverse audiences of people and communities in Medway and Kent.

The Halpern Charitable Foundation was founded in 2002, achieving charitable status in March 2003. It was set up initially to meet three particular aims – to provide affordable space for artists to work and exhibit in Medway; to help people with mental and/or physical illness/disability; and as a backstop for the Chatham Memorial Synagogue, should it ever be in real financial difficulty with no other avenue left.

Since then the Foundation has refined and expanded its ideas. We realised that in addition to providing studio and exhibiting space at affordable prices to artists, we needed to help break down the barriers some of the public felt in accessing contemporary arts. We realised that there were a lot of people not being included within the local community and we have found that using the arts to enable these groups is tremendously effective.

HILARY HALPERN

Hilary Halpern was born on 31st May 1928 in Chatham, Kent. He lived with his parents and sister over the health food and tobacconist shop they ran in the High Street.

Hilary went to the Sir Joseph Williamson Mathematical School, the local Grammar school in Rochester. He was evacuated to Wales during the war to live with his Aunt, Uncle and cousins along with two distant cousins who had arrived in Britain on the Kinder transport. He decided not to stay in Wales and hitched a series of lifts from Wales across England back to his parents’ home in Chatham when he was about 12 years old. The journey took 21/2 days, and he slept out, wherever he was, and was pretty hungry.

Back home as a teenager, Hilary lived through the blitz, on more than one one occasion searching for his mother through the burning dockland of the East End. As a young man, Hilary served in the airborne forces in the theatre of the Middle East in the immediate post-war period. He was in Israel in 1948 for the handover of the country from the British. With the invasion of the country by the surrounding Arab states, who did not recognise the new state, Hilary joined forces with the nascent Israeli army and fought until the ceasefire was agreed.

Returning to Britain, he studied architecture and town planning at Leeds where he met and married Marie White. He started his architectural career in Rochester High Street, but soon set up an office in London, which developed into the Halpern Partnership with branches in more than 20 countries.

In 2002, Hilary bought a property just off Chatham High Street with the intention of creating a Mecca for artists in Medway. He said:

“It’s a little dream. My first love was sculpture, before architecture, and wen I retired, I decided to look around and see what there was available for artists in Medway - it is almost non-existent. I decided I would look to open a workshop with a gallery and cafe and cater for a whole range of artists and for it to be like their home.”

With over 30 artist studios, a gallery, meeting space and Cafe Nucleus, the property bought by Hilary Halpern has become the main centre for Nucleus Arts that we know today.

A devoted, and much loved member of Chatham Memorial Synagogue, he was also involved with its well-being and longevity, honouring a death-bed promise given to his grandfather.

Hilary passed away in 2013, aged 85.