The Floating Front Room is Open

"Coffee is a language in itself."

— Jackie Chan

Gather together with neighbours from near and far at The Floating Front Room, a neighbourhood cafe on the canal at South Loop Park. Whether calling in on a walk or bike ride, or looking for somewhere to rest, read, linger, discuss, and create, a warm welcome awaits you, along with a range of delicious hot drinks, snacks, and shared resources for you to borrow during your visit, such as books and zines.

Building on the history of coffee houses as sites for revolutionary organising, and the coffee shop at the heart of Impact Hub Birmingham that was built in this spirit, we know spaces like this to come together are more than the sum of their parts. However, The Floating Front Room offers a light, open, informal place in our work to take a load off, spend quality time, and help us all to stay afloat as more pressure is put onto us.

-

FOOD & DRINK

— A complimentary drink and cake is offered to absolutely everyone visiting The Floating Front Room as a universal principal, as part of every visit. If you need further refreshments during the same sitting, additional drinks and cakes are also available for a small contribution (£1/£1.50) with card and cash accepted. This contribution is largely in place to ensure those who visit next have the same a range of refreshments to enjoy, and to encourage only having what we need to avoid unncessary waste together, though feel free to top up your reserves in the way you see fit.

— Coffee available includes pourovers / hand brewed coffees, alongside any styles you love from your favourite coffee menus such as flat white, americano, latte, and more, always made using delicious locally roasted coffee from Quarter Horse Coffee.

— A range of teas from Teapigs, including herbal / caffeine-free teas (all using compostable teabags made from corn starch), and hot chocolate are also available.

— Dairy and Minor Figures oat milk options are available for all drinks.

— A range of vegan and gluten free cakes by local bakers are always available as the perfect accompaniment to your cuppa.

-

B.Y.O.C (Bring Your Own Cup)

As part of our mission to reduce waste and move all of our processes together towards deep care and regenerative relationships with land, materials, and each other we are no longer going to be serving drinks in single use cups.

We would therefore love to encourage you to bring your own keep cup or mug when you come to visit, if you have one. If not, we will also have beautiful reusable cups made from coffee grounds for you to use during your visit, but please remember to return these before you leave ready for the next visitor who comes after you. These are a shared resource to ensure hot drinks remain accessible to more people, without us creating waste, so we thank you for practicing this together with us, as we make these shifts together.

If you fall head over heels in love with our cups, we will also have some available for you to make your own, in return for a small contribution, which you can then bring with you when you visit.

-

ACCESS & FACILITIES

— The Floating Front Room is a dark green canal boat moored canalside at South Loop Park, Rotton Park Street, Birmingham, B16 0AB.

— All paths leading to The Floating Front Room through South Loop Park are flat and accessible. Primarily food and drink will be served via a hatch in the barge to enjoy outside, however if you wish to enter the boat itself for limited covered seating, please note that the boat has steps, so is not accessible to anyone in a wheelchair or for whom steps are a barrier.

— There is no formal seating outside, but there are benches and blankets available should you wish to relax in South Loop Park.

— Unfortunately we currently do not have any toilet facilities available, so please do factor this in when planning your visit.

— If you plan to enjoy your refreshments in South Loop Park, please dress to be comfortable outside in weather that may be changeable.

-

OPENING TIMES

— The Floating Front Room will be open on most Tuesdays, 10am ― 4pm, throughout 2025 from Tuesday 29th April onwards.

— The exceptions are that The Floating Front Room will be closed on Tuesday 17th June and Tuesday 26th August 2025, but we will look to signpost other local coffee mornings and cafes to enjoy on these days.

— Additional opening times may also become available throughout the year as part of special days, celebrations, other hosting on site, or just because the weather is glorious. To find out about these directly as they are arranged, please sign up to our Neighbourhood Updates WhatsApp Channel at: bit.ly/CIVICSQUAREupdates

— All of the specific dates that The Floating Front Room is open will be added to this page and as printed posters on the barge at the start of each season to ensure you can feel confident when to visit, though there is no need to book online ahead of your visit unless you would like to.

-

BOOKS + ZINES

“The future must enter you long before it happens.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

#BeyondBooks is a platform to explore the role of books, reading and libraries at CIVIC SQUARE. From Hub Talks at Impact Hub Birmingham to Neighbourhood Book Shares in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we know the power of ideas and writing in unlocking our collective capacities to imagine new (and sometimes remember old) ways of being.

At a time when there are huge cuts to our city's library budgets and a decimation in library open hours across the city, we feel it’s more important than ever to find ways to create informal reading and learning spaces with the infrastructure that we have in our homes, streets and neighbourhoods, to uphold the transformative properties of democratising knowledge and distributing resources as far as possible. We draw power from Save Birmingham, Birmingham Loves Libraries, Birmingham Resistance Library, Bear Bookshop and many others organising alongside us in Birmingham, as well as countless incredible projects around the UK and globally.

The Floating Front Room has a range of books that you can read whilst visiting, alongside zines donated by makers from all over the world as part of the public Brum Zine Library collection. We’re always happy to talk books, zines, comics and publishing of all kinds, so please do share your recommended reads, or anything you are creating. You can also donate your zines to the library by bringing them along with you for others to access.

-

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONT ROOM

For us, The Front Room was phase one of CIVIC SQUARE, acting as the beginning of an ambitious, long-term neighbourhood platform to meet, connect and co-design together, operating as an initial 3 year prototype designed to transition into the full Neighbourhood Public Square proposal.

In real time in 2020–2022, the pivots that COVID-19 required us to make illustrated the necessity of adaptive, robust, resourced, robust neighbourhood infrastructure. The Floating Front Room — our on site neighbourhood cafe, operating from a canal barge — became an unexpected site of mutual aid, food distribution, and a safe(r) neighbourhood meeting point as lockdowns, closure of services, and many effects of the pandemic played out live, demonstrating the evolving role of our existing infrastructure in crisis. This included navigating how to be present, connected, and directly useful in the here and now, whilst designing for and making tangible what is needed longer term too; work that we continue to build on together for the next of co-building on site.

This use of terminology drew deep inspiration from home and heritage, with the front room holding a significant place in the home for so many cultures and communities, particularly those who immigrated to the UK in the 60s and 70s. From local savings groups to co-operative childcare, the front room is the place where families and communities have organised, shared joy, grieved together and grown collective resilience across a backdrop of challenging times. The front room is a noble environment to receive guests, to welcome and be welcomed, and became a sacred place to express, share and preserve social and cultural values.

Together we have been exploring: What does such a space look like in our neighbourhoods and commons? How could it be designed, built and stewarded collectively? What inspiration can be taken from the way our front rooms operate(d) in order to design networked spaces in our places?

The significance of The Front Room is shared and in may cases held sacred by many other organisers and neighbours, notably including our incredible collaborators Hood Futures Studio who are currently working to manifest the vision for ABUELOS, a cultural centre with accommodation, as a site of radical hospitality and artistry, built in the image of grandad's house.

Read More
—Set Up Phase: The Floating Front Room (2020)
—Organising ABUELOS (2025)

-

NEIGHBOURHOOD BARISTA PROGRAMME

As part of co-building the next chapter of The Floating Front Room as a neighbourhood cafe, we are excited to host a Neighbourhood Barista training programme. This will offer the perfect introduction into what it takes to become a barista, covering different types of coffee beans and coffee-based drinks, well as milk texturing, the science of espresso, grinder tips and latte art.

If you're from the surrounding neighbourhood(s) to The Floating Front Room and would like the opportunity to train as a barista, then please let us know by visiting in person on Tuesdays or e-mailing info@civicsquare.cc.

-

OTHER WAYS TO CONNECT

There will also be a range of Neighbourhood Supper Club dates for the year, and new forms of Site As A Classroom activity building on Neighbourhood Trade School, Material Matter[s], Neighbourhood Doughnut Co-creation and lots more together over the past 5 years.

We can't wait to welcome you as we continue to find ways to make, learn, eat, connect, grow and give thanks as we take the next steps of co-building Neighbourhood Public Square together, whilst remembering all that came before us and staying grounded into the practice of reimagination and relationshipping with the land, materials and each other.

All forthcoming activities will be added onto this Eventbrite page, or you can sign up at bit.ly/CIVICSQUAREmail to receive our e-mail newsletter, which includes upcoming events, visits, progress and opportunities together on site, publications and more connected work from our neighbours near and far that we'd love to share openly with you.

-