A café run by autistic people says they are now facing the possibility of choosing between closing the space and paying staff after their being told that their rent could increase by £400 a month. The director of the Aubergine Café, Selena Caemawr, set up the organisation after she said she hit “rock bottom”. After she was diagnosed with autism in 2016 she struggled to hold down jobs for long periods of time due to employers not fully understanding.
“I thought: ‘I’m not cut out for the workplace, I’m not meant to be in employment. It just goes wrong every time,’” she said. “I got really quite unwell and I became homeless. I was sleeping on a boat with a damp mattress in the winter and it was horrible.” Selena, who has lived in Cardiff since 2005, came up with the idea for the Aubergine Café in 2018 and began to apply for funding. After starting out as a pop-up the business moved to its current location in 2019 and transformed the space in Clare Street to the café it is today.
It has adjustable lighting and arranged seating areas to cater to people's needs. As autistic people sometimes suffer with sensory issues the café operates with an almost silent coffee machine and doesn't organise cutlery while open. “I don’t think that the world’s ready just yet to make things autism-friendly everywhere but maybe that’s because they don’t have the right role models,” Selena said. “I thought: ‘Let’s just do it for ourselves.’ If people are not going to be able to provide the services for us let’s do it for ourselves.”
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Selena recognised that she was not the only one struggling in the workplace. “We have what we call ‘spiky profiles’ so we can be amazing at some things, better than other people in fact, and then at other things which seem kind of pretty standard it doesn’t happen that way.”
She continued: “The idea was to create a space run by autistics for autistics where we could identify all these things. When we’re together we get it and we don’t have a problem socialising together. It’s when we’re in other spaces.” The Aubergine Café in Riverside first opened its doors in its current location in November 2019.
Volunteers transformed the café by sanding down the walls, putting in new back doors and flooring as well as adding ramps for disabled access. Selena says the business invested approximately £20,000 worth of work into the site. After being shut for a few months for work to take place the business was then hit by the lockdown in March 2020. They have been able to operate on a more or less consistent basis from June 2021.
The café is publicly funded by a number of organisations, primarily Arts Council of Wales, as well as the National Lottery and the People’s Postcode Lottery among others. “It’s a little haven,” Selena said of the café. “You know that when you come in the door you can leave the neurotypical rules and nonsense outside which tells you how you’re supposed to behave in certain situations. People understand here that they’re free to be themselves.”
The café sets out to develop innovative work practices to empower autistic people and help them to thrive. It takes a “task-based” approach to roles of those who work there with Selena finding tasks that will suit individuals’ strengths and needs. “We don’t force anyone to do anything they’ll find psychologically distressing or too difficult when someone else can do that much more quickly, or show them how to do it, or work with them,” Selena said.
However on October 20 Selena received a WhatsApp message from a managing agent acting on behalf of landlords saying that commercial agents had advised that the minimum monthly rental value of a property of the size of the café should be £1,200. The message offered to draw up a new lease, with the current lease coming to an end in December, for three years at £1,200 a month. The rent currently paid for the space is £800, Selena said.
“It’s just unaffordable,” Selena said of the potential increase. “It means it would be the choice between keeping the place open and being able to pay staff. So we’d end up taking a cut.” The café is currently in the process of applying for a grant but they say the rent increase would eat up half of this.
“We’d have to choose what’s more important – to pay rent or people,” Selena said. “So now we have to find a way to pay people if we’re going to pay rent or we close this space down and just go virtual.” She added: “There are people...who come here for the experience, who have maybe never had a job, never had a situation where they can be accepted at work.”
During the pandemic the business moved online to tackle social isolation and have continued to run hybrid events where people can come to the café for events as well as take part virtually. For example in an upcoming open-mic night at the café people can perform on the stage as well as those joining virtually being projected onto a screen to take part.
The café is applying for the Warm Welcome Spaces fund and staff are hoping to work with a barbershop in Canton for the barbers to open one day a week as an official warm welcome space. The café hopes to provide them with volunteers and work with them as a partner.
Selena said she wants homeless people to feel that they are able to come into the café whenever they want as opposed to having a specific day and time. On Christmas Day last year the café also opened for the whole day for people to come in presents and a family-style meal. However, with the potential increase in rent, Selena now fears they could shut by the end of the year.
“The café business is a tool so we can do all of the social impact work. We’re not just trying to help autistic neurodivergent people. We’re looking out for our queer, BAME communities that we belong to and our general local area. We’re trying to build relationships and bring people together,” she said.
The café has disabled facilities for people to use, including a shower, and has posted videos on their website showing how wheelchair users can get from the city centre to the café using drop kerbs to help people visually find their way to the area. “We chose this space especially as well because there are walking and wheeling groups from the city centre. Most of our clients don’t drive... and so public transport is really important,” Selena said. Blue badge users are also able to park outside.
Selena said people visit the café from all over the country, including many people from England. The café was previously located in a city centre location where parking was difficult for disabled people. “This spot was specifically chosen because of those accessibility features. We need a spot where people can access from public transport and be able to get here easily,” Selena said.
A WhatsApp message initially sent to Selena from the managing agent for the property, which was shown to WalesOnline, said that a new lease could be drawn up for another three years from January 2023 at £1,200 per month, adding that if Selena did not want to go ahead with that amount of rent and duration she should let them know "ASAP" so they could start working with estate agents to find another tenant. However, the managing agent, who asked not to be named, said in a comment that the £1,200 figure was "provisional at this moment in time" and added: "It will be finalised once the commercial agent provides latest rental review for the premises."
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