The Painted Mug Cafe, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a new performance space, venue for rent, and (soon-to-be) full-service café with espresso bar. ‘The Mug’ was developed by a collaborative team of queer artists seeking to serve and empower our LGBTQIA+ community through ambitious programming made accessible—physically and digitally. The café is on track to be worker-owned, and we will reinvest in the QTPOC and disabled artists of our city by prioritizing a shared narrative in our programming. ‘The Mug’ is an intentional LGBTQIA+ performance space and designed to decenter drugs and alcohol.
We seek to provide opportunities for growth for our member-artists, including access to work, talent-incubation, and professional development. We believe a performance space for queer artists designed by queer artists is as empowering as it is unique.
For our neighbors, we seek to be an LGBTQIA+ affirming asset of the community with great coffee, and the venue chosen to host those personal milestone events that will become lifelong happy memories.