How a London school secured funding to convert a neglected annexe into a community hub
When I became chair of the Friends of Kenmont, I was handed the keys to an old, dilapidated annexe that the PTA used for storage. When I put the key in the door, I had to push hard to get it open because the building was filled from floor to ceiling with rubbish.
It had once been used for breakfast clubs, after-school clubs and community events – even for building floats for Notting Hill Carnival! I started dreaming about what we could do if it was cleaned up.
Naïvely, I thought it would just be a case of clearing the rubbish and giving the walls a lick of paint. Parents took carloads of rubbish to the dump, but once the building was empty we discovered it had a bad damp problem and needed a lot of work.
I knew we would need partners to help us achieve our ambition, so I turned to a local residents’ association who had recently lost their own community centre. We decided to team up and see if we could get funding to transform the annexe into a community hub for both the school and local people.
The residents’ association invited me along to their next meeting, which councillors from the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham also attended. We put our case to them, and they agreed to try and link us up with possible funders. We got an email from HS2 inviting us to apply to their Community and Environment Fund. The catch was that the deadline was in March – and it was already February!
We had to provide concrete evidence that there was a need for the space. We held a focus group with local residents to show there were people who wanted to use the building and gathered written evidence from local providers willing to run classes there. A parent at the school who works in PR made the application professional and concise. Another, who is an architect, highlighted the work that needed doing, as well as the cost.
I couldn’t believe it when I heard we had been awarded £75,000! It would have taken years and years to raise that ourselves.
We had to match-fund 25% but the local authority put in £18,000 and we received another small grant, leaving the Friends with £4,000 to raise. The grant money came through quickly, and we were able to get the work completed over the summer.
The annexe is now hosting breakfast clubs, PTA coffee mornings, parents’ workshops, school fairs and discos, children’s parties, residents’ meetings, yoga, boxercise and meditation classes. It’s so wonderful to see it brought back to life again – although I do still have to pinch myself when I think about how much money we got!
- Nazia Chishty, chair, Friends of Kenmont, London (197 pupils)
See more on Instagram: @friendsofkenmont
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