Brixton Windmill is a unique 200-year-old listed building in an urban park, where a new education centre will be completed in December 2018.
The Friends of Windmill Gardens are raising money to kit out the centre so it can host school visits, baking workshops and community activities.
The Friends, who are all volunteers, were formed in 2003 to campaign for the restoration of Brixton Windmill, which was derelict in those days. We achieved this in 2011, with the help of a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and match funding from Lambeth Council.
Since the restoration we've run free tours of the windmill on summer weekends, organised community events in the park, offered workshops on bread and flour production to local schools, and started milling flour, which we sell to local bakeries and shops.
We've done all this in a building shared with the local nursery, so availability, storage and facilities are very limited.
Now Brixton-based award-winning architect Squire & Partners has designed us a new building for free (see sketches below), and Lambeth Council is paying for its construction. This means we can expand our schools education programme, offer other workshops such as baking classes and milling experiences, provide better facilities such as toilets for park users, and hire the space out to local groups for meetings and events.
But we need to kit out the interior. Some of this money will come from grants, but we are asking you to help.
We have loads of rewards to say thank you for your amazing support - see right! Or if you can't help financially, we'll need to expand our pool of dedicated volunteers once the centre opens. If you'd like to train as a guide or miller, help out with education or fundraising, bake cakes for our open days, or just come along and muck in, you'd be very welcome. It's a great way to meet new people and develop new skills. For more information see http://brixtonwindmill.org/
Thank you for reading this far and even bigger thanks if you've donated! Crowdfunder is an all or nothing platform so if we don't reach our target by midday on Wednesday 4 July we won't get anything - please share the campaign with your friends and family.