Our capital built project
We're so excited that High Trees Learning Centre is finally undergoing renovations! Our Capital Build Project will transform the way that we support our local community and allow us to change more lives through our employment, education, community action and youth services. We need your help on the final push to make our designs a reality!
High Trees was founded in 1998 by a group of local residents in Tulse Hill to save an old library building, our current home and the physical centre of our work. As the building was handed over to the local community it grew into the charity that we are today, changing lives through diverse and far-reaching services.
Whilst we are proud to have been able to grow and evolve our work from within the old library (called St. Martins Learning Centre), the building itself is in increasing state of disrepair with no capital investment for over 22 years. This has been affecting our service delivery, particularly since Covid-19.
These are our current premises with dark, poorly lit spaces, awkward layouts and out of date facilities.
In order to inform High Trees’ strategic direction we worked with more than 600 service users via a series of consultation events. The redevelopment of the building was realised as a key objective to effectively house the vital services that support our local communities, and to support the organisation’s growth and sustainability in the long run.
What it will achieve
Creating more community space will allow us to work with more people each year. For example, our plans include a dedicated internet café and ICT suite, which means we can support more digitally excluded people.
- The new building will allow us to bring our Employment & Welfare team back in house which means our users will now be able to access their courses and employment support in the same place
- This will allow us to rent out our other community building (the Scout Hut) which will help increase our trading income, making us less dependent on a volatile grant funding landscape.
- Our training rooms will be inspiring, high-quality and fit for purpose which will allow us to competitively market and deliver our paid-for courses in the borough and create an improved learning environment for our free community courses.
Have Your Say
The design of the inside of the building was developed in partnership with the buildings current users. The outside of the building however, will be seen not just by High Trees users but everyone in the local area.
We want to ensure that our building is visible, and therefore accessible, to as many local residents as possible, while of course balancing respecting the building's history. We have created a public forum where you'll find several proposed designs for the final look of the building and we’d love you to have your say. Find the survey here
Why we need your support
Over the past year, we have been putting in huge efforts to raise the funding to make this project happen. We are now at the final hurdle, and we are asking for help from the Lambeth community and our supporters to get us closer to our final goal. Our Crowdfunder will be used to raise £6,000 to develop:
- 1 Internet Café for community use
- 2 new dedicated employment support interview pods for our service users.
£3,000 – Raising this will allow us to fit out 1 Internet Café for community use.
£1,500– Will enable us to furnish and equip 1 dedicated employment support interview pod, which will mean increased support for those currently un-employed or in insecure working conditions.
£1,500 – Means we can complete our second dedicated employment support interview pod as a space for service users and our Employment and Welfare Advisors.
Our stretch target of £10,000 will be used to purchase interactive whiteboards for our training rooms improving the learning experience of our service users.
To find out more about High Trees and what we do visit our website
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