The Girls Build Club

Aim: Help us raise £5,000 to build a specialised workshop for our lively club where underserved girls will learn build skills and gain confidence

The aim of The Girls Build Club is to help get girls into construction, design and architecture. Once built, the new workshop will be a busy, happy hub where girls from underserved backgrounds will learn a range of building skills. They will lead their own fun build projects and grow confidence in their physical abilities.

We at Social Arts Practice (ASAP) have run similar projects but as one-offs and at a smaller scale – we are now ready to expand and create our own tailor-made, permanent space in East London.

The Girls Build Club 

The focus of the workshop’s activities will be a weekly club where girls (age 9-14) can learn skills, become a strong team and take on ambitious projects. 

We are creating a specialised workshop space for them to feel at home and take agency over. We work with teens that may have a complex home life our club will be a haven to relax, have fun and become their most creative selves!

Our programmes are focused around slow builds and open briefs set by our budding young designers, where process, imagination and exploration are celebrated. We work with girls with many varied and additional needs, who can find school a tough place to be. Girls can become vulnerable to negative outside influences. We hope to provide a positive third space to find community, purpose and an engaging alternative learning environment. We ensure small group sizes and use flexible teaching methods to get the best out of our girls and have the most fun. 

Our girls will also benefit from our extensive network of experienced female builders and architects: we will set up work experience to complement our careers guidance. We will provide long-term support and mentoring and create meaningful routes to industry. We hope to inspire girls to consider careers in construction and architecture to help diversify this sector.

The Workshop Build

Over the past few years we have taken on small projects and we are now ready to set up a dedicated workshop space where our girls can flourish. We are building our workshop space this summer with hopes to kick off our club in September. Our open air workshop will facilitate teaching groups of 8 girls in each session. The working area will be 40sqm and have specialised storage for tools and trestles to suit all body types. In this key first phase of the build we will set up a fully functioning workshop. It is an open design that the girls will adapt and add to over time, as they see fit.

The main bulk of your donations will help us to afford materials, tools and PPE. We are building the project from 95% reclaimed timber in collaboration with circular material hub ReCollective. We will purchase specialised hand tools to enable all of our young makers to achieve great builds. We will also buy a kit of PPE aimed at children and young people, with gloves, masks, ear defenders and glasses to suit all sizes. Allowing our girls to experiment in a safe environment. A small portion will go specialist design expertise to ensure that our workshop is safe and long lasting for many generations of girls to benefit from! 

The labour will be provided by our wonderful volunteers who are already committed to The Girls Build Club dream. This will enable us to afford all we need to get the club off to a great start and get our girls building!! 

For more information check our our website
https://www.asocialartspractice.com/thegirlsbuildclub

Community Hub 

Once established, we also hope to open up the space to the wider community. We aim to run classes for adult women in the area to give them confidence in DIY and open up new careers for them. 

Re-use is at the centre of our work at ASAP and we hope to run an up-cycling scheme where we take on furniture donations and fix them up to use at our workshop, or sell on to fund future projects. With all or our projects we teach people the value of mending what is broken and breathing new life into them with bold designs. 

We hugely appreciate any donations you can make towards making our dream a reality. 

Thank you so much!! 

ASAP x

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 1st September 2025 at 3:29pm