New loos for Bognor Makerspace!

Volunteering, jobs & education

Through the installation of the two new toilets the building has been made much more accessible and fit for use for all. This has bolstered our ability to provide an exciting, innovative and welcoming centre for local residents to visit, learn and work in. In May we ran a festival work experience programme, providing young people with valuable qualifications in Health & Safety Awareness & Food Safety, plus experience in backstage crewing, front-of-house operation, stewarding, health and safety and café operation. The new facilities were crucial in delivering this free training course and will ensure all our participants feel welcome and comfortable and better able to work to their full ability. At the same time gaining useful qualifications and improving their CVs and skills to help them progress into employment, training or further learning.

Arts, culture & heritage

In June we hosted the first ever Bognor Puppet Festival, based in the Bognor Makerspace, celebrating all things puppetry featuring some of the UK's most skilful puppeteers such as Norwich Puppet Theatre and Long Nose Puppets. This included performances, workshops, conferences and free events. The Bognor Makerspace will provide a range of artistic projects and training courses led by experienced practitioners and always culminating with public performances. These will include puppet shows and an important focus will be on the development of the new Puppet Making Assistant Apprenticeship. Theatre companies based in the South East will also be able to hire space within the makerspace to develop their own work, build props and sets and rehearse new productions.

Activity, health and leisure

The successful installation of the new facilities in our Makerspace has allowed us to provide better support for community classes and workshops. As part of our recent festival, we hosted a puppetry workshop by experienced community workshop leaders Splodge Designs, allowing young people to get involved in arts and crafts and be creative, even putting on an open-air performance in the high-street! In the future these might include costume making, sound design, painting or even cooking classes, allowing local people access to new experiences which would otherwise be unavailable to them, alongside modern, inclusive and hygienic facilities. The new toilets are crucial for those with disabilities and the new kitchen will allow us to host community events and provide a sociable café on the ground floor, encouraging other groups to collaborate on the development of the community learning strategy, aiming to deliver a broad range of activities that relate to the Makerspace theme that are attractive to all ages and accessible to everyone.