The new £1.45 million Fitzherbert Community Hub has officially opened its doors in Kemp Town.
“The Fitz” is the fruit of a partnership between the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, Brighton Table Tennis Club (BTTC) and the Real Junk Food Project.
Together they have transformed the 19th century parish hall of the St John the Baptist Church into a 21st century community engine room.
The Hub houses a large and flexible activities space which can be divided by a sliding soundproof wall, a large and fully equipped modern kitchen and state of the art sound and wifi systems.
The building and its new landscaped garden are fully accessible to disabled people. With very high standards of insulation and energy supplied by heat source pumps, it is deep green.
A huge number of people and organisations funded the transformation. Sport England set the ball rolling with a £180,000 grant to BTTC – “one of the most innovative and progressive sports clubs in the country … and in many ways a model for the sports club of the future”.
Other major donors included the Kemptown Community Philanthropists, the Diocese and the Albert Gubay Foundation – and 260 people contributed £55,000 through a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign.
The Hub will be used for parish events, while the table tennis club, which runs sessions seven days a week in the former Catholic school next door, and the Real Junk Food Project are working together.
They aim to provide fun, food and friendship through table tennis and “pay as you can” meals at the Hub for local people and club players using food that would otherwise be binned.
A recently launched weekly After-School Club is putting the new Hub to immediate good use.
Children come from Queen’s Park School primary school in a “walking bus” to play table tennis, try their hand at cooking with help from the junk food experts (they have already made leek and potato soup) and have a meal afterwards with their parents when they come to pick them up.
The two organisations are fundraising to extend the after-school work to three days a week by the end of the year.
The Hub is also home to Voices in Exile, which offers support and legal advice to asylum-seekers and refugees in Sussex and Surrey.
Main contractor for the project was local builder Pilbeam Construction. Much of the furniture for the Hub is the work of Making it Out, a Portslade-based charity working with people leaving prison or at risk of going to prison. Architects for the scheme were Stead and Co.
Other funders for the scheme include the Catholic Parish of East Brighton, Veolia Environmental Trust, the Garfield Weston Foundation, Laing Family Trust, Benefact Trust, National Lottery Awards for England, Ernest Kleinwort Charitable Trust and the Rampion Community Benefit Fund.
To find out more, click here.
Pictures from the official opening by Caleb Yule …
What great news for the community!