CASE STUDY : BEDROOMS

In 2011, a call went out for 6 artists to design and create a room which would house their performance in the second One on One festival in 2011. The only two criteria were that they had to act as a working bedroom that could be comfortably stayed in after the performance and they had to be themed on an existing story.

The chosen designs went on to provide Battersea Arts Centre with the legacy of permanent residency spaces, allowing future artists to live and work in the building without limits, providing complete creative freedom without impinging on the public opening times. Having a community of different artists in residency generates dialogue and cross-pollination of ideas.

This idea of Battersea Arts Centre providing a ‘Home’ for artists has gone on to become a crucial aspect of the final masterplan, and is being developed further.

POP UP BEDROOMS, RIO OCCUPATION

In 2012 the Playgrounding project was extended to a second phase in connection with The Rio Occupation, an exchange of 30 Brazilian artists who came to London for 30 days as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad Festival. Throughout the 30 days of the Occupation, the artists hosted a panorama of Rio’s contemporary creative scene in some of London’s most prominent and revered arts venues, including The Roundhouse, Southbank Centre, Somerset House, Victoria and Albert Museum and Barbican.

We used this opportunity to create a home for the visiting artists, extending the exiting residential facilities by developing a series of pop-up bedrooms across all major performance spaces. This series of pop-up bedrooms can now be used for a range of residencies and allows us to use the building flexibly.

“Having the Rio Occupation artists living all together in a creative space was a completely central element of the project. It enabled them to get to know each other on a much deeper level and create far more tangible relationships... They broke down barriers with all Battersea Arts Centre’s staff – we all felt like we were part of the same team.”
Liz Morton, Battersea Arts Centre Producer for the Rio Occupation

THE BEES KNEES

In 2010, we created a scratch of a children’s play space, The Bees Knees, transforming what was previously Studio 1, one of three black box spaces, into an English garden, complete with decking, picnic tables, a community notice board, toys, a slide and a gentle slope for toddlers to climb and roll down. It is a room designed for families with young children where they can interact in a safe, accessible and stimulating environment. It was immediately popular and received constantly high visitor numbers.

This early scratch enabled Battersea Arts Centre to offer a new strand of engaging work aimed at toddlers aged 0-5 years to help develop their learning, creativity and social skills, as well as supporting parents in bonding with their child and in meeting other members of the community.

Following the sustained success of The Bees Knees, the project was incorporated into the masterplan and developed further with lessons learnt from the first phase, and more funding invested to make it more permanent. It now plays a key role in the creative programme as a space to develop and present family work.

WELCOME AREA

In 2012, we ran a playground project which extend the café into foyer. We aimed to develop a feeling of community and inclusion as soon as you walk in the door; a place to eat, meet and share with each other. This built on the ‘Home’ principal embodied by the bedrooms project and extended it to everyone who comes through the doors. The Welcome Area playground project allowed us to discover and start to overcome the challenges presented by a building designed for a purely formal civic function and to help maximise the area as a potential revenue generator.

In the foyer we introduced seating, wifi, mirrors, lighting, internal doors and heaters. For the marble staircase, a seating installation was commissioned with rung makers Nicholas Hartwright which created a continuous flow of carpet, linking a series of benches. This softened the imposing, municipal first impression of the foyer with a welcoming, warm seating area. In the café we created a raised platform to make the space more dynamic, and reconfigured the space utilising recycled and reused elements of design such as a reclaimed floor from The Almeidia Theatre.

Overall these measures made the area a more hospitable, less imposing, dynamic space with the flexibility to facilitate different roles for the daytime and evening. It then led to a further development of the Bar and Café area as part of the masterplan which has been completed in Spring 2013.

COUNCIL CHAMBER

The Council Chamber has always been one of Battersea Arts Centre’s main performance spaces. Until February 2011 it was a black box space, with a permanent seating rake.

In March 2011 Kneehigh returned to Battersea Arts Centre with their award winning show The Red Shoes which had originally been staged in the Council Chamber. We used that opportunity to return the space to its original form, the idea being that artists should be able to use and respond to it, almost casting it as a character in their productions. The black paint was stripped; the permanent rake was taken out and replaced with a flexible system which could be used throughout the building.

The result for The Red Shoes was a completely new and flexible approach to staging. It also allowed for the space to be used for commercial purposes and now the Council Chamber is regularly hired for functions and events.

THE RED SHOES

One of Kneehigh’s best loved and award winning shows, The Red Shoes is a passionate, funny, bloody and surreal re-imagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy-tale about a girl possessed by a pair of red shoes who can’t stop dancing. In trademark Kneehigh style, the production fused dance, live music, striking visuals and compelling story telling to bring the tale to life.

'This is intensely charismatic theatre about what it is to be alive'
Elisabeth Mahoney, The Guardian

Full review available here

GRAND HALL

The Grand Hall Playgrounding project came from a desire to test its potential as a theatre and maximise the income from the Grand Hall commercial outlets hires. 

In spring 2009 we used the opportunity presented by Kneehigh and Royal Shakespeare Company's co-production of Don John to test the space as a temporary large scale theatre for a five week run. This provided a legacy of greater access to the space and better technical facilities. Playgrounding enabled the Grand Hall to become a flexible space that increases Battersea Arts Centre’s artistic and income earning potential.

THE LOWER HALL

The Lower Hall was originally created for community uses and served this purpose both as a Town Hall and as an Arts Centre. In 2012 a series of Playgrounding works were undertaken and as a result the Lower Hall has become a versatile, flexible and vibrant space suitable for our current regular hires, and fulfilling the requirements that our new clients were asking for, such as an easier to use sound system, dance mirrors and better storage facilities. The Lower Hall now provides an essential and affordable service to the local community and also helps improve Battersea Arts Centre’s awareness and relationships with its neighbours.

This work was an early scratch of this side of the building to improve the space in advance of the major works in 2014/15. Further improvements to the lobby areas, toilets and accompanying offices have been written into the masterplan to enable the space to reach its full potential.