Woodward Library the future Community Arts & Culture Centre

We want to work with residents and local organisations to build an exciting programme!

Barking and Dagenham Council has been awarded a capital grant from Arts Council England to redevelop the old library on Woodward Road, Becontree Estate into a new community arts and culture centre. It will build on the legacy of the Arts and Culture Hub at Valence Library, which was a base for Becontree Forever and Becontree Broadcasting Station through the centenary.

Woodward Library – the first library built on the estate – will become a base for the future programme. The library will be a central arts and digital hub currently lacking on the Becontree Estate or in the wider Dagenham area.

The library will be redeveloped to have a fully accessible ground floor space that is welcoming to all in the local community and beyond. A building next to the library will be built to provide affordable work and studio spaces to creative practitioners in exchange for leading community-based activities for estate and borough residents, both on site and directly in the community.

The centre will be part of the borough’s Safe Spaces initiative, allowing young residents free and unquestioned access at designated after-school hours throughout the year.

Other planned uses for the arts centre will include:

• Permanent base for Becontree Broadcasting Station.
• Creative digital hub space providing much needed digital access and skills training for artists, cultural practitioners, and residents.
• Rehearsal, exhibition, and performance space for community groups and socially engaged practitioners and artists to develop new work that emerges directly from the experiences of residents of the area, both past and present.
• Public realm seating and a sustainable community garden.
• Community kitchen to be used by core cultural partners and artists.
• Workshop spaces for community-based programming that are bookable by individual residents and local cultural organisations.

Woodward Field Trip

As part of the redevelopment of Woodward Library in Dagenham, local residents are being invited to join a series of FREE Woodward Field Trips to amazing creative community spaces across the borough and London. The field trips aim to bring residents together to inspire and help to build a vision for the new Woodward Arts & Culture Centre.

First Field Trip

Old Manor Park Library

Residents enjoyed our first field trip to Old Manor Park Library in Manor Park on Sunday 12th February. The former library was transformed into a space for artists, makers and people living in the local area. It incorporates affordable artists’ studios, Rabbits Road Press (a community risograph print studio and publishing press) and a space for the community to meet and create.

Rabbits Road Press gave us a tour of the beautiful former library built in 1904. We enjoyed a creative risograph poster making workshop and were inducted into the risograph printing process. The group discussed how similar workshops, equipment and a model of cultural programming with the local community could be embedded into Woodward Library.

Second Field Trip

Hackney School of Food

Barking & Dagenham residents enjoyed a cooking class and tour of the incredible Hackney School of Food on Wednesday 8^th March.

The Hackney School of Food is a vibrant cookery school for people of all ages established by LEAP Federation of Schools in partnership with the charity Chef in School. Resident were shown around the beautiful gardens and the refurbished old school caretaker’s house, designed by Surman Weston architects and has been awarded multiple architecture awards. We took part in a cookery class, taught how to make delicious quesadillas from fresh ingredients.

A Portrait of Woodward

February-April

This creative oral history and photography project will capture a portrait of the local community surrounding Woodward Library as the building is redeveloped into a new community arts and culture centre in 2023. Residents' photographic portraits and recorded conversations will be captured by students from Barking & Dagenham College and Becontree Secondary Schools with the support of photographer Jimmy Lee and sound artists Joe Namy and Lucia Scazzocchio.

Woodward Arts & Culture Centre are looking for residents interested in participating in the project who live or work on Woodward Road, Gale Street or near Becontree Station in the RM9 postcode. If you have stories of the surrounding community to share , or would like to have a photographic portrait taken, please express your interest here.