Last year, The Camphill Foundation UK & Ireland was approached by The Lantern Community with a request for financial support for an ambitious new project – the creation of a purpose-built Creative Arts Centre.
Situated in Hampshire, near the town of Ringwood, The Lantern Community is home to 55 adults with diverse learning abilities. Their mission is to provide a stable home life, meaningful work, creative activity, friendship and social connection alongside opportunities for personal growth. Inspired by Camphill principles, the community offers cultural and spiritual enrichment within a unique shared living environment.
We are proud to have pledged £30,000 towards this exciting development and Jason Gonsalves, Estates and Maintenance Manager, has kindly shared the community’s vision:
“With the ever-evolving requirements of an ageing population, The Lantern Community is seeking a different approach to how the craft workshops use creativity to meet the needs of their users. With fifty-five live-in Companions and more than twenty-five day placements, the way that we provide our craft workshops and the facilities in which they are housed, needed a rethink.
For the management team, this journey started nearly three years ago over a coffee, with some rough sketches and a chat about the needs of our community. Now finally, with planning permission granted and the construction tenders returned, we are preparing to break ground around April time.
The building has been designed by local architects, Footprint, who have come up with a concept that not only meets the practical needs of the community but also fits with our beautiful estate and its rural location. We are fortunate to be located on the edge of the New Forest National Park, with its ancient woodland and open heathland, and adjacent to the beautiful Moors Valley Country Park and Ferndown Forest, which have inspired both the design of the building, and its colour palette of natural tones and materials.
The crescent shaped building will comprise of three separate workshop spaces; one will be a Pottery Studio, one an Art Studio and the final one, a multi-use workshop/social space, potentially used for dance, drama and music activities, along with out of hours activities and social gatherings.
There will be a living green roof, along with some PV solar panels to generate power, heating will be via an Air Source Heat Pump and underfloor heating. Careful attention has been given to the thermal performance, ensuring that the building is warm in winter and cool in summer.
The external landscaping will be a major part of the development and will encompass the Lantern Community’s ‘swirl’ logo within the design, alongside the creation of a wild garden and water attenuation wetland planted with native flora. We will be planting many new trees and grassland to offset the construction area and its impact on ecology and the environment in and around the estate.
During the planning process, we consulted closely with the Companions whose home this is and asked them what they would like to see.
Everyone who comes to our community will benefit greatly from the construction of this Creative Arts Centre and it will enrich the creative and social lives of our Companions.
The community has been fortunate to have received kind donations from benefactors and support from charitable trusts and there is a real buzz of excitement around the community!
Building work should be completed around December 2027 and we can’t wait to see how it turns out!”
It is an honour supporting a project such as this, and we look forward to witnessing the positive impact it will have on the Lantern Community and many individuals for the years to come.
If you are planning a project and need support to help bring it to life, we’d love to hear from you. Please click here to find out more.
Together, we can help turn inspiring ideas into reality.
