and going to look at it. To say we were disappointed would be a huge understatement – try to imagine a stereotypical scout hut from the early 80s. I had in my mind some sort of futuristic chalet building with a good mixture of wood and glass and what we saw was one step up from a Nissen hut. It was back to the drawing board and we told Mr Heer that we would continue to look for companies ourselves and keep him posted. In the meantime, we were spending every possible moment raising
revenue for the building fund. We raised what we thought was the requisite amount of money (approximately £180,000) only 10 months after we had started, so in June 2010 we thought we were ready to get the build going. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Our search for a company that produced high quality pre-engineered
buildings had proved fruitful. I work with trainee teachers at Southampton University and through this link I was asked to become a headteacher representative working with a large construction firm who were eager to put educationalists, architects and builders together to try to come up with blueprints of schools for the future. Through this work I met with more than a dozen experts from the construction industry and this gave me the opportunity to question them about the building we were looking to construct at Anton. Everything I heard from them confirmed that our original desire for a
wooden structure that was significantly cheaper than a brick building, and aesthetically pleasing as well as environmentally friendly, was the right way forward for us. I was put in touch with several companies that had a track record in successfully designing and building these robust, permanent structures that had a lifespan comparable to conventionally built buildings. I arranged for companies to come and visit us in Andover; I showed them the proposed site, discussed with them the purpose of the new room, put forward our desired dimensions and then discussed costs. We narrowed it down to two similar sized companies offering a
similar bespoke building at much the same cost. One company had a far more personable individual representing them. He had helped build the company up and I felt that he could deliver exactly the building we had worked so hard to raise the funds for. Our original intention was to have our new studio as a stand-alone
building, although several companies offered the option of adding it as an extension to our existing building. For a number of reasons we decided to keep it separate, not least because aesthetically we felt it would look better this way. The school community had worked together so effectively to raise the money for this project, and we were determined that the building had a real “wow factor” when people saw it. Additionally, our thinking was that the studio would be used by community groups after school, at weekends and during the school holidays. Our intention was that as we built relationships of trust with these local groups they would be able to be keyholders and would need no access to the school building or need for the caretaker to be constantly on site. We have used the same method in letting our all-weather pitch for many years and it has served us well. The local authority, although supportive, was still a little anxious about
us not going down the traditional building route so we arranged a visit to the factory so that we could see, and have explained to us, exactly
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