Our building

In 1998 Theatre Resource acquired a beautiful Victorian school building which was for many years used as a boarding school for disabled and disadvantaged children from inner London. Located in the attractive market town of Chipping Ongar, Essex, the building was lovingly restored with the support of a number of partners and stakeholders and was re-opened in 1999 as a modern, well-equipped and fully-accessible arts education Centre.

The Centre is now used as the base for many of Theatre Resource’s own projects and programmes including a range of regional and national training and continuing professional development opportunities for groups, individuals and organisations wishing to develop arts practice with disabled people and socially-excluded groups. The Centre has also become a well loved and much used resource for a wide range of local community groups and organisations.

The Centre has a large bright central hall, two multi-purpose teaching spaces, pottery studio, ICT room/UK Online Centre, fine art studio, kitchen, offices, and large car-park and grounds. All the spaces are wheelchair-accessible.

The future
Theatre Resource wishes to expand the scope and range of its services and establish a world class centre of excellence for the development of arts education activities with and for disabled people and socially-excluded groups.

In order to do so, we plan to invest in developing our Centre so it can become a resource available to groups and individually from a significantly wider catchment area. We also want to expand the range of services we offer to include longer-term educational courses, vocational training and employment and supported employment schemes in the arts and service areas connected with the arts and creative industries (such as catering, hospitality, etc.)

With just under an acre of land at our disposal, our ambition is to develop a new fully-accessible residential study centre, so we can run a year round programme of residential courses and projects. We also wish to establish a supported housing scheme on site providing longer-term accommodation for disabled people who will take part in longer term vocational training, employment and supported employment schemes.

Further information can be found on the RAISE pages on the menu to the left.

Copyright 2008. Do not reproduce without permission. All rights reserved