North Kensington Centre welcomes community ahead of new term
Kirsten Arcadio
As the re-imagined North Kensington Centre begins to emerge, we are inviting the local community through our doors on Saturday 3 September.
Over the summer the progress that has been made to the building – an education site for almost 150 years – is significant, with the whole site well on track in its redevelopment into a fresh, new state-of-the-art adult education centre.
Visitors on Saturday will get to experience our completed second and third floors, where we will be teaching from the start of the autumn term, as well as getting a sense of the areas that will complete later in the year. (This includes new classrooms, science labs, and art studios, all reconfigured and newly fitted out.)
The look and feel of the front entrance, café and outside space (though still under construction) is clearly visible with an open, inviting aspect.
Please do join us as the college takes shape to welcome our new and returning students for the start of the new academic year.
What’s on at our North Kensington Centre?
As well as visiting the building to get a sense of where you will study and the facilities here, there will also be:
- Advice and guidance about our courses
- Course tasters in Arts, Crafts, Science (in our new science labs!) and digital skills
- The opportunity to enrol on a course
- Refreshments
Finding out about courses and enrolment
We are open for enrolment from Thursday 25 August onwards with our subject leads, advisers and tutors on-hand to discuss any course queries or pre-assessment requirements. So our Community Open Day is the perfect opportunity to make any final queries and sign up for your course…
The college is known for its community-led learning provision offering courses in ESOL, essential skills, digital skills, music, science and humanities, vocational learning and the arts.
Our art-based courses, particularly jewellery, glass and ceramics are proving very popular, as are our counselling courses – with eight groups starting in September alone.
Although September enrolment is important, thanks to our flexible course provision, start dates are available to students throughout the year.
What’s different?
The Community Open Day aims to bring focus to our pre-term re-opening and enrolment period with a chance to see some really radical changes to the building and its surrounding environment:
- The old Caretaker’s Lodge has been demolished, opening up views of the iconic Trellick Tower.
- Bricks from the lodge have been re-used in building the perimeter walls – a sustainable measure to make the most of the materials on site and maintain a low carbon footprint.
- The central ‘plaza’ area, in front of the new ground floor entrance and café, is really opening up to show the space and and flow of the new street-facing façade of the building. When complete it will be landscaped and our Morley Heart Gardens reinstated.
A warm welcome from the Centre Principal
Craig Hanlon-Smith, Centre Principal, said:
“We are delighted to be opening up again for the new academic year. The building has been covered in scaffolding for so long, which does make it look a bit closed even though we’ve been open throughout the build.
“Finally, you can really see the effect that the changes are going to have. Things like the upgraded glazing and the open, welcoming look and feel of the design. The whole building is really taking shape and we would love the local community to come and see it and give us some feedback on how things are coming together.”
Listen to our Centre Principal talking to Portobello Radio
Craig recently appeared on Portobello Radio to talk about the Community Open Day, our course offer and the new features of the building (including a newly appointed Morley Radio Studio coming later in 2022) that will support our community-facing Morley Radio programmes and courses.
Listen to Craig’s interview:
Book now
You can book to come and see us or simply turn up. If you have something specific that you want to find out about, booking helps us to prepare things in advance.
