Crossway Foundation
There has never been a more important time for this kind of project in East London. Offscreen’s work in our school has had a very positive and practical impact on how students view the outside world and themselves.
Mrs Bushra Nasir
Head Teacher, Plashet School
East Ham, London Borough of Newham
The Crossway Foundation is a collaborative project being developed and implemented by Offscreen, The Prince's Regeneration Trust and a group of social entrepreneurs, artists and educators committed to the development of a new Middle East-UK cultural centre in East London.
Offscreen’s plans to develop 109-111 Redchurch Street as a permanent base in East London. The building, to be known as The Crossway Foundation, is to be both Offscreen’s physical headquarters and its separate charitable home. The Foundation will enable Offscreen to dramatically broaden its reach and develop its innovative educational models in the run up to the 2012 Olympics.
The Prince's Regeneration Trust have helped identify 109-111 Redchurch Street, a landmark building in a conservation area that is currently deteriorating and potentially at risk; they will support The Crossway Foundation to conserve and restore this building as the new base for Offscreen’s activities and advise them in making the building fit for purpose and sustainable. In this way the Trust will preserve a part of the national heritage that is under threat, breath new life into an existing building and so preserve its embodied environmental energy, and add value, vitality and activity to an inner-city multi-cultural community.
Alongside Offscreen, the contributors to this new Foundation are:
- Adam Williamson: artist in residence at The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts (2004-6) who runs a succesful schools and museum workshop proghramme to share a positive understanding of Islamic art and culture with young people.
- Edge of Arabia: the first project of its kind to promote and support contemporary artists from Saudi Arabia, which is now embarking on a World Tour
- Bold Creative: a Bafta Award winning social enterprise which develops creative projects, often using audio-visual and IT multimedia, to engage, inspire, educate and unlock the true potential of young people.
The leaders of these programmes recognise the synergies and collaborative potential between their organisations. They developed an idea for a new umbrella organisation, Crossway, which could draw on the energies and expertise of all contributors to expand the educational and artistic programmes already being offered, and develop new activities and modelswith national and even international impact. Central to this vision is the need to improve on the limited and fragmented nature of their existing working space and acquire a new, permanent and purpose-designed home in London.
The Prince’s Regeneration Trust has provided support to this fledging initiative in the areas of governance, fundraising and business development. The Trust adopted this project in 2007 because of its significant community regeneration potential, particularly in some of the most deprived parts of East London, where it principally works, and its track record for improving intercultural relations, both locally and internationally. Recently, the main thrust of PRT involvement has been to assist Crossway in its search for a suitable building.