Type: Community
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Client: Clapton Commons
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Location: Hackney, London
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Status:  Start on Site Jan ‘23

The Common Rooms

A multi-purpose community space run by Clapton Commons at St. Thomas Church, Clapton. 

Clapton Commons is a grassroots network of neighbours in Hackney, working to transform their area for the common good. The Common Rooms will create a series of new spaces for the community to prosper, repurporsing the existing church hall and undercroft into a shared space that will be used for communal meals, a food bank, exercise studio, private meeting rooms, after school clubs and events. Low cost and high impact, the project is intended as a proof of concept, testing the potential of the site to inform further redevelopment.

Bold new signage draws visitors into a mature garden, where a new entrance door with a distinctive colour palette leads into the Common Rooms. A series of new lightweight partitions subdivide the undercroft, creating private meeting space, an open kitchen, a  new communal dining area and a larger flexible space for events and exercise classes; creating a new home for the community to thrive.


The project has been sucessfully crowdfunded by Clapton Commons with additional support from the Mayor of London. You can view the crowfunding campaign video here. The project has also received funding from the Hackney Community Fund. 
Funding:
Spacehive Crowdfunding
Mayor of London
Hackney Community Fund