Help us regenerate The Lockwood Centre on Slyfield Industrial Estate into a NEW Creative Community Hub for Bellfields, Slyfield and beyond.

A local community centre is under threat, but you can help save it by joining our regeneration consortium with access to great facilities for your arts and community projects.

Since the withdrawal of Adult Social Care from the Lockwood Centre in April 2023, an organisation formed from local community groups and creative businesses (including Lockwood Arts), has been trying to persuade Guildford Borough Council (GBC), to allow them to lease the building so that they can provide desperately needed services within the local community and beyond. This organisation is called The Lockwood Regeneration Consortium.

Unfortunately, GBC is asking us to pay full commercial rent for the building AND take on responsibility for the total upkeep as well. This is not viable for our vision for the building but we could generate enough rent for a workable solution if GBC consider the benefits offered to the community. The alternative is for the building to be demolished to make way for a temporary car park while GBC plan redevelopment of the site.

Lockwood Arts has been based at Lockwood since 2002. This group of diverse artists has led a vast number of innovative and exciting projects, achieving local and national recognition in supporting all disabilities (educational, mental and physical), and promoting opportunities for fun and creativity for everyone in Guildford and beyond.

We want Lockwood to be repurposed to provide a centre for creativity and wellbeing for the community at large; the cultural hub that Guildford deserves. Everyone knows that being creative benefits health and mental wellbeing but our plans will also support climate change and the environment. It’s a huge building with enough space to create a buzzing community of imaginative enterprises and innovative start-up businesses, interested in addressing sustainability and the climate challenges we face.

The centre will be run on a not-for-profit basis, relying on social investment and skills sharing; exactly what Lockwood Arts has been doing for twenty-two years! We will continue to promote and celebrate the work of disabled artists and disability arts organisations within Surrey AND remain a welcoming, inclusive and accessible location for artists ‘of all abilities’.

Help us regenerate the Lockwood Centre on Slyfield Industrial Estate into a NEW Creative Community Hub, with affordable space for local artists, creatives, start-up businesses, and so much more.

If you would like to know more about what The Lockwood Regeneration Consortium has to offer, please contact Craig Hills: info@jellytreetv.co.uk