CAST

Locally listed Victorian institute converted to artists' studios

Location: Helston, Cornwall

, UK

Status: Built

Service: Architecture

Area: 1,120m² / 12,000ft²

Client: Cornubian Arts & Science Trust

2015-18

The Passmore Edwards Institute, a locally listed former school built from 1897, is one of the most significant civic buildings in Helston, Cornwall. We helped the arts charity CAST turn it into artists' studios, offices and a café with a public face to the town. After the school left in 1972 the building fell into neglect and resisted repeated attempts to convert it into flats. When CAST asked us to help in 2015 it was already in informal use as studios, and the question was whether it could be made to work properly: financially, physically, and for the community around it.

We began with a feasibility study and strategic brief, working with CAST's trustees to define what it needed to become. That strategy became the basis of a successful Arts Council England application. The key moves sit at ground floor. We refitted a 57m² café space and carved out a 12.5m² kitchen and accessible WC from underused space, and converted two windows into full-height doors onto a south-west terrace, giving the charity a public face and somewhere to sit in the afternoon sun. A new ramp to Penrose Road makes the building step-free for the first time.

Former classrooms became studios, CAST's offices and an artist's residency, and the old assembly hall became a dedicated screening room. Cornwall Council backed the external works, glad to see a locally listed building back in use, and construction was delivered with local conservation architect Alison Bunning. The vision we set out in 2015 still shapes CAST: new stairs to the town museum are under way, forming a small cultural quarter around Penrose Road.