News

On Saturday 13^th August the site of St Anne’s in Lewes was open for the first time since May to invite local people to share their views on how it should be used for an interim period of 3 years. The site which belongs to East Sussex County Council is a former school which was closed in 2005. Remaining closed since then it became occupied in April 2011 resulting in an eviction in May. Since then the council have launched a public consultation to ask local people how the site could be used and who should mange this process.

Joined by local organisations Pop up Coop, Common Cause Cooperative, Lewes Town Partnership, All Saints Centre, The Oyster Project and The Lewes Pound, Meanwhile Space CIC coordinated the day welcoming residents to share thoughts and enjoy the site again.

As well as walking the grounds, members of the public were given guided tours of the old school building with the Council presenting some of the physical restraints for the site.

During the long sunny day over 200 people visited the site with 87 making proposals for use. We were overwhelmed by the number of ideas for St Anne’s some of them easy and straight forward to implement quickly, others which are not practical and some which are not feasible under current constraints but are worth investigating.

The next step of the process to get activity happening on the site once more is to form a steering group and start to evaluate the suggestions coming forward.

To find out more about the site or how you could get involved please contact Jessica, jcb@meanwhilespace.com.