World Heart Beat commences the main construction of its new music education centre and concert venue in Embassy Gardens, London, and calls for support for the final phase of its capital campaign.
ITC have been appointed as contractors for the project and will begin on site on 8 November;
The total project cost is £2.65m and the charity has secured just over two thirds of their target (£1.8m);
There are a host of ways individuals and businesses can support from small donations, donating kit and instruments, to naming a seat or space including the auditorium;
World Heart Beat, a registered charity, was awarded the building by London Borough of Wandsworth and property developers Eco-World Ballymore, from a competitive field of 42 cultural organisations, and has a 50-year lease at £1p.a worth in excess of £10m;
The charity will be a ‘cultural anchor’, benefiting 1000s of young people, many from disadvantaged backgrounds;
The public concert hall, the first to open in London since 2008, will programme an exciting mix of emerging, professional and international headline artists performing music from across the globe;
The building is situated adjacent to the American Embassy and just 120m from the new Nine Elms tube;
The venue will commence operation in May 2022 and will formally launch in September.
World Heart Beat Music Academy is delighted to announce the appointment of contractor, ITC, for the main construction of their new music education centre and concert venue in Embassy Gardens (Nine Elms), London. Work on site will commence on 8 November and the venue is expected to be open in May 2022. The charity is now calling for support for the final phase of its capital campaign.
Thanks to individuals, businesses, trusts, foundations, liveries and statutory funders, World Heart Beat has raised £1.8m. Supporters include Eco-World Ballymore and HEARST publishers, The Backstage Trust, Cockayne – Grants for the Arts, the Foyle Foundation, Fidelity (UK) Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Linbury Trust and the Story of Christmas. The charity has c£850,000 to raise to achieve their target and has a ‘shopping list’, which sets out what they need to get the building open and fully-operational.
“We are delighted that we now have our main building contractor in place. ITC are a great company to work with and offer so much experience in constructing complex, high-quality arts and cultural venues. People have been so generous in getting us to this point and we are so grateful. With just the last third to raise, we hope more people will be inspired to make us a gift and help us open this wonderful new space which, will benefit children and young people, as well as audiences and artists. Every gift is special and no gift is too small. Our ‘shopping list’ still has lots of items on it, from microphones to a grand piano!” – Sahana Gero, World Heart Beat Founder and Artistic Director.
“We are really excited to be working with World Heart Beat on this new, inspiring, music and performance centre in Nine Elms. The venue will provide state-of-the-art facilities, with high quality acoustics, creating an outstanding environment for local young people to learn and develop their skills.” - Nick Conway, ITC Managing Director.
World Heart Beat’s new Embassy Gardens site will extend their work at their existing Kimber Road music academy and be a centre for musical excellence, providing thousands more students with music education and doubling their teaching capacity per year. They will continue with their community-informed approach to engage young people and local residents in the Nine Elms area including those living in the adjacent communities on the Patmore, Savona, Carey Gardens, Doddington & Rollo estates, which are in the bottom 30% of most deprived areas in the UK. Top quality recording studios and kit, will enable the charity to record students first EPs and together with their industry partners, teach a breadth of music industry skills such as sound engineering.
The new centre will also be the first public concert hall to open in London since 2008, equipped with state-of-the-art technology / digital infrastructure. The high-quality acoustics and performance space, will provide a platform for an array of artists; from students, to young people at the very start of their careers and ‘household names’, performing everything from western classical, to Indian music, jazz, and more.