Development plans to enhance our existing facilities
Longtown Outdoor Learning Trust, working with The Wilson Foundation, hopes to develop a new building to enable the continued provision of high quality outdoor learning and adventure activities for schools and groups, both for day trips and residential stays.
Currently we do not have a dining space to seat all our residential guests in one sitting. The new building will provide a purpose-built multi-use dining room that will seat all our residential guests in one sitting. It will also provide a meeting space and base for day sessions, and be a flexible multipurpose indoor space for activities and games in all weathers.
Our kitchen facilities require updating to make them fit for the future and the new building will provide a new purpose designed catering kitchen. This will greatly improve our current cooking facilities and, for example, avoid us having to move hot meals and crockery across the courtyard to other buildings.
The building will also provide toilets and showers for our existing camp ground. This will reduce demand on our current facilities and will mean we will no longer need to rent costly temporary shower and toilet units during the summer period. These new facilities will also be used for our local after school adventure clubs, scouts, and holiday club activity days.
We currently don’t have a fully accessible dining room or meeting space, and the new building will provide an accessible venue and facilities for all to use during day visits and residentials.
The new building development is about making the Centre fit for the future, and to enable us to better serve our current guests and activities. The purpose of the development is to ensure our programme of activities and residential stays continue to meet future health and safety standards and improve what we currently offer.
Who's who?
https://www.thewilsonfoundation.org.uk/The Wilson Foundation is a Northamptonshire based charity whose primary aim is to help under privileged young people. They own the outdoor centre and grounds, and are kindly paying for the development of this new building. (www.thewilsonfoundation.org.uk)
Longtown Outdoor Learning Trust is a small local charity in charge of running the outdoor centre. We currently employ 11 staff, and run an apprenticeship scheme to train new entrants into the outdoor education sector. Our apprenticeship staff live in the local community and often rent accommodation locally. Through our work we support local businesses, such as through catering provision services and building maintenance.
Quattro is the Design Architects instructed by The Wilson Foundation to design and project manage the build in collaboration with LOLT. Quattro is a leading Sustainable Architectural Practice with over 35 years’ delivering Sustainable Design Services across the UK. (www.quattrodesign.co.uk)