Shipley College: Arts centre for village ‘will chime with the views of Sir Titus Salt’

By Chris Young
Published 9th Sep 2023, 07:41 BST
Updated 9th Sep 2023, 07:48 BST
A new community and arts centre in Saltaire will “accord with the intentions of Sir Titus Salt”, according to a major new planning application.

The scheme for a community, arts, heritage and future technologies hub in the World Heritage Site will be partly funded by the Shipley Towns Fund – a £25m pot of cash awarded to the area by Government.

The hub will be built on a car park area at the corner of Victoria Road and Caroline Street and a planning application for the work has now been submitted to Bradford Council.

The application comes after a public consultation into the scheme led to a “varied” response – with some residents questioning the construction of a modern building in the heart of a Victorian model village.

An artist's impression of what the hub would look like viewed from Victoria Road.An artist's impression of what the hub would look like viewed from Victoria Road.
An artist's impression of what the hub would look like viewed from Victoria Road.

The centre will provide classroom space for Shipley College, focused on T level qualifications, a “civic garden” and a new home for the Saltaire Collection – thousands of artefacts and documents recording the history of the village.

There will also be exhibition space, new public toilets to replace the facilities already on the site and visitor information boards.

The scheme is one of the biggest in the Shipley Towns Fund and will receive £5.9m from the £25m pot of regeneration cash.

The plans, put forward by Shipley College, point out that the site was once home to the village Sunday school and so the new educational use would have a historic precedent.

Saltaire’s designation as a World Heritage Site limits the amount of new development. One of the only recent developments in the past decade was the construction of Shipley College’s Jonathan Silver building, which opened in 2015.

At the time it was the first major building to be constructed in the village centre for almost 130 years.

That application proved controversial, with numerous objections from residents and heritage groups.

The application for the new hub says: “We see this as a project that fits well with Salt’s original vision for public buildings serving the local communities of Saltaire and Shipley that will also enhance the experience of visitors to the World Heritage Site.”