Ecclesbourne School Theatre and English Block

Ecclesbourne School was successful in its bid for a further round of Academies Capital Maintenance Fund (ACMF) funding thanks to our support. This phase of the masterplan was for a new theatre and English department building, replacing an existing teaching block which suffered undersized spaces and was in increasingly poor repair.

At the heart of the project, and the proposed design, is a highly flexible theatre space. This provides a venue for performances and presentations with audiences of up to 300, but is sub divisible into two studio spaces to maximise use.

A state-of-the-art audio visual control suite overlooks this from a first floor gallery, and electrically operated bleacher seating ensures the room configuration can be rapidly changed. The theatre facilities are optimised for community events, in a suite which features a spacious foyer space, and capability of expansion into adjacent classrooms for break-out and social use. The English department facilities include ten classrooms with super views overlooking the first XI pitch and a flexible seminar suite overlooking the theatre itself. Dedicated storage is provided for books and theatre equipment.

The external appearance reinforces the materiality adopted on the previous phases - the classroom modules and fit-out within the modern foreign languages building, completed in 2014, have been so successful that an identical provision has been incorporated here. This repetition provides simple flexibility across the school estate, and simplifies maintenance and cleaning programmes.