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Hampstead Town Hall is a great lottery success
• I AM writing in response to the article last week concerning Hampstead Town Hall (Reclaim old Town Hall, call).
There are several points which I hope will help your readers take a balanced view of the current situation.
Firstly, Hampstead Town Hall is certainly not "often empty". Around 2,000 people use the building each week, it is open seven days each week and we now probably have too little available space for activities.
Rather than being quiet, we can hardly keep up with the requests from the community to hire the 11 different spaces in the building; for example, since re-starting weddings and civil partnership ceremonies earlier this year, six weddings have been held in the council chamber.
The range of people using the building is huge - from the large performing arts programmes for disadvantaged young people run by the Weekend Arts College, to clubs for young people with learning difficulties (our 'WAC nites'), the extensive programme of lectures and learning organised by the University of the Third Age, the Worship Tabernacle groups on Sundays and the activities of 15 resident charities
Hampstead Town Hall is one of the few really "successful" Lottery projects, delivered on time and operating successfully six years on.
The partnership with Camden Council, brokered and supported by the Friends, has retained a prominent public building in community use, and we have always acknowledged the crucial contribution of the Friends of Hampstead Town Hall to this success.
We are not complacent about the future and we don't take our community for granted. We are setting up a community forum to give local residents, local organisations and users the chance to inform the development of services and the ethos of the Town Hall.
We hope the Friends of Hampstead Town Hall will be part of the forum and have invited them to help us in its development. One last point, InterChange Trustees would happily have attended last week's meeting but we were holding our AGM at precisely the same time - the date had been in the calendar for 12 months!
I hope we can move forward positively - and together.
SUE WILBY
Acting Chief Executive
InterChange Trust
• I write regarding the article on Interchange Studios (Reclaim old Town Hall, call). That is exactly what has been achieved when the disused building finally got put back into use.
Interchange Studios, when they moved into the old Town Hall from Dalby Street, did not claim to be setting up the building as a community centre.
It is a building that houses many vibrant organisations, WAC, University of the Third Age, and many small community arts and campaign groups. It has a specific purpose to provide a space for these groups. As someone that works for one of the charities based at the old Town Hall I can truly say that the building is one of the most well-used that I know.
The hundreds of young and old and people from many faiths and cultures that come through the door every day is a testament to the ethos of the building. The reception and caretaking staff would not agree that the building is under-used as they are on site from early until 9pm every day and later at times for the many evening classes and events at the Studios.
It may well cost a lot to hire or even rent rooms but the building is really a joy to work in and the cost of maintaining such an architectural gem must be enormous.
So forgive me if I do not have much sympathy with the bleating of the Heath and Hampstead Society. Some of them probably live in houses as big as the old Town Hall and could have held their meeting plotting their petty approach to the Charities Commission at home with members that are no doubt
pretty unrepresentative of the population of Camden as a whole.
Name and Address supplied
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