STORE Store, Camden, London – Argent LLP with STORE Store

Coal Drops Yard collaborated with Store Projects to create a space that not only showcased design and craftsmanship, but also supported learning and access to the design industry, offering school time and after-school clubs where students learn to improve their product-making and create portfolios, working alongside practising artists and designers.

Where is the project located?
118 Lower Stable Street, Coal Drops Yard, London, N15 5DR
 
Who is the developer/client of the project?
Argent LLP

In 2018, Company Place was engaged by King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership (KCCLP) to lead the cultural programme to launch Coal Drops Yard. Immediately they signed up Store Projects, an association of artists, architects, and designers that drive social change by enabling public access to art and design. The brief was to come up with a concept for a lively events programme that would engage the local community with the then-new retail space.Coal Drops Yard, and the broader King’s Cross estate, are a hotspot for creative, design-led and culturally aware businesses and visitors. By working with Store Projects, Coal Drops Yard aimed to be a place that not only celebrated design and craftmanship, but could also support learning and access into the design industry. Could STORE Store support today’s students to become tomorrow’s design talents, and potentially future tenants of Coal Drops Yard?

The King’s Cross development sits in Camden, where there are 10 state secondary schools, including Regent High School and Maria Fidelis School, which are in Somers Town, an area of particular interest for the community engagement work that STORE Store do.
 
Tell us what you did and how the project, event or installation enlivened the place in a creative way?

STORE Store is a workshop and design shop in Coal Drops Yard, King’s Cross. From here they run after school clubs, in-school workshops and summer schools for state school students across Camden and neighbouring boroughs, with priority given to pupil premium students. In their after-school club, students learn, alongside practising artists and designers, to develop their own product making skills and build portfolios which support them towards scholarships into higher education. Products designed and prototyped in the after school club are sold in STORE Store, with students earning royalties on their sales. Design items are not the only thing on offer; STORE Store also provides workshops for the general public too. 

This project started by considering how an alternative educational program could be self-sustainable, having started as a meanwhile project commissioned by the estate. STORE Store has now transitioned to a tenant and cultural asset for the destination.

STORE Store’s activations often spill out, enlivening the public realm and they have further leveraged their location by partnering student projects with other tenants on site, such as Nike, COS and even the building’s architect, Heatherwick Studios.

“We really enjoyed collaborating with Store store this year to run the Summer Workshop for high school students. It is a very unique entity that contributes to the richness and diversity of the Coal Drops community. They are doing an amazing job in including the public and creating awareness of design and the impact it can have in our community and wellbeing.”- Heatherwick Studio

Please share any data or figures that support your entry, for example increased footfall, happiness surveys, event attendance and/or observed changes in behaviour. 

Each year in the winter break, STORE Store runs portfolio preparation workshops for the students who are considering applying to university. The STORE team advises them on the options available, helping students to build a portfolio of work that prepares them for potential interviews. 

Through teachers’ dinners and direct feedback gathered from students, STORE have gauged how successful the programmes are in helping students build confidence in themselves and equipping them with the best possible skills to go on into higher education courses.

Of the 500 state school students who attended the after school club over the past three years, more than 50 students were offered places at universities such as Cambridge, Westminster, UCL and Central Saint Martins. Seven of these students were offered places in the prestigious Architecture department at UCL.

“Our students really benefited from the unique offer from STORE. The opportunity to regularly experience great interdisciplinary work with a constantly evolving range of professionals from the top level of design and engineering has been invaluable to our students.” -Mr Ed Chambers, Design and Technology teacher at UCL Academy.

STORE Store has also run 62 public workshops in the past three years with over 600 members of the public taking part, recently as far afield as Texas in their lockdown online iteration of the public workshops.

The success of the London location has enabled STORE Store to open a secondary location in Rotterdam, providing these much needed services to the local young people there.
 
Did the project make a positive social and environmental contribution? Please provide any evidence or data to support this. 

STORE Store has always run a policy of priority places for pupil premium students, this ensures that access to these courses is not based on their financial situation. 

Many of the associates involved in teaching the students and general public are pioneering new materials and technologies to specifically address the climate crises. TENS studio, Studio ilio and Liam Hodges have led after school club sessions on reframing waste as a source material for new fashion and lifestyle products. In the public workshops Materiom and Tessa Silva-Dawson put on more radical craft sessions like learning to make bioplastics.

Through their work, STORE Store has built a large community of students, designers and members of the public, many of which have stayed engaged in the project, supporting each other in their professional goals. One student, Hani is a particularly good case study; she first took part in one of STORE Store’s summer schools in 2017, part of a one-day workshop at a state school in Hackney. She returned to take part in numerous online and in-person after school clubs, as well as portfolio development courses, all run out of Coal Drops Yard. Hani is now in her second year at CSM and works for STORE on her weekends to help subsidise her studies. She is someone who has helped shape the courses and is now in a position to organise and run courses herself.

NB: Pupil premium definition - www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium/pupil-premium