Building the future of St Margaret’s House: Why this £700,000 investment really matters
We recently shared the brilliant news that St Margaret’s House has been awarded £700,000 from DCMS through Arts Council England’s Creative Foundations Fund.
We were delighted to announce it — and deeply proud that St Margaret’s House was chosen for support through a highly competitive national programme. Since then, many people have asked what the funding is for, why it matters, and what happens next.
This blog is our chance to explain.
The short answer is this: the grant will help secure the future of one of East London’s most loved community spaces, enabling essential repairs and improvements across our historic site so that we can continue serving local people for generations to come.
The longer answer is about buildings, community, responsibility, and the importance of investing in places that bring people together.
More than a building
St Margaret’s House has been active in Bethnal Green since 1889, and today our buildings on Old Ford Road remain a rare and precious kind of place: a multi-use community space where creativity, wellbeing, enterprise and neighbourliness meet under one roof.
Across our site we welcome more than 100,000 visitors each year to community workshopsevents and exhibitions, to our cafe to our shop, to see our tenants and to hire our spaces.
We are home to:
a year-round arts and wellbeing programme
creative health and social prescribing activities
affordable workspace for 30+ charities, social enterprises and community practitioners
the vegan Gallery Cafe
the Ayoka charity boutique
exhibitions, workshops, rehearsals, community meetings and cultural events
volunteering, training and local employment opportunities
Every week, around 3,500 people come through our doors.
For some people, St Margaret’s House is where they come to make art, learn a skill or attend an event. For others, it is where they come when they are lonely, anxious, newly arrived in the area, or simply in need of connection. For many it’s a place to work and earn a living.
That matters everywhere. It matters especially in Tower Hamlets.
Why investment in Tower Hamlets matters
Tower Hamlets is one of London’s most dynamic boroughs: youthful, diverse, entrepreneurial and full of creativity. It is also a borough where too many residents experience inequality, poverty, overcrowded housing, physical and mental health challenges and barriers to opportunity.
That means community spaces are not a luxury. They are essential civic infrastructure. Places like St Margaret’s House provide something that statistics alone cannot capture:
somewhere warm and welcoming to go
affordable activities
support networks
trusted local relationships
creative opportunities close to home
practical routes into confidence, skills and wellbeing
At a time when many neighbourhood spaces across London are under pressure, investment in places like this is urgently needed. This grant recognises that East London deserves long-term cultural and community infrastructure too.
So what is the £700,000 for?
The funding has been awarded through Arts Council England’s Creative Foundations Fund, designed to help organisations undertake essential capital works that protect their future.
At St Margaret’s House, this means investing in our buildings so they can continue to serve the people who rely on them.
The works include:
Structural repairs and restoration
Independent surveys identified urgent repairs required to masonry, roofs, parapets and other parts of the building fabric.
These are not glamorous works, but they are vital. If roofs leak and structures deteriorate, rooms become unusable and community activity is disrupted.
Fire safety and compliance upgrades
We will modernise core systems so the site remains safe, compliant and welcoming for the public.
Heating and energy efficiency
Some areas of the site need significant heating improvements. Better systems will reduce waste, improve comfort and lower long-term costs.
Water and electrical infrastructure
Upgrades to water systems, distribution boards, emergency lighting and wider infrastructure will improve resilience and reliability.
Bringing spaces back into fuller use
Some rooms currently underperform because of heating, leaks or outdated infrastructure. This project will help return valuable space to creative and community use.
This is about People, not just buildings
Capital funding can sometimes sound dry: roofs, boilers, wiring, drains.
But the real story is people.
When a rehearsal room is warm and watertight, artists can create there.
When a workshop space is safe and accessible, local residents can gather there.
When a building is reliable and welcoming, community organisations can plan confidently there.
When a cafe is accessible, people meet there.
When a trusted space remains open, loneliness is reduced, wellbeing improves and communities stay connected.
Our mission is rooted in the belief that creativity and social connection support healthier lives.
The buildings make that mission possible.
Why we feel proud — and responsible
We are incredibly proud that DCMS and Arts Council England chose to invest in St Margaret’s House.
The Creative Foundations Fund was heavily oversubscribed, with arts and community organisations across the country applying for support. To receive £700,000 is a significant endorsement of the value of our work and the importance of this site – it’s national recognition that our home for creative health in East London needs to be protected.
Our pride comes with an understanding of the responsibility associated with this funding. This is public money. It belongs to all of us. We have been entrusted to use it carefully, transparently and wisely. We intend to do exactly that.
That means:
strong governance and oversight
robust procurement and cost control
careful project management
minimising disruption during works
protecting access wherever possible
ensuring long-term public benefit remains central
We know grants of this scale are rare. We do not take this support lightly.
We’re investing too: £320,000
This project is not being delivered through external funding alone. St Margaret’s House is committing £320,000 from our own reserves and funds towards the programme. That is a major investment for a charity of our size, and it reflects our belief that the future of this place is worth backing.
It would have been easier to keep patching problems year by year. Instead, we are choosing to tackle long-standing issues properly, responsibly and ambitiously.
There’s still £350,000 to raise
Even with £700,000 from Arts Council England and £320,000 from St Margaret’s House, the full programme is not yet complete.
We still need to raise approximately £350,000 to finish the wider project and the same again to deliver all of the access and sustainability changes we really want to make.
So, while this funding is transformational, it is not the end of the journey.
Over the coming months we will continue speaking with trusts, foundations, businesses, donors and supporters who believe community spaces matter.
We will be inviting others to help complete this next chapter – please contact us if you think you can help.
What this means for Bethnal Green and beyond
St Margaret’s House is deeply rooted in Bethnal Green, but our impact reaches further.
Through our Creative Health Tree model and partnerships, we contribute to spark conversations about how arts, health and community life can work together. We host programmes for children, families, older adults, disabled participants, artists, volunteers and people referred through social prescribing routes.
We support smaller organisations with affordable space.
We create opportunities for people to connect across generations and backgrounds.
This investment helps ensure all of that can continue — and grow.
There will be dust. There will also be hope
Any major building project comes with temporary inconvenience. There may be scaffolding, noise, phased closures or changes to how some spaces operate at times. We will work hard to communicate clearly, minimise disruption and keep people informed.
Behind the practical inconvenience sits something hopeful: renewal.
Looking Forward
St Margaret’s House was founded more than 135 years ago with a commitment to community, dignity and social progress and those values still shape us today. This project is about more than maintaining old buildings. It is about renewing a living mission for modern East London.
A place where:
creativity supports wellbeing
a network of local organisations can thrive
people who feel isolated can find belonging
neighbours can meet
artists can make work
communities can grow stronger together
Thank You
Thank you to Arts Council England and DCMS for this extraordinary support.
Thank you to our trustees, staff, tenants, artists and practitioners, volunteers, cafe and shop teams, partners and wider community whose daily work and belief in St Margaret’s House helped make this possible.
And thank you to everyone who uses and loves this place.
So, we shared the brilliant news that we secured £700,000.
Now comes the next part: using it well, raising the remaining £350,000, and building the future of St Margaret’s House together.