Grimm & Co

Grimm & Co describe their core purpose as ‘changing lives one story at a time’. They support under-resourced children and young people aged seven to 18 with their confidence and skills around creativity and writing, through workshops for schools as well as out-of-school, holiday clubs and publications. 

The charity was established in 2013 as an action research project in literacy, occupying a physical base from 2016. Turnover and staff numbers have grown year on year. Prior to the injection of significant capital funds, turnover in the year to March 2019 was £375,075 and the charity was employing seven FTE staff. By 2022, staff numbers had increased to 14 posts, 38 associate artists and over 100 volunteers.

Project facts

Client: Grimm & Co

Location: Rotherham

Design team:

• Architects – Halliday Clark 
• Quantity surveyors and project management – Penningtons 
• Mechanical and engineering – BWB Consulting
• Structural engineers – Dudleys Consulting Engineers
• Fit out – Lumsden Design Ltd.

Build time: estimated 14 months; work started on site in December 2021 and is due to complete by February 2023.

Overall cost: £2.7 million (projected)

Sources of funding:

• Arts Council England Small Capital, Art’s Council England Kickstart, Key Fund (social investment)
• Future High Street Fund (as part of an overall £12.6 million award to Rotherham Town Council)
• South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA)
• Individual giving
• organisational reserves.

Procurement strategy: design and build

 

General description of works

Arts Council England’s capital funding enabled the purchase of a Grade II listed, 250-year-old Methodist church in the town centre, which Grimm & Co have converted into an Emporium of Stories. The conversion involved the installation of a mezzanine floor, a performance space, three new classrooms, an indoor slide, a bookshop, cafe, a passenger lift that will enable access to all public areas and accessible toilets, as well as significant infrastructure works including repairs to the roof, drainage, dry rot treatment and prevention, mechanical and electrical improvements, new heating supply, secondary glazing to windows, and replacing the back of house lift, offices and storage spaces. The central design challenge was about creating and fitting out characterful spaces while retaining the character and key features of the church.

Case study

In Rotherham, Grimm & Co have set a high bar for literacy hubs around the world. Their former venue, inspired by American author Dave Egger’s hub in San Francisco, was fronted by a shop called the ‘Apothecary to the Magical’, selling, among other things, goblin mucus soap and elf-size thinking caps. This venue so successfully captured the local imagination that the organisation quickly began outgrowing it, leading them to seek a new base.

From an internal perspective, the main drivers for the capital project were:

• A strong will and enthusiasm to bring imagination and uniqueness to Rotherham. 
• Growth – demand for Grimm and Co’s services had grown rapidly and beyond expectation since 2016. They found themselves unable to meet the volume of requests for their schools and out-of-school provision activity, mainly due to restrictions of the property. The team also wanted to offer better physical access, particularly to accommodate children with special educational needs.
• A desire for greater versatility (being able to easily change spaces and layouts) and therefore make better use of a building footprint to achieve their mission.
• A basic but fundamental need to improve their accommodation. Grimm and Co had delivered work from a characterful former pub on a leasehold basis since 2016 which was well-located but subject to basement flooding and inadequate heating, so they were seeking the benefits of an updated, fully functioning building management system including efficiency, reliability, and cost control.

An ally in local renewal

Public documents speak of Rotherham as a place in search of renewal, with a host of projects aiming to restore vitality and viability to the town centre. Among the challenges were the drastically reduced town centre footfall, deteriorating perceptions of the town, reducing investment and a resigned attitude to decline. A 2019 early draft of the local cultural strategy referred to “restoring faith and optimism in the borough, transforming perceptions and rebuilding Rotherham’s reputation and encouraging ambition”. Grimm & Co see themselves as contributors to this process, with their capital planning application submission explicit in terms of their goal “to dispel negative perceptions of Rotherham and its residents, challenging community narratives and apathy that many Rotherham residents feel about their town and give them a reason to be really proud, invested and engaged in the place they call home.”

Honest community consultation

The church was put up for sale because of its diminishing congregation. Grimm & Co understood that the nature of the building (as a place of worship), combined with its listed status and their distinctive plans, could potentially generate strong views but they were genuinely interested in what local people thought and wanted. The local press were willing to support the process and featured the consultation for their readership, which took place in the summer of 2019. Responses were overwhelmingly positive. One contribution summed up the tone: “Rotherham needs this! This building needs this! The children of Rotherham need this! Well done Grimm & Co for being so inspirational.”

Young people were also asked what they wanted to see within the designs. They named themselves the Black Lanyard Brigade and were also consulted on the programme and on evaluation. 

Igniting local imagination and ambition

Although at the time of writing the full fit out is ongoing, the project is already achieving some of the intended outcomes. Grimm & Co had become a destination for visitors in their former site and the level of interest continues to grow, with the premises strongly representing Rotherham as a place with imagination. Deborah Bullivant, the Chief Executive and driving force behind Grimm & Co, is involved in wide-ranging planning and investment forums that extend well beyond the cultural sphere – including the Cultural Partnership Board, Ambition Rotherham Pioneer Board, the Town Deal Planning Board and the Town Centre Retail Group. Deborah sees part of her role as engendering belief in the value of ambition and distinctiveness with an unrelenting focus on inclusion. 

With the developing belief in the possibility of how arts can change a town’s sense of self has come investment in local cultural infrastructure – key posts have been recruited to, joined up action is now happening across the cultural and civic spheres, and financial support for quality programming is following. 

Rotherham has aspirations for the area where Grimm & Co is located to become a new cultural quarter – a first for the town. Another ‘first’ will be the world-first year as a Children’s Capital of Culture, due to take place in 2025. This emerged particularly from the project’s engagement with young people and participation in Reimagining Rotherham. As the website explains, “Children’s Capital of Culture isn’t an award given by the Government, or part of a national culture bid. Instead, it’s an ambition that the children and young people of Rotherham have chosen for their borough.”

Enabling growth

The capital works have materially changed Grimm & Co’s ability to respond to a continued growth in demand. They estimate that the additional space enables them to work with three times as many people. It also provides scope to extend their offer in areas of emerging strength, such as teacher training and development. 

The organisation takes a blended approach to pricing that ensures cost is not a barrier to engaging in their offer. For example, they endeavour to ensure arts-based, out-of-school learning is free to the children who attend and schools are asked not to pass on the cost of attendance to ensure it’s also free to the child. With their mission being heavily oriented to those with the least opportunity, this is seen as a critical feature of their model. Designs for the space therefore were also about their ability to manage this, assuming continued growth. The inclusion of the bookshop and cafe as well as hireable spaces mean that Grimm & Co can develop the unrestricted income base further, removing the pressure to maximise yield from charging participants and improving the charity’s long-term viability and robustness.

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