On Wednesday 10 June 2015, Bow Arts – an educational charity that supports a community of over 400 artists – launched Rum Factory Studios in Pennington Street Warehouse. This Grade II listed building is at the heart of the new London Dock development in the former News International site, East London.

This new partnership between Bow Arts and St George plc is born out of recommendations made by Futurecity within our Cultural and Placemaking Strategy, submitted as part of the original planning application for the scheme. The strategy suggested the opening up of the building for interim uses while construction across the development was underway. This approach aimed to activate London Dock, putting it on the map as a new cultural and business destination and helping to create a sense whilst supporting East London’s cultural organisations. Futurecity proposed a range of potential cultural partners appropriate for the building, including studio providers such as Bow Arts, who were invited on a site visit.

A vast, vaulted brick building, Pennington Street Warehouse was originally used to store rum and other precious cargo arriving into London via the docks and has been closed to the public for over 200 years. The opening of Rum Factory Studios will be the first interim use of the space. Following restoration of the building, it will be brought back into permanent use with a mix of retail, restaurants, galleries and offices.

As Bow Arts CEO Marcel Baettig said during the site visit,

“It could be London’s newest prestigious hub. The scale of the opportunity … makes it possible to contemplate a cultural impact on the emerging neighbourhood akin to that of … King’s Cross.”

At a time when artists are increasingly being pushed out of the city by rising rent prices, this is a positive step forward and supports the GLA’s desire to acknowledge the value of artist workspace provision both on a local and national level, to protect its vulnerable status, and to encourage partnerships between the public and private sectors to extend its growth and accommodate the ever growing need.

Our strategy focused on the role London Dock is playing in opening up this part of Wapping for the very first time in history and acting as the missing link between its disparate but distinctive neighbourhoods: St Katharine Docks, Shadwell and Limehouse basin. Futurecity also recommended a range of embedded art commissions within the public realm across the development, including a Text & Image Trail which is now in development, lighting anf sculpture commissions and commissions around the themes of water, play and ecology.