Launch of the new Saturday Creative Arts School and the Hearn Centre
The Foundation and Central Foundation Boys School are delighted that a major new partnership is being launched in 2025-6 with the Hearn Foundation.
The Hearn Foundation has confirmed generous new grant funding to launch a Saturday Creative Arts School. This new provision will be hosted in the Creative Arts Centre at the Boys School which has been renamed the Hearn Centre.
Recognising the cost and difficulties of accessing educational provision arts which can face schools, the generous support of the Hearn Foundation allows for that high quality and extensive arts provision to be available to all Central Foundation students.
The Hearn Foundation, funded by Peter Hearn, an ex-student of the school, is a significant funder of arts programmes, including programmes at the Old Vic and Trinity Laban Conservatoire in Greenwich and Blackheath Halls. Now, the Hearn Foundation has committed significant funds to support the provision of the arts at Central Foundation. In 2024 it entered into a 3-year partnership to fund the drama and performance provision of our Central Baccalaureate including the provision of drama and public speaking qualifications for all of our Year 7 and 8s. Additional funding will now enable the launch of a Saturday Creative Arts School.
The Hearn Foundation and Central Foundation share the same vision of the power of arts to transform lives – both for all that engagement with the arts brings and developing attributes of self-confidence, teamwork, empathy, creativity and problem solving. The arts can become the preserve of the few as a result of the cost and difficulties of accessing educational provision. The incredibly generous support allows for that high quality and extensive arts provision to be made available for all students at the Central Foundation schools.
We are pleased that this will extend to students at both schools and as it established, to other young people in the local community.
This partnership is also a great example of how organisations and people with shared values can transform lives. The two London communities where our schools are based both are within the top 10% of the most deprived communities in the UK [1]. While it is fantastic that the Central Foundation has been able to invest over £40m over 12 years in the Boys School Redevelopment and now the Girls’ School Sixth Form expansion project, we no longer have that sort of funding available so developing new funding partnerships to add to the student opportunities and experiences is a critical part of our new strategy. Both schools have new programmes and opportunities for which they will need new funding. We would love to hear from funders, corporate partners and individuals who would like to get involved.
Immediate projects include
Girls’ School Garden Spaces Project where they want to create an urban oasis in Central London to provide an outside garden and social space for 450 sixth-form students at this inner London School. they are looking for supporters who can give anything from £25 to help lay the amazing new courtyard space co-designed with students as a Persian rug, to donors able to give more perhaps to fund a bench (£400) or a more substantial grant.
Student Opportunities Project which is a collaboration between the Foundation and both schools to extend and develop the work experience, careers and aspirations-raising opportunities available at our schools by adding to offer at least one additional career-related opportunity/intervention offered to each Year 7 – 13 student at each school each year – that’s 2,850 new opportunities per annum. The Foundation has committed £90k over the next two years and we are seeking partners to match this funding so the 18 month pilot can become a permanent programme.
If you want to find out more about our current programmes please visit https://www.centralfoundation.co.uk/ways-to-support-us or drop our chief executive Sarah Gosling an email on FoundationOffice@cfsl.org.uk to arrange a conversation.