SET Community Courtyard Fundraiser
SET Community Courtyard
This project is being done by SET Woolwich in partnership with Sandwich Club and Growing Greenwich. 
Mock-up of Courtyard, Image courtesy of Sandwich Club
SET is a grassroots art and community organisation operating across five London sites. We curate an eclectic and experimental arts and education programme and provide genuinely affordable artist workspaces to a community of over 200 artists.
SET turns disused buildings into positive, socially-engaged artist communities. Our new centre, SET Woolwich, is one of London’s largest meanwhile-use projects, housed in a former 14-storey office building in Old Woolwich. SET is working to convert the car park at the front of our Woolwich site into a courtyard that will also serve as a community garden space, with help from the grassroots design collective Sandwich Club and our local partner Growing Greenwich. 
Mock-up of Courtyard, Image courtesy of Sandwich Club
Mock-up of Courtyard, Image courtesy of Sandwich Club
The aims of the project are to engage with the local Woolwich residents, provide a welcoming wheelchair-accessible green space and offer the local community an access point to the arts. 
Plan View of Courtyard, Image Courtesy of Sandwich Club
The garden will consolidate SET’s embeddedness within the local Woolwich community through activities, events and workshops delivered in partnership with Growing Greenwich and other volunteers. These workshops will include gardening lessons from Growing Greenwich covering seed sowing, managing herbs, vegetables, and fruit trees. By encouraging visitors who wouldn’t normally be aware of SET, the garden will provide an entry point for the local community to engage with other aspects of SET’s public programme of exhibitions, screenings, artist talks and workshops. 
Growing Greenwich, Courtesy of Growing Greenwich. 
Images from previous events from the SET Programme.
The SET Garden will also provide additional health benefits. The London Tree Map shows that there are very few trees in the area and the London Pollution Map indicates a high level of air pollution. We are based at Riverside House on Beresford Street which is a main road with a considerable amount of traffic on a daily basis. The amount of greenery that we plan to have in the garden space will help counteract this and provide a space with cleaner air which will have positive health benefits for those in the area.
We hope that the garden will also help to counteract some of the social isolation and loneliness which has become increasingly prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic. By providing an accessible and communal space, gardens can promote physical and mental health wellbeing and help to build healthy and socially sustainable communities.
The garden space will be maintained by the SET team, volunteers from the SET Community, volunteers from Growing Greenwich and from the general public.
What will the money go towards?
Total amount required: £8121.37 (inc.VAT)
Labour: £1250
(£250 per day x 5)
We will be contracting SET Woolwich's building team construct the garden. They have been building the studios at SET. This includes clearing the courtyard space of the current vegetation, constructing the seatings planters and etc. They will be executing all the physical aspects of bringing Sandwich Clubs design to life.
Materials budgetary total: £5829.47 (6871.37 inc.VAT)
This will cover the cost of the following materials:
- Pine Bark: £480. (£80 bag x 6)
- Plywood: £734.50 (£29.38 per sheet x 24)
- Timber Softwood: £281.30
- Pergola Timber Wood: £504.02
- Soil: £1500 (£100 per bag x 15)
- Screws £119.80 (£11.98 per box x 10)
- Paint 5L £459.90 (£45.99 per tin x 10)
- Specimen Trees £1500 (price may vary based on available stock)
- Planting £1500 (price may vary based on available stock)
We look forward to potentially seeing you in the courtyard :)
