A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE. COMPANY REGISTRATION NO. 5801195. REGISTERED OFFICE: 118 HIGH STREET, WOOTTON BASSETT, WILTSHIRE SN4 8BQ UK
The project, branded 'The Beaufort Vision' aims to provide a total arts facility in Wootton Bassett - close to the M4 in North Wiltshire. Plans include:
Ground floor sketch plan. The blue section is the tall centrepiece building. 10ft cellars run the length of the main building and theatre. This will facilitate the tiering of the theatre (the amphitheatre descends from ground level) and natural soundproofing for the recording studios.
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TO READ THE HISTORY OF THE CAMPAIGN, CLICK ON EITHER THE PHOTOGRAPH OR THE LINK ABOVE. This illustration shows the centre section of the Beaufort Brewery buildings. Art & Crafts will be housed in the left wing, and the theatre in the right wing (descending to a depth of 10ft below ground level). The central building will house galleries and practice rooms. The artists impression at the bottom of this page shows the buildings from another vista, which includes the brewery master's house which is also part of the gift.
The buildings have been donated to the town by Kings Oak, who are developing the 11-hectare former St Ivel factory site in Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, for housing.
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North Wiltshire is, by the admission of all concerned, sadly lacking in Arts facilities. The Northern part of the District (Area 2) is particularly lacking, and is comprised of the market towns of Calne, Chippenham, Malmesbury, Cricklade, Purton and Wootton Bassett.
Only one other town in North Wiltshire has an Arts Centre: Corsham. Unfortunately it is tucked away in the south west of the District, near Bath, and is inaccessible to much of the District because of lack of public transport and the long travel times involved.
Wiltshire County Council has identified nine key existing arts groups across the county. The nearest is based in Marlborough; the rest are clustered around the Trowbridge and Corsham area, leaving the north of the county without any key arts facility either existing or planned, apart from this one.
With facilities for the performing and visual arts, with hands-on courses for all ages and abilities, this facility will:-
o Take the boredom out of being young 
o Take the loneliness out of being old
o Take the isolation out of being a
refugee/immigrant
o Take the frustration out of being disabled
o Take the exclusion out of having
special needs
Because it will provide for the whole community.
The arts bridges all divides through:
o Workshops
o Courses
o Education
o Disability access
o Group participation
o Self-expression
o Physical activity
o Sharing of ideas
o Sharing of cultures
o Sharing of knowledge and skills
Or simply sitting back and enjoying The Arts!
And because we are developing a facility across the whole Arts spectrum, the interrelationship between all the above will provide a facility that will attract people from all over the South of England and beyond.
ONE POUND BECOMES THIRTY...
The Wiltshire Forward Plan, April 2005, has identified that for every £1 of Wiltshire County Council grant seeded into the arts, £29 is generated; and for 
every £1 of District Council grant seeded into the arts, £10 is generated. “Taken altogether it reveals an eight fold return on total county and district funding”
The same document also reveals that North Wiltshire receives less local authority arts funding than any other Wiltshire district, and at the time of the report it had only received a total of nine thousand pounds in funding from outside organisations. (Moves have since been made to remedy this by investing in The Pound arts centre in Corsham. However, for most of North Wiltshire's market towns, Corsham is more difficult to get to than Bristol or London by public transport.)
So, economically, socially and culturally, 'The Arts' is a winning investment. In addition, the Beaufort Brewery Arts Centre will provide added value to the following:
EDUCATION AND TRAINING. The Beaufort Vision will provide an enormous asset to North Wiltshire to utilise as an educational facility. North Wiltshire is already working with others to provide community arts training courses, via local groups and individuals with the skills needed to plan and manage successful community and participatory arts projects. The arts centre will provide an impressive, visible resource centre from which such activities can be promoted, held and monitored.
SPECIAL NEEDS. Basic skills rise when there is the motivation to use them. The Arts can give those with learning difficulties the confidence in themselves to deal with basic skills problems, whilst at the same time providing different approaches to the learning process.
GROUPS. Group activities in the Arts Centre that combine basic skills with the Arts will help learners feel less isolated and increase self-esteem.
THE ST IVEL FACTORY CLOSES. The huge St Ivel Dairy Factory closed in 2003. The lorry company that used the brewery as a 
maintenance depot now had no customer. It closed up and left. The brewery buildings were empty and the site was up for sale.
PLANS WERE DRAWN UP. Soon, the draft plans came out and we saw that the Brewery buildings were earmarked for flats. At once, we got to work on our campaign that successfully returned the Brewery to the local community. The general public were inspired from the very first suggestion that an arts centre should be built on the site, writing in their hundreds to the local council to support the plan and making their feelings known at a public meeting – again in their hundreds!
PUBLIC SUPPORT. The people involved in this project are ordinary members of the local community. They convinced the local council that the building should be part of the gift to the local community as an arts facility, and the local community wrote in their hundreds to the District Council to back this up.
The steering group has recently initiated a membership scheme, and were touched to receive cheques ranging from an elderly lady who loves her town, to a doctor who can see a healthier community as a major benefit of the scheme.
MARKETING THE IDEA. We have held presentations of the project, inviting schools, local politicians and businesses, the arts community and members of the public, inviting comments and suggestions. We also issue regular press releases which are always published in the local newspaper.
EAGERLY AWAITED. Many local artists and performers are looking forward to the day the Beaufort Vision opens its doors. This facility 
is eagerly awaited by all. The local schools, performing groups, the Wiltshire Guild of Artists, and not least a 150-strong dance school that presently has to travel out of district to hold its annual shows, and a local ceramicist who is looking forward to accessing a kiln for large-scale works.
MEETING CULTURAL NEEDS. Increasingly, the North Wiltshire community is becoming multi-cultural, with an increased exodus of minorities from city areas and new immigrants from Eastern Europe settling in our market towns. The arts will provide an area of commonality that will accommodate integration without assimilation. We can celebrate and marvel at the richness of one another’s cultural heritage through the arts; and with all disciplines in one place, the richness will be seen by and available to all to appreciate and take part.
LOCAL EMPLOYER, LOCAL MEMORIES! The brownfield site upon which the Beaufort Brewery buildings stand used to be Wootton Bassett’s main employer – St Ivel. The factory employed 600 at the height of its production, and produced the main part of St Ivel’s dairy product output.
People met each other whilst working there and married. One local man pointed to a second floor window in the main brewery building and told how in that room his father asked for his mother’s hand in marriage. The last brewery-master’s daughter is still living in the town, as is the original dairy-master’s daughter. The St Ivel site is full of memory, full of history, and many a tale can be told about it. It closed for the last time in 2002.
LOCAL FOODS. Wiltshire is fortunate to have a wide variety of locally produced foods of a high quality. Locally we have rare breeds farms, cottage food industries (preserves, honey, fresh produce etc) and others. We intend to invite these producers to market their wares at regular markets on the plaza to the front of the Brewery buildings; thus providing a known and regular sale point for local craft produce to augment the monthly Saturday farmers market which is much valued, but far too infrequent for fresh produce!
FINDING A HOME FOR AN IDEA. When the idea for a local arts facility came to one person, who shared it with another, a tour of the town was made in the search for suitable premises. Those that might have been suitable were occupied. Those that were available were too small for the vision. The only one that really met the vision in full was the former Beaufort Brewery, but as we viewed it, huge lorries were manoeuvring across its forecourt as it was a busy maintenance depot.
THE RIGHT BUILDING, AVAILABLE AT THE RIGHT TIME. Since it was built, the Beaufort Brewery has been, and still is, the largest building in Wootton Bassett.
A PERMANENT COMMUNITY FACILITY. The Beaufort Vision will be a permanent structure housing many arts facilities which will continue to add value to the life of the town and the lives of the people who use the centre. The buildings will never again be threatened with conversion to private dwellings. the vibrancy and dynamism of the Beaufort Vision will ensure that the town will be known far and wide for this unique facility, and jobs that were lost in the brewing, then dairy industries will be restored in the tourist and arts industries.
STRATEGIC POSITION/TOURISM. The Beaufort Vision is eagerly anticipated by the town and surrounding villages’ many art and crafts groups and 
performers. But we will not stop there! Wootton Bassett is half way along the M4, between London and Bristol, and is ideally situated for touring exhibitions and performers. We also expect such a large facility to become a major tourist attraction because it will have something to please everyone.
We have researched a number of ‘hands on’ craft facilties nationwide (eg, plaster casting, pottery throwing/decorating/glazing/metalsmiths) and have noted that they are patronised all year round and that people will travel considerable distances to visit them. Add to this the performing arts, the galleries and the browse factor of so many studios stocked with the work of talented local crafts folk, and you have a winning formula!
We have the support of the local town, district and county councils. Indeed it was North Wiltshire District Council who wrote our project into the Draft Local Plan that had to be agreed to by whoever bought the brownfield site on which it is located. The District council has supported us through help and advice in funding, and brokerage.
We also have had help from ProHelp – an arm of Business in the Community – who provided us with the services of Messrs Gardiner Theobald, Eric Cole & Partners who drew our first plans, and Alan Stone who surveyed the building and declared it sound.
We would like to acknowledge here the tireless support we have received from Rural Renaissance. The Beaufort Brewery Trustees would not have climbed so far up the fundraising learning curve if it were not for this organisation, whose award to the project has enabled the project to begin the process of securing a consultant to help us to form a feasibility/business plan robust enough to secure the millions of pounds needed for this project. Particular thanks to Sarah Brady at GWE Trowbridge.
The Feasibility Study can be viewed from the link on the navigation bar at the top of this page.
Many fine heritage buildings were lost in North Wiltshire in the 1960s – a period when the oldest known house in Wootton Bassett was pulled down to widen a road. The brewery buildings escaped destruction as they were being used as a dairy, and then as a lorry depot. But they did not escape the vandalism of having their beautiful windows smashed in and replaced with large garage doors for the lorries to use.
The plans we have for these buildings, which were large enough to house many articulated lorries during its previous use, are awesome and innovative.
SURPRISING ARCHITECTURE. Not least of the surprises we discovered when the buildings were surveyed was the existence of a brewery cellar running the full length of the ‘theatre’ end and the main building. This meant that 
we could build the theatre into the ground, but it also meant that our planned outdoor amphitheatre, which we thought would be cut into a nearby slope, could now be cut down into the ground, to meet the theatre floor, where doors can be opened to create a single indoor/outdoor performing space. We believe that this performing space will be unique, as we have not been able to locate anything like it anywhere else. The incredible space created by the theatre/amphitheatre combination will provide not only for a unique performing area, but also an exhibition area for visual arts, flower shows, itinerant performers, festivals and any number of other events.
LOCAL INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS. Presently, the building is hidden. Its gates were until recently ivy-covered and people still drive past without noticing the empty gothic building behind. Soon, however, the gates and walls will be re-built as part of the site's redevelopment by messrs Kings Oak. A new cycleway is planned that will pass alongside where presently there is not even a footway, and an attractive, inviting vista will be opened up. Beyond the buildings will be public green space where previously the pubic were barred; and the housing plans for the brownfield site boasts a main street called “The Beaufort Boulevard” which will end its vista upon the frontage of the main building of the Beaufort Vision.
Placed as it is, between the old part of town and the new development (with more planned), this project will bring the town to the people and the people to the town. It will be the beating heart that provides the circulation that is so vital to a healthy community.
For more information, please contact Bridgett Tubb on 01793 849499 email bridgett@tubbjoys.freeserve.co.uk
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THE PROJECT - AN OVERVIEW
