Future-facing vision taking shape in Chatham’s Historic Dockyards
Due to open in late 2026, Docking Station will harness the transformative power of creative technology to open up new possibilities and futures for young people, creative businesses and the communities of Kent and Medway. We caught up with Project Director, Caroline Dennis, and her team during a recent CDF Network Study Visit to the site together with fellow CDF Round Three project leads from Barnstaple, Bradford, Morecambe and Walsall.
Unique amongst the Cultural Development Fund (CDF) projects, Docking Station has its roots in the first round revenue-funded CDF project, Creative Estuary. Docking Station builds on this legacy with capital funding as a significant part of the £3.5m third round CDF investment, contributing to a wider capital cost of c.£14m.
Partnership
The project is being delivered by the University of Kent’s Institute of Cultural and Creative Industries (iCCi) in partnership with Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust and Medway Council, one of only 10 local authorities in the South East recognised as a Priority Place by Arts Council England.
Like many of the CDF projects, the initial challenge for the main delivery partner – in this case iCCi – was to work with all partners and landowners to negotiate complex agreements to facilitate and formalise the project. In the case of the Docking Station, this included a long lease agreement between the ultimate site owners, Homes England, and Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust (CHDT) to secure the historic building and associated land. The iCCi was then able to enter into a lease agreement with CHDT to ensure they could meet CDF requirements, specifically:
- Minimum lease term of 20 years
- Security requirements to ensure the buildings and equipment will be used for the purposes of the CDF grant
The Docking Station Project is formally overseen by the University’s Executive Group and Council members. With local authorities acting as lead partners for the vast majority of CDF projects across all four rounds, this represents a different approach with a university as lead partner and the iCCi itself funded through Arts Council England as a National Portfolio Organisation (NPO).
Addressing a Need
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Located between the University’s Pembroke campus and its Historic Dockyard premises, this development places cultural and creative industries at the heart of the regeneration plans for the last remaining undeveloped part of the former Dockyard site.
Docking Station aims to address the income, productivity and skills challenges faced in Medway by providing the facilities and skills development opportunities to support digital innovation within the creative industries sector. This will be achieved by creating a shared space for different audiences across Medway and beyond, including:
- Industry: a suite of industry-standard digital studios
- Creative Businesses: Co-working space and business incubation
- Students: Industry-focused courses, including new courses in games design and screen skills as well as flexible short courses
- Academics: Centre for research, development and innovation
- Communities: Cafe, exhibition spaces and a public creative and cultural programme
Facilities
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Docking Station will include a suite of state-of-the-art facilities and digital studio spaces, including virtual production studios, motion capture, volumetric capture, photogrammetry and post-production facilities. Director of Digital and Future Technology, Will Draffin, is clear however about the need to balance this with the ever-changing needs of a rapidly evolving industry, saying:
“The aim is to have a flexible, versatile space for creative technology, not to be fixed on what that technology should be”.
This flexibility also extends to a broader understanding of how the facilities might benefit the wider creative and cultural sector and others, including developing new approaches to bringing technology into regional theatres, new approaches to healthcare or making the arts more accessible.
Ultimately, it’s also about what you do with the space and technology.
Through Docking Station, iCCI seeks to capitalise on its investment in the building and facilities through a cohesive strategy which addresses this, including support for:
- Individuals: Festivals, outreach, education offers and careers
- Micro-enterprises: Co-commissions, co-working spaces, CPD and skills development
- Business start-ups: Incubator spaces, production support, preferential hire rates, CPD and skills development
- Scale-up: Follow-on space, production support, preferential hire rates, CPD and skills development
- Established businesses: Student placements, research, Knowledge Transfer, space hire, CPD and skills development
“From an industry perspective, it’s a talent problem, not a technique problem … and this is what ultimately affects production costs”, says Will. “You can’t just put a facility in an area without a business pipeline and a talent pipeline. It’s about creating a whole digital and creative ecosystem around the facilities”.
Activity Plan
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Underpinning this engagement activity is a mix of funding including a revenue funding proportion of the overall CDF investment to help unlock the value of the main capital investment. This is a unique and vital part of the CDF programme, supporting activity to help support site activation, community engagement, creative and cultural programming and market preparation throughout the design and construction process. This raises awareness, connects audiences and builds partnerships prior to opening and gives the capital projects the best possible chance of success.
In the case of Docking Station, the activity plan includes:
- Community research project
- Oral history podcast
- Primary school project
- Secondary school workshops
- Youth workshops
- Artist in residency programmes
- Festivals – including bOing Family Arts Festival
- Heritage skills development for construction
- Student experience
Current and future programmes include hackathons with local colleges – working with students on creative narratives and environments – and the creation of “Tech Packs” including some of the Virtual Reality (VR) headsets, laptops and Motion Capture suits to loan to local partners and venues, including Brook Theatre, Lordswood Community Hub and Medway Learning and Skills Hub.
The grants from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Colyer Fergusson Charitable Trust also part-fund this engagement activity.
Building on the Past
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Docking Station is centred around the restoration of a derelict local landmark and Grade II Scheduled Ancient Monument – the former Police Section House (PSH). This is the last remaining undeveloped part of the former Royal Dockyard, Chatham. The LIDAR scan and walkthrough video, above, gives a good indication both of the enormous potential for the restoration and the sheer amount of work required to bring the building back into use.
With the site having remained empty and unused since 1984, Project Director, Caroline Dennis, is clear that “none of this would have been possible without public funding since there was no clear case for viable commercial development.”
The £3.5m secured through CDF helped leverage and support additional funding to meet the costs of the project, including:
- £3.5m Cultural Development Fund (CDF)
- £5.6m Levelling Up Fund
- £3.9m National Lottery Heritage Fund
- £10k 10th May Charitable Trust
- £300k Colyer Ferguson Charitable Trust
Additional fundraising continues to address remaining gaps, including a recent “Make Your Mark” campaign allowing individuals or businesses to become a permanent part of the building by naming a brick, step or window.
The designs for the project include both the restoration of the former PSH and a modern purpose-built facility extending to the rear.
Like the majority of CDF projects, balancing the different funders’ requirements, expected outputs, objectives, budgets and cashflows from multiple sources becomes a fundamental part of the project delivery. Recent exponential increases in construction costs and sometimes unforeseen expenses unearthed when working on heritage properties also requires ongoing value engineering and – in the case of Docking Station – commissioning Clague Architects to rework original proposals.
“We’ve shedded cost but added utility”, says Caroline.
This includes keeping the main functionality whilst turning an originally-envisaged dedicated photogrammetry studio into a mixed-use space, dropping some of the height of the new building to sit more comfortably with the historic building and simplifying some of the materials for its facade design to tie in with the new surroundings.
The Future
Docking Station currently sits strategically within the wider offer of University of Kent and iCCi, including:
- Gulbenkian Arts Centre, including theatre, concert hall and cinema
- Art31 youth engagement programme – a central part of iCCI as an NPO
- Creative Estuary – focused on place-shaping for the wider region
- bOing Family Arts Festival
iCCI’s Director, David Sefton, sees the Docking Station as evolutionary and a key part of its future:
“What the Docking Station is doing is changing every single area of work we do”, says David. “It shouldn’t sit in its own area, but influence everything. Our artistic programme is changing because of it. It influences how we teach and how we engage with local communities and online and it informs future areas of research and practice. How do we look at digital safeguarding? How do we navigate the tensions or concerns parents might have around doing more online?”.
Will Draffin also reiterates what iCCI and Docking Station means for the local creative ecology:
“Through Docking Station, iCCi continues to create that innovation leadership in the region. There’s a whole cultural leadership piece we need to create that incorporates artistic practice, place-shaping, technical practice and commercial practice. We should be there to help support others to do that”.
To keep up to date with progress on the Docking Station project, sign up for Docking Station News via LinkedIn.
