Forum topic: Exhibiting the new-look Dugdale Centre

The "proposed interior scene" at the Dugdale - an excerpt from a presentation dating from February 2022

This Monday was the first day of a three-month outdoor exhibition that will be moving around the borough to let people know about what changes they will find when they revisit the Dugdale Centre when it reopens this winter.

The first two changes that people will notice are a new name - the Dugdale Arts Centre - and a relocated main entrance, moved round the corner into Cecil Road. Inside, they'll find pretty much everything in new places apart from the Centre's small theatre. And despite the fact that the ground floor will now have to accommodate the whole of the Enfield Museum - not just temporary exhibitions, but permanent exhibits too will be squeezed in - the designers are adding a second, less formal, performance space with its own tiered seating area. This won't be separated by walls from other parts of the ground floor, so there could be a problem with visitors to the cafe conversing with one another interfering with performances.

The cafe, En_Food, will spill out onto the wide part of the pavement outside the building - something that works well in many places, but perhaps not next to one of Enfield Town's busiest junctions, where traffic will be queuing at the lights.

The new Dugdale will be located on the ground floor only, rather than two floors as it was previously, because the remaining floors in the Thomas Hardy House will be occupied by a new Parents and Children's Hub, which will have its own separate entrance in London Road. The local studies library and archives that were previously on the second floor are now in the Civic Centre in Silver Street, though most of the actual archive materials are temporarily housed in Ridge Avenue Library.

The council have stated that the changes are are part of a cost-cutting project to concentrate their estate in fewer locations and to create hubs for services in convenient town-centre locations. However, they have not been greeted with universal enthusiasm - the refurbishment plans were "called in" by opposition councillors in March, whilein their latest newsletter the Enfield Society, which campaigned to keep museum and archives at the Dugdale, reveal scepticism about the vision for a "best-in-class arts centre including theatre, museum, cabaret performance area, education space, pop-up shop and award-winning sustainable food café".