Renovating the Old Dairy volunteering space

This project aims to renovate The Old Dairy volunteer building at Windmill Hill City Farm and transform it into a warm, welcoming and accessible space full of natural light. The Old Dairy is used by 300 volunteers each year facing wellbeing or mental health challenges as a place to take breaks together, store their personal belongings, prepare for gardening and animal care sessions and take shelter in cold, wet weather. The building has been upgraded piece-meal from a goat-milking parlour to a storage area, and now is an uninsulated draughty room, divided into a kitchen and a boot room. By insulating the Old Dairy, adding heating and making it more accessible we will be able to improve our volunteer facilities and increase the number of volunteers we work with, especially those with mobility, dementia and sight impairments. We will also create a private meeting space to carry out volunteer consultations and understand volunteers’ specific needs. The works will also make the Old Dairy space more welcoming to 132 nursery children and 500 primary school children who use it each year.
The specific works include reinforcing the roof, installing insulation and plasterboard, fitting new roof lights, creating stud walls to separate the rooms, installing shelving and cupboards for volunteers’ belongings, fitting dementia friendly flooring and making the building more accessible with wider doors and a ramp.
Through renovating the Old Dairy, we will be able to achieve the following aims:
1) Improve the mental health, wellbeing, resilience, confidence and self esteem of those people accessing the volunteering programme who experience poor mental health and wellbeing, and improve accessibility to reach new groups e.g. older people, people with visual impairments and mobility issues. Last year, 98% of participants on our Health and Social Care programme felt their mental health had improved and 93% felt less isolated.
2) Improve the environmental learning opportunities on offer to children and teachers through our Outdoor Learning and Early Years education programme, providing enhanced experiences of food, farming and the environment on the farm. Currently, 100% of teachers rate the quality of their educational visits to the farm as 5/5.
3) Reduce the carbon footprint of Windmill Hill City Farm, contributing towards the farm’s climate action plan and ambition to be carbon neutral by 2030 which in turn will reduce energy bills so that more can be spent on charitable activities.
4) Protect and improve the biodiversity of Windmill Hill City Farm with the help of volunteers e.g. planting for pollinators, creating wildlife gardens, growing vegetables to organic standards and using a closed loop system for composting food waste.