LONDON’S South Bank centre, the home of the Royal Festival Hall and Hayward Gallery, is creating a new education centre as part of its pound;54 million renovations. The centre will incorporate a large dance floor, doubling the size of the current “Hothouse” space, the only dedicated area for education at present in the RFH; a new Gamelan room, twice the size of the existing one, which attracts more than 2,000 people of all ages to 400 workshops a year; and a dedicated “making space” area for exhibitions and installations.

Michael Lynch, chief executive, says the new centre underlines the importance SBC places on education. South Bank is a key partner in the Lambeth education action zone with artists and musicians working in local schools. St Andrew’s CE school was commended by the Office for Standards in Education for consistently improving the achievement of boys from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds, which inspectors attributed to their involvement in arts projects.