Blueprint Launches The Trent Basin Makers Yard

Award-winning specialist developer Blueprint, has opened a new community and commercial hub on Daleside Road in Nottingham, adjoining its Trent Basin development.

The Trent Basin Makers Yard is to be a new home and incubator hub for local artists, makers and service providers with a strong focus on culture, health and wellbeing, revitalising an ex-industrial area with many underused spaces and hidden assets.

Blueprint has already purchased two key buildings on Daleside Road, Arlo House and the Pine Warehouse next door, in order to establish a core base for the project and secured its first tenants, One Thorseby Street and Bikeworks, alongside a commitment to further extend The Trent Basin Makers Yard.

Sam Veal is Chief Executive at Blueprint: ”We have seen the residents at Trent Basin establish and instil this new neighbourhood with a very strong sense of place and identity – very much with an independent energy. At Blueprint we wanted to extend this sense of place and create a new destination for the makers, and manufacturers and artists in the area, where social enterprises can be supported and nurtured, and attract those practitioners that promote health and wellbeing. The vision is to reimagine, restore and breathe new life into this ex-industrial site.”

Although the management of The Yard will be collectively organised by its tenants, the team at Blueprint will step in to support as needed and potentially look to purchase additional properties as The Yard expands. There are also plans in place to link the new hub directly to the Trent Basin development with a new pedestrian and cycle route for residents and providing direct access to the river and the historic basin inlet for visitors and those located at The Yard.

Tristan Hessing is currently director of One Thoresby Street, a not for profit community of freelance sculptors, photographers, product designers, musicians and filmmakers, based in Nottingham city centre. He states: “I will soon be moving on from One Thoresby Street and am currently evolving a new offering at The Trent Basin Makers Yard to include a pioneering new creative collaboration and artistic fabrication base as well as an events hub for the East Midlands with national impact.

“I could not be more pleased to be a founding partner of this new project that has such potential for the city.”

Ian Keetley is Managing Director at Bikeworks, a not-for-profit community interest company that focuses on recycling bikes and promoting cycling as an affordable, healthy and sustainable way to travel: “We had been looking for a new base to move to for some time that gave us the opportunity to expand and work within a culture driven and collaborative space. Trent Basin Makers Yard gives us that space where we can service bikes, run maintenance classes, workshops and events and sell refurbished bikes, all of which support a range of community projects here in Nottingham.”

Colin Hallahan plans to open an Aikido Dojo at Trent Basin Makers Yard. Shobukai Aikido Daleside will teach this Japanese martial art to residents and the wider community: “The practice of aikido is to overcome oneself instead of cultivating violence or aggressiveness. We already have commitment from a number of internationally recognised teachers to visit us in 2021, so exciting times ahead.

“The opportunity we have at The Makers Yard is to not just provide a place to learn aikido, but we want to expand to be able to offer the local community a space for other wellbeing physical activities and to other martial arts clubs in the local community.”

The launch of The Trent Basin Makers Yard is just the first step in its planned development. Blueprint’s strategy for the site look to link the site directly to the waterfront in order to activate underused industrial space there to create more public social space overlooking the river and the basin inlet at the heart of the Trent Basin neighbourhood.

Trent Basin’s residential community is continuing to grow with Phase 3 currently under development with homes to be released for sale in Spring 2021. Phase 4 will also include the development of a new school for the community. For more information please contact Peter Conboy at Blueprint at peter.conboy@igloo.uk.net.