Charity: Discover Children’s Story Centre
Location: Newham, East London
Service: Advice from Access and Sustainability Advice Service (ASAS), access audit by Centre for Accessible Environments (CAE).
Status: Client has made immediate access improvements and is using its own funding to make more substantial recommendations from the CAE access audit.
The client
Discover Children’s Story Centre (DCSC) is a children’s museum that aims to support a love of language, literature and stories. The DCSC was founded as a charity in 1997 and opened its doors in 2003. Today it attracts around 100,000 visitors per year.
The DCSC is a place where children aged 0 to 11 and their families can enjoy playing, learning and making up stories together. Visitors come from the local Stratford area, across London and surrounding areas.
The centre’s ethos is that stories are critical to child development, that they can transform lives and shape strong and vibrant communities.
The building
The DCSC lies in a former factory building built in the Victorian period on Stratford High Street in the London borough of Newham.
The centre has two floors of immersive, multi-sensory, exploratory play spaces called Story Worlds, which was conceived as an interactive story trail with an outdoor story garden
The brief
The DCSC sought advice from CAE after they conducted a business review working with children, families, staff and stakeholders.
The aim of the audit was to inform the museum’s commitment to accessibility and inclusion as a company, and their planned building works.
DCSC is carrying out extensive works to its building, which includes a new cafe, reception area, an under-two’s space and a ‘story tree’ attraction with the aim of improving accessibility and inclusion. The project costs £2 million and will be completed in 2026.
CAE’s audit provided:
- recommendations for planned upgrades to the communal wash and play areas.
- recommendations on the new café flooring and making the new story tree attraction more accessible to wheelchair users.
- an understanding of the various needs of the centre’s users and how to use this knowledge to plan for future projects and plans.
The outcome
Rebekah Polding, CEO of Discover Children’s Story Centre, said: “The audit gave us an understanding of what needed improvement and allowed us to use the knowledge gained from the audit for future projects to ensure we can keep to our principal of growing accessibility.”
Since the audit, the centre has upgraded one of its bathrooms with a submarine theme. They have used suggestions and principals in CAE’s report to ensure all users can access the communal wash and play areas, including the submarine’s control console.
CAE’s audit findings are being used to inform their planned refurbishment project. Examples include ensuring the new cafe flooring is not visually busy and making the new story tree fully wheelchair accessible.
Rebekah added: “It was brilliant to have such knowledgeable and encouraging auditors visit, applaud what we’re doing right and support us in finding more ways to improve the visitor experience.
“We get great feedback from people about accessibility, but we’re always trying to improve and hope to provide an even better welcome for more people once we’ve completed the work that our audit recommended.”
For more information and advice on ASAS and how we can help you, email our Access Advisor, Asa Hems, at asas@cae.org.uk or telephone +44 (0)754 6690 040.
