The Our Town - Clarenville Blog by Paul Tilley

This photo is of the former Clarenville Primary School.  You can't quite make out the graffiti on the door which says Welcome to Hell.  Perhaps the artist doesn't realize that it's no longer operating as a school. As I passed by it today, I wondered about the status of the building. It has been closed for over a year now. I assume it is considered an asset of the provincial government but I wonder about its future. It certainly can't be left to rot or left to be the target of vandals. While travelling through Ontario recently with the Governor General's Canadian Leadership Conference , I toured the Rexdale Community Hub . The community of Rexdale is a priority neighbourhood of the City of Toronto.  The Hub is housed in a renovated school. It houses about 11 social agencies, including a women's centre, medical clinic, family resource centre and employment centre. It also includes a gym with hopes to soon include a community kitche...

Paul's post about a community centre for Elizabeth Swan Park reminded me of  this article by Taryn Sheppard I read in The Scope about a community centre in Denmark.   The community centre pictured here serves a neighborhood of 600 families. The bottom of the structure has a half-pipe skate ramp and going up one side there's a climbing wall.  Herstedlund Community Centre in Albertslund, Denmark. Photo by Adam Mørk The inside includes multi-functional spaces that could serve many different groups at the same time. With spaces on various levels with many entrances, there's lots of ways to access various rooms and to create different spaces with moving walls and hatch doors. A kitchen can transform into an outdoor patio or bar. A performance space has a stage that can be divided into smaller stages by sliding walls. The top level of the facility is an open roof terrace and basketball court, which can be acces...