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Young Jersey performers and budding DJs will have a bigger and better place to make music and stage events next year when work is finished on a new base for the Youth Services team at St James Centre.
Work has now started on the final phase of the project costing more than £2.5 million to modernise the church and vicarage, and the Youth Service will be moving out of their building in La Motte Street in January, which will then be turned into homes.
The historic building will have a new entrance foyer and exhibition area, auditorium and sound-proofed rehearsel rooms, a recording studio and radio station.
Principal Youth Officer Mark Capern said: “The exciting stuff is that in the church there will be a new recording studio, new practicing rooms, larger performing space - we’ve never had a big enough venue for young people to put events on for young people.
“It will be a much better resource for youth arts and I think it could become a flagship for other youth services in the UK.”
The school building at St James Centre was completed last year and the Youth Service use it to run the Prince’s Trust and Duke of Edinburgh Award schemes.
As well as the new performance space, the Service will use the building as an administrative hub and the Youth Enquiry Service will have counselling rooms in the Vicarage.
Education Minister Deputy Patrick Ryan said: “This is an important project for the Youth Service and will play a major part in ensuring it can meet the needs of Jersey’s young people in future. It is an exciting and much-needed development and I look forward to seeing it come to fruition.”
The church first opened in 1829 and was one of the first places Islanders could go and worship since medieval times.
It closed in the 80s and the States took it on in the 90s and turned it into an arts venue and concert hall.
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