Salford Uni’s £55m arts and media school ready student intake
THE University of Salford’s £55m flagship New Adelphi Arts Centre is set to open its doors for the start of the academic year – providing students with cutting edge facilities.
The building opens on Monday September 19 and will be the new home for many of the University’s School of Arts and Media courses – art, design, fashion, photography, music, performance and dance – as well as the School of the Built Environment’s new architecture programme.
The building, with its 161,000sq ft of floor space over eight storeys, will provide a purpose built facility for students to work to professional standards, enabling them to collaborate with top industry professionals in a state of the art environment.
The New Adelphi Arts Centre’s facilities include: A 350 seat theatre, to open for public and community performances as well as student shows; professional quality TV studios featuring HD cameras; five professional recording studios; a band room large enough to record an orchestra; 8,000sq ft of specialist art and design workshops.
The facilities will enable students to work with innovative new practices, processes and technologies, enhancing the University’s existing relationships with industry collaborators including HOME, The Lowry, Hotel Football, Islington Mill, the Daily Telegraph, and a wide range of media organisations including ITV and the BBC.
Professor Allan Walker, dean of the School of Arts and Media, said: “New Adelphi is designed to provide our students with a comprehensive and cutting-edge environment of creative studios and performance spaces which will support the development of their professional experience and training.
“It will enhance our working relationships with a wide range of organisations – an approach to learning which is at the heart of the University’s Industry Collaboration Zone (ICZ) strategy and which is central to our commitment that all students will benefit from engaging with industry professionals during the course of their degree programmes.
“We expect New Adelphi will soon be recognised as one of the UK’s most advanced creative production and training facilities for all forms of performance, plastic arts and for design combined with media and digital technologies.
“The building will not only provide an artistic hub for our students, but a programme of events will make it a mainstay of Greater Manchester’s cultural landscape.”
Built by BAM Construction, the building was made using 1,000 tonnes of structural steel and 60,000sq ft of reinforced concrete.
It houses a café, a bar, a rooftop terrace and wildlife attracting green roof. Its distinctive large walkway, cutting through the centre of the building, will lead visitors into the heart of the University’s Peel Park campus.
BAM director Tony Grindrod said: “This building has involved some real challenges with the amount of structural steelwork required and the huge number of specialist facilities to fit inside, but the team has pulled together to deliver an impressive facility while still making time to benefit students and local people with a huge amount of learning and employment opportunities.
“Many of the BAM team, including myself, came to the University of Salford so we’re proud to have delivered what will now become such a landmark building for the University at the gateway to its campus.”
