14/10/2026
Learning & Participation is such an important part of the work we do with communities. Through artist-led workshops, studio visits and longer-term creative projects, we connect people of all ages with practising artists, creating opportunities to make, learn and find new pathways into the arts.
Over the past year, we delivered 81 learning activities, generating 991 participant engagements across London. We worked with primary and secondary schools, SEND participants and care-experienced young people, as well as adult learners and emerging artists. Through this work, participants were able to make, learn and engage directly with artists and contemporary art.
The recent loss of our Holborn space means we lose not only a physical space, but the work and partnerships that have grown from having a permanent presence in Camden. For schools, young people, artists and community organisations, having somewhere local to return to is what allows relationships to develop over time and makes participation in the arts feel possible and accessible.
At the heart of The Bomb Factory is a belief that art is a public good, not a private luxury. In one of the world’s most expensive cities, access to art and creative opportunity is not a given – it has to be built, and held. Losing Holborn does not simply make this work harder; it severs the very relationships this report sets out to celebrate, at precisely the moment when accessible cultural spaces are needed most.
We are hugely grateful to our partners and schools, and especially to the artists and participants who have made this year’s programme possible. Their involvement is what makes this work so meaningful, and what makes its loss so hard to accept.
This is the reality facing artist-led organisations across the capital. We cannot sustain deep, place-based work on temporary tenancies and borrowed rooms. If organisations like ours are to keep doing this work, and keep doing it well, we need what we have never reliably had: permanent, secure space.
