Anyone who has walked past the Packs building on Cross Street in Ryde over the past few months will be aware of the huge refurbishment works taking place there.
Thanks to funding from Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery and others, the former department store is being transformed into a state-of-the-art cultural centre called Department.
The brainchild of the visionary team at Shademakers UK — Sharon George, Paul McLaren, Martin Sheaf, Joe Plumb and Lily George — Department will feature studio and work spaces for creatives, performance spaces, exhibition spaces, community spaces, a cafe/bar and even a recording studio.
Sneak peek
The OnTheWight team were recently given a tour of the building to see how the work was coming along. Obviously it’s still a building site, but it was clear to see the vision for the transformation.
Architects Turner Works are responsible for the overall design, with Isle of Wight architects, Modh, assisting at a local level, and Crown Park the main contractor.
A surprising amount of the budget has had to go on making the building safe. As with many old buildings, once you start peeling back the layers, all sorts of horrors can be revealed.
However, the quality of materials being used, the attention to detail and layout of spaces make it very easy imagine the final outcome – which we believe is going to be spectacular!
Heritage Exhibition
Tracy Mikich, Teresa Grimaldi and Sean Turner have been working hard to develop a Heritage Exhibition, celebrating the many uses of the building over the past century. Meanwhile, Amber Rose from Stitch Department has been busy running community heritage workshops, with the output being revealed at the grand opening in March 2025.
For those desperate to see inside sooner, some events are being programmed to take place in the building from February (more on those soon) and studio/work spaces will be available from January 2025.
You can read more about the transformation on the Department website.
Photo tour
We’ve shared some shots below to give you a flavour of the work taking place, but since our visit, we hear that work has progressed at pace with many more transformations taking place.
