The Project: Balby Carr Community Sports and Science College

The Brief

The Doncaster based school is a mixed comprehensive, serving the districts of Balby and Hexthorpe. The pupils range from ages 11 to 18 including a popular oversubscribed sixth form due to the excellent Sports Academy programmes, totalling about 1,300 students. The majority of the school was built in the 1960's and the early 1980’s but has developed additional facilities over the years to support the quality learning and teaching programmes, specifically, additional sports fields and pitches to support its Sports College status. 

Balby Carr's buildings reflect the architecture of the eras in which they were built. It has not benefited from any funding from the Government BSF scheme, but the college has ensured it continues to develop its 5 star facilities to provide both students and staff with high quality amenities that reflect a 5 star, 21st century learning environment.  

As a Sports College, Balby Carr finds the Sports Hall an essential space for PE, teaching and sports clubs. Adding a tiered seating area for spectators had to be versatile, so that the whole space could still be used, and with a quick transformation, could offer a complete seating block.  With daily use the seating also needed to be tough, strong and safe.

The End Result

The sports hall can now accommodate a full seated audience, on auto-Q retractable seating.  The seating block is fully automated, so can pull out and retract at the touch of a button and take one operator. This alleviates time and manpower, so instead of taking a number of staff to set out chairs, it now takes one person to operate auto-Q and alleviates any health and safety issues.

The retractable seating is used daily for school assemblies, an important motivational and inspirational part of the school day.  Before its installation, the main hall was used for assemblies, where the chairs were stored, and used for school lunches too. The logistics of using the same space for different activities together with the time and manpower were influencing factors in looking for an alternative.

The space that the main hall offers can now be utilised as a curriculum teaching space for the sixth form students, and is also still used as a dining hall at lunchtime. The sports hall, the largest indoor space, can be used as an assembly room, a teaching space and a sports hall. The versatility of auto-Q allows for a variety of uses, offering a good view for spectators, a closer audience for teachers and a safe and solid seating space, where the chairs cannot be shuffled, tipped or moved.  

Balby Carr also chose to have dual stack seating, which means that half of the seating can be used whilst the other half is still stored away. This means that auto-Q can accommodate a smaller audience and allows for activities to surround the seating, as it did in a school open day, where the students illustrated their table tennis talents, with a number of tables set around the sports hall.As a sports college, Balby Carr offers extracurricular activities, sports clubs and academies, including football, golf, Sports Leadership and boxing. The success of these and the support the school can offer its pupils in terms of sports coaching and facilities, illustrates the importance to invest in the right equipment to get the maximum return.

What They Said

Familiar with Stage Systems already, having purchased Q-build staging previously, Balby Carr initially chose Stage Systems to quote on a retractable seating unit due to an existing good relationship. Auto-Q then proved to be the right product based on its own merits of versatility, price and quality, in addition to the service that Stage Systems offer.

The auto-Q retractable seating now means that the school assemblies can run efficiently, audience facilities are available for sports events and the use of space in the hall and sports hall can be used more productively.

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