As City Gateway looks to launch a new volunteering scheme, giving Canary Wharf and City workers volunteering opportunities less than 10 minutes from their offices, Sir Ian McKellen came down to the Limehouse Youth Centre to see an art project already bringing together a wide spectrum of the community.

The centre in Tower Hamlets, run jointly with Poplar HARCA, has attracted more than 50 entries into its art competition which is being openly judged by a mix of young people, Canary Wharf workers and local residents, including Ian himself.

At the launch today City Gateway’s CEO Eddie Stride commented: “Many of the companies we partner with already provide incredible opportunities for their staff to support local projects but in some roles it can be hard to take a day off to volunteer even if your boss tells you to! We’re looking to provide bite-sized opportunities where people can come down in their lunch breaks or straight after work and still make a big impact.”

City Gateway works in partnership with over 20 large firms in everything from team volunteering days through to individual mentoring schemes & ongoing work placements. The new scheme launches with a ‘Literacy Lunch’ project at City Gateway’s Women’s Project - a twist on reading volunteering schemes which traditionally target children as it aims instead to boost the language and confidence of women, principally from the local Bengali community.

Marketing Manager Jerry Daykin interviewed Sir Ian as part of his visit to the centre.

What’s your overall impression of the art work you’ve seen today?

I do love art, my house is full of paintings on the wall – though none of them are done by me, I’m useless! Drawing’s a great gift and several of them clearly have a great eye for colour and pattern. They’re all full of energy, they’ve clearly had a lot of fun doing it!

It’s quite moving when you see some of the fairly rough art downstairs, kids who have clearly not had a chance to do much art before, that they’re still managing to communicate something original.

How vital do you think it is that there are activities like this in the community?

Hugely important, it makes you aware of your surroundings, it’s not an arty farty thing you indulge by yourself, it affects the way you look at the world.

One of the things we’re doing is opening up the voting to the local community, how important is it to involve them in initiatives like this?

Well it’s fantastic and it’s always been the best thing about this club that it’s able to bring people together from different backgrounds. It’s on Narrow Street which really straddles the divide of being a very desirable residence at one end and a community with huge needs at the other.

There’s a nice domestic atmosphere, very friendly, when I come down in the morning it almost feels as if the kids have spent the night here! You don’t have a dormitory here do you?

No we don’t! But it is great that the young people do come to see this as a place they feel at home, especially when so much else in their lives can seem quite uncertain.

What would you say are some of the biggest changes you’ve personally seen in the community?

I used to walk past the centre going to the DLR but I never looked in, sometimes I used to cross over to the other side of the road to avoid groups of people! Now I’ve come here, and I’m hanging out with them, and the police and it’s great. It feels extremely relaxed but focussed at the same time, everyone seems to know why they’re here. I guess it’s opened my eyes to my own community.

Obviously one of the big changes the wider area’s seen is Canary Wharf developing and thousands more people coming to work here. Do you think companies there should have a responsibility to support the communities around them?

Yes they should, it is their duty – they’re lucky to be here, in many ways they’re the outsiders in this community. There’s a tradition of people with money helping the local community, especially in this part of London, and they should be aware of the local residents.

They can be stuck in all of this new development and around them, if they just looked out of their windows, on the street level there are people who need help through no fault of their own. City Gateway clearly can be the link. They have a duty, even in this economic time.

It’s good neighbourliness really, if you want your windows broken just forget about the local people and they’ll break your windows for you, or would you rather train them up to come and work for you and give them the chance to be good neighbours?

We’re launching a scheme to give people an opportunity to come and volunteer at locations just 10 minutes from their offices, in their lunch breaks or straight after work – what would you say to encourage people to come?

They’d have a fantastic time! In a sense they live here, they spend their days here, they should know what’s going on. They’d have their eyes wide opened, as I’ve had mine.

It’s so easy to sit around and complain about everyone else but once you meet some of these people you realise that everyone’s the same. Everyone needs encouragement, everyone wants a good laugh, everyone wants to develop themselves and projects like City Gateway begin to allow that to happen.

If you’re running a big business close by you should be a good neighbour and know what’s going on, it’s so easy to! It’s fun for me because I don’t have children and I imagine what would my kids be like, how well would I be looking after them?

You’ve been down to visit the centre several times now, what would you say was the biggest thing you personally got out of it?

I feel better about myself as a person living in this area because now I know a little bit about what goes on down my street in this youth club. I feel a bit more that I belong and have a right to live where I do.

You’ve been appearing in Waiting for Godot with Patrick Stewart, what’s the next big project coming up?

In November ‘The Prisoner’ comes out on ITV, a remake of the 70s thriller series, where I play Number 2 who’s in charge of a village of supposedly very happy people.

I’m hoping to take some of the rest of the year off, I am of retiring age after all, and then in 2010 I’ll be going back to New Zealand to make two films based on The Hobbit, Tolkien’s book which proceeds Lord of the Rings. That’ll take about 18 months, though I haven’t had a chance to read the scripts yet.

Well thank you very much for coming down, we really hope you’ll be able to be involved again in our work before you jet off down under - perhaps there'll be time to finish off that Hip-Hop Shakespeare album you started!

http://www.citygateway.org.uk/volunteering