Archives: Community

We’re celebrating 13 years in partnership with the Young Readers Programme – the award-winning initiative from our co-owner British Land and the National Literacy Trust, which aims to encourage children to read outside of the classroom.

As part of this year’s celebrations, we welcomed 308 children from Bedenham Primary School, Holbrook Primary School and St John’s Gosport CofE Primary School to take part in a storytelling session designed to inspire a love of reading.

Children had the chance to listen to stories from a professional storyteller and take part in a range of fun activities, including a literacy session with Explore Learning. We also gave each child a book of their choice to take home for free.

The Young Readers Programme is especially designed to provide additional support and help with the development of children in under privileged areas by giving them better access to books.

We’ve taken part in the programme for the last 13 years and have helped to support more than 2,200 school children in Fareham and seen more than 6,800 books donated across the region.

Research from the National Literacy Trust shows that reading for enjoyment among 8 – 18-year-olds in the South West is at its lowest since 2005 – for almost two decades.

Find out more about National Literacy Trust and its Young Readers Programme.

After a successful ‘Bottle Top’ project last year where Whiteley encouraged customers to donate hard-to-recycle bottle tops, which were then repurposed into a colourful art mural onsite.

The project was so popular that bottle tops continued to be donated at a significant rate so we created a new project to stop them going to land-fill called ‘Bottle Top to Benches’.

We worked closely with a local company called ‘Reformed Plastics’ who create furniture from 100% recycled plastics. This company collected all our donated bottle tops along with some unwanted plastic to be reprocessed in future furniture projects.

The total weight of plastic collected was 701kg (including 276kg/184,000 bottle tops!)

Altogether including the giant rainbow chair we have worked together to prevent over 1100kg of plastic waste going to landfill – the equivalent of 70,000 500ml plastic bottles.

Plus for every giant rainbow chair sold, Reformed Plastics donate £100 to Awesome Archie – a charity dedicated to making the world a more inclusive place for children with neurological differences.

We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who helped us with the collection and hope you enjoy having a seat on our giant rainbow chair located near Baja.

Some of the retailers in Whiteley have special times that could be beneficial to customers with Autism or sensory differences.

The Entertainer Quiet Hour

We have a quiet hour the first hour of every day. We turn the music off and dim the lights.

Tesco

Our quiet hours are Wednesday 9am – 10am and Saturday 9am – 10am

Rock Up

Our SEN sessions run the first Monday of every month 18:30 – 20:00

Rock Up Whiteley online tickets – Products (roller.app)

Clarks Quiet In-Store Fitting

Shoe shopping can be overwhelming for little ones. If you’d like to visit us during a time with fewer crowds, noise and bright lights, then we offer Quiet Time appointments.

To book this contact Clarks Whiteley or call 01489 581716.

Cineworld

We run a specific Autism Friendly Session at 11am on the first Sunday of every month.

In these sessions, the lights go down to half, the sound is a little quieter and there are no adverts or trailers. Just the film itself.

We always have these available for booking much further in advance than our regular films.

Whiteley Shopping Centre has unveiled a new book swap area for visitors to share and exchange books for free.

The initiative aims to inspire the community to get reading by providing access to stories free of charge and helping people to be more sustainable.

So far, more than 150 books have been donated by the local community alongside Whiteley’s team and retailers to stock up the shelves, with readers encouraged to return the book once finished or replace with another to keep the cycle going if they are able to.

The bookcase, which was gifted to the centre by a local resident, is located in Market Square, and novels currently available include everything from rom coms by Marian Keyes and Elizabeth Noble to thrillers by James Dashner and David Gemmell.

The Whiteley team have spent the last five months working on a recycling project at Whiteley Shopping Centre, asking the local community, schools as well as all the stores and restaurants to get involved in the collection of plastic bottle tops. The aim was to create a large woodland themed mural, which is now on display on the Whiteley Stage for September.

We have collected over 6000 bottle tops and the collection is still going, anyone is welcome to donate plastic lids (any size or colour) into the collection bin located just inside the public toilet by Market Square until the end of September 2023. All the remaining bottle tops will be donated to a local charity recycling scheme and to Eco Artist and Designer, Sarah Turner, who is currently creating our 10-year anniversary sculpture, made entirely from recycled materials.

Whiteley has the community at heart and is proud to be an integral part of this expanding town.

We have hosted many annual community activities such as remembrance services, Whiteley Primary School carol concerts, local charity events and art projects to name just a few. We are also delighted to support the Town Council’s hosting of Meadowside Music Festival.

On location, we run three-day workshops designed by arts charity Create, and attended by Winchester & District Young Carers. The workshops are designed to introduce young carers to new art forms like film, photography and animation, boosting confidence and team work, while providing some enjoyable respite from their demanding everyday roles.

This year, we launched the Highbury Handover which saw 100 students from Highbury College undertake work experience and project work at Whiteley – they received full marks all round! We look forward to providing more opportunities for young people in the very near future.  

We welcome pre-booked visits from schools to Whiteley Shopping Centre.

Whiteley Shopping Centre is private property and a popular location for geography field trips – as such we require all schools to contact the centre in advance to arrange their visit. Please do contact the management team on the details below at least a week prior to your intended visit date to ensure the trip is able to be booked in.  

The team will be able to provide information on where to park safely, site rules and supply you with our centre fact sheet and sustainability documents.

Please call 01489 566000 or email [email protected]

Whilst we may be unusually quiet at the moment, we have been working alongside our local community. We thought you might like to know what we’re up to.

We want to let you know a little more about the people working in Whiteley right now. Whilst we may be unusually quiet at the moment, we thought you might like to know what we’re up to. These are the people working throughout this crisis to ensure our community gets what it needs and stays as safe as possible whilst doing it. They are our heroes.

This is Mark from Marks and Spencer. Mark is an in store trained baker and one of the people responsible for ensuring we all get enough bread throughout this pandemic.

Mark stepped up to keep working because he knows this gives someone else in the team the opportunity to step back and care for their dependants. As one of only a few trained bakers in store, the team have had to be flexible to ensure they are there to bake as often as possible to try and keep up with demand.

As well as bringing us our bread, Mark has also been taking care of his 81-year-old aunt in remission from cancer with regular food deliveries to her doorstep.

From us to you, thank you Mark.

We want to let you know a little more about the people working in Whiteley right now. Whilst we may be unusually quiet at the moment, we thought you might like to know what we’re up to. These are the people working throughout this crisis to ensure our community gets what it needs and stays as safe as possible whilst doing it. They are our heroes.

This is Justin from Boots. Before the pandemic, Justin worked in Whiteley store assisting customers with fragrance and electrical products. Since the pandemic, Justin’s role has changed completely.

As soon as Justin saw how busy the number of prescriptions coming into the company had become, he knew he had to help and immediately offered his services, requesting a redeployment to the driver hub.

This change of role now means that Justin supports the delivery team to keep the number of home prescription deliveries stable for customers and care home services. This obviously puts Justin at greater risk but he wanted to step up to support his community, colleagues and Boots.

Justin says he’s so proud of the team at Boots Whiteley and how they’ve all supported each other throughout this time.

From us to you, thank you Justin.