Records from the 1950s show that social events in the Halls ranged from birthday celebrations, antique fairs, ‘Meet a Mum’ jumble sales, weddings, aerobics, to a Psychic Festival. The fact that the Halls offered a multi-purpose community venue played a significant role in the promotion of local citizenship and civic pride in the post-war period. Stanley Arts from 1970s onwards As the decades progressed, without a separate cultural identity and no physical separation, the upper and main halls, the gallery and the assembly rooms, all increasingly became part of the expanding Technical school; known locally simply as Stanley Tech. Though the buildings were used to some extent outside of school hours, the record of separate cultural activity in this period is limited, and to all intents and purposes Stanley Halls and Stanley Tech were the same place. By the turn of the 21st century, the Technical School, which had by then seen better days, was being absorbed into the Harris Academy chain; and a new school complex was being built on an L-shaped site around the back of Stanley Halls. In 2007 the newly-opened Harris Academy South Norwood comprised the old Technical School building, the Upper Stanley Hall & Clocktower, and a modern new-build school site stretching around behind Stanley Halls. The rest of the historic Stanley Halls complex, including the main Stanley Hall and gallery, and the assembly & society rooms, were separated from the Upper Hall with a new internal wall that divided the Stanley Halls complex in two. Over the next five years the future of the larger, lower half, the ‘unneeded’ part of the Stanley Halls complex as it was seen by the developers of the new school academy, was in question. With these remaining buildings under threat, and competing visions for their future, the local community came together to apply to take them on from Croydon Council as a community asset transfer. In 2015 the buildings were finally signed over to the newly-formed Stanley People’s Initiative, a charity established to save this part the historic Stanley Halls complex, and hopefully to find a new use for this extraordinary set of buildings. Over the first few years of operation this new, reduced, Stanley Halls slowly found its feet; and with it, a renewed sense of purpose. Paradoxically, the pandemic of 2020 helped to re-establish the buildings in the hearts and minds of local people as an