THE CHARITY

The Poly is a thriving charity promoting engagement in the arts, sciences and Cornish history through film, live events, exhibitions, lectures and workshops, with our roots in artistic and technological innovation and local industry. 

Our vision is to be a place where everyone feels welcome to be entertained, engage with culture, and be creative. 

Our Mission, as a key cultural and community hub in Cornwall, is to provide inspiring, inclusive and innovative entertainment, learning and development opportunities across the arts, sciences and history.

Building on the founding principle of the RCPS (‘to educate and encourage the public in all aspects of the Arts Sciences Crafts and History with particular reference to the County of Cornwall’), and in light of the importance of community underscored by the recent pandemic, it was agreed that The Poly has an important role to play in promoting wellbeing for the town’s diverse communities through cultural engagement and opportunities to be creative. Within Cornwall it is also uniquely placed to foster creative connections between heritage, art and science to support innovation, with the possibility of engaging with a wide range of constituents and partnerships, from children and young people, to locally-based HE providers and businesses.

 

Our Values

 

• Connecting heritage, art and science 

• Supporting innovation

• Community-centred

• Environmentally and socially responsible

 

We believe that: opportunities for creativity flow from connecting heritage, art and science and that creativity across these areas can make our community and our world a better place; innovation should be encouraged and supported; there should be no barriers to accessing culture and creativity; environmental and social responsibility should inform all our actions.

 

Registered charity 1081199.

OUR HISTORY

The Cornwall Polytechnic Society (the Poly) was founded in 1833, the inspiration of Anna Maria and Caroline, the teenage daughters of Robert Were Fox of G.C. Fox & Co, a prominent Falmouth firm of shipping agents. The firm was also joint owner of the Perran Foundry, whose workmen constantly brought models and inventions for inspection, and new ideas for improving the working of the foundry. With their father’s encouragement, a Society was formed ‘To promote the useful and fine arts, to encourage industry, and to elicit the ingenuity of a community distinguished for its mechanical skill’.

The Society was certainly founded on philanthropic principles, but President Sir Charles Lemon, seven prominent Cornish Vice Presidents, and Chairman Charles Fox, were all successful businessmen, for whom whatever ‘encouraged industry’ should also be good for business. With this in view, the founders determined that a large Hall should be erected by the Society to accommodate an annual exhibition of new inventions, especially mechanical ones, in an era when science was continually revealing new wonders to the world.

For the first two years, exhibitions were held in the Falmouth Classical School, which proved so popular, and were so overcrowded, that the Committee decided that the new Hall and permanent home for the Society should be built as soon as possible.

You can read more about the history of The Poly in the following books:

Founding The Poly describes the industrial conditions that called for the creation of the new society.

Cornwall's House of Inventions tells the story of those inventions and the Hall that was built to exhibit them and how The Poly ended up re-inventing itself.

PDF versions of those books can be found here:

House of Inventions (PDF) >

Picture - Anna Maria Fox, Founder of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society.