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Lottery Fund Seals The Deal for New Inverclyde Arts Centre
Plans for Inverclyde's brand new community arts space were boosted today as the Big Lottery Fund announced a grant of £378,716 to the new theatre at Greenock's waterfront – completing the funding jigsaw for the multi million pound project.
Today's award to the Greenock Arts Guild is one of 17 in a £5.9 million package to be announced later this week, will fund projects across Scotland from the Big Lottery Fund. These are the last to be made from the current Growing Community Assets programme which aims to empower and strengthen communities by allowing them to take control and ownership of local assets.
Announcing today's awards in Greenock on the site of the new Arts Centre Big Lottery Fund Scotland Director Dharmendra Kanani, said: “It's great to be here today is this historic location. The Big Lottery Fund is delighted to support this project. The community cafe and conference suite that our funding will contribute to, will allow this fantastic project to house social enterprises creating additional revenue to support the whole Arts centre. The project's aim to support people from the community with mental health problems and young people at risk of offending means the whole community in its widest sense will feel a benefit from the work ongoing here.”
“Across Scotland we are investing in communities to help strengthen them and allow local people to drive forward change in their area. Our funding can empower small communities to make change happen for themselves. These are among the last grants made from our Growing Community Assets programme before it is relaunched later this summer. Each of them latest has the long term future of their communities at their heart and I am confident they will all enjoy great success in the years to come.”
Greenock Arts Guild Chairman, Elliott Mckelvie welcomed the funding. He said, “We are delighted that Big Lottery has recognised our project as delivering real benefit to the community of Inverclyde.This is the culmination of several years' work with them to help deliver an important aspect of our operational plans for the new arts centre. The award will enable us to launch an ambitious programme of engagement with members of the community who may not have engaged with arts activity in the past. We expect it to result in real benefit to them and to the wider community.”
Bill Nicol, CEO of Riverside Inverclyde said " I am delighted that the big lottery application has been approved for the Arts Centre and Theatre project at the historic East India harbour site in Greenock. This is an important day, one which takes us a stage further in securing the development of the theatre on the Waterfront. I would commend the Greenock Arts Guild and our partners in securing this finance and look forward to hopefully seeing a site start on the build next month".
The project is also part funded by Riverside Inverclyde, Inverclyde Council and the Scottish Arts Council.