Council outside Glasgow to fund Jewish Heritage project

FUNDING of £10,000 to develop a Jewish heritage centre in the city centre will be awarded by a council outside Glasgow.

Two charities developing the Scottish Jewish Heritage centre in Garnethill Synagogue will be granted a oneoff payment from Inverclyde Council to help with the development.

Work on the centre being developed in Scotland’s oldest synagogue, which opened in 1879, started last May and is expected to be completed at the end of 2019 or the beginning of 2020.

Inverclyde were approached because of the large Jewish community across the constituency but no request has been made to Glasgow City Council’s development and regeneration services department.

Running costs for the masterplan, within the A-listed building, are expected to be £55,000 annually for the next five-years.

The leader of the council, councillor Stephen McCabe, received a letter from the Scottish Jewish Heritage Centre for a yearly grant to help deliver this project.

The idea is being shaped through a partnership between two charitable trusts – the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre (SJAC) and the Garnethill Synagogue Preservation Trust (GSPT).

The GSPT, which was set up in 2012 as a registered charity, looks after the fabric of the building at Garnethill and acts as landlord for the for the centre and synagogue.

The hub will include a Scottish Holocaust-era study centre and is being created following a four-year development period.

The facility equipped with will be digital learning material and a library providing access for the first time to unique collections revealing the experiences of refugees, fleeing Nazi Europe.

Project workers believe the national centre will enhance the resources available to teachers and lecturers across the country, including Inverclyde, and have requested financial support to help fund the ongoing revenue costs for the new centre.

The project has already been awarded funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Association of Jewish Refugees and The Wolfson Family Charitable Trust.