Culture’s cash boost to get
Tourist attractions and big events – like many businesses and households – have taken a big financial hit from the coronavirus pandemic. But Leicestershire’s cultural gems are now getting a £3.1 million boost to prepare them for the end of lockdown, allow
Tom Mack
LEICESTER Comedy Festival, Athena, the Great Central Railway, Curve and The Phoenix are among about 60 organisations, charities and venues benefiting from Culture Recovery Fund cash.
Leicester Comedy Festival founder Geoff Rowe, below, has heard that his organisation is getting £50,000 for a summer events programme, including Big Weekends and the Stand Up Challenge, as well as paying for staffing and freelancer costs.
He said the city had taken a big hit from all the cancelled events. He said: “Each year the vistors coming to Leicester for the comedy festival contribute about £3 million to the local economy and that didn’t happen this year.
“We had an online festival with an audience of about 30,000, but they weren’t spending money.
“We also took a financial hit, like our promoters and all our venues did.
“Thankfully for us we have the support of the city council, De Montfort University and now this money as well. “Our focus is on next year’s festival and our 30th anniversary festival in 2023 and hopefully we can now be around to celebrate it.” He said it was clear how much exactly the festival bank account was down compared to previous years.
Curve theatre in Leicester, which is getting £371,000 to bring creativity back to the city, has also been hit hard by the lockdown.
The threatre has been continuing with various online projects, such as streaming live music with Sunset Boulevard in Concert and sharing a livestream of the production The Color Purple.
The theatre is planning a scaledback programme of performances and community projects over the coming months, working with local youth groups and artists, including a special season of socially-distanced events celebrating local creatives and the city.
Curve’s chief executive Chris Stafford and artistic director Nikolai Foster said in a joint statement: “Covid continues to have a devastating impact on our industry, and we are indebted to Arts Council England and the DCMS (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) for this crucial investment in our theanot tre, and indeed in arts and culture in this country.”
Despite being forced to do online performances, the theatre has still managed to commission more than 200 events and shows, worked with more than 250 freelancers and break new creative ground with its streamed productions of Sunset Boulevard and The Color Purple.”
The Great Central Railway, which has lost about £3 million in revenue in the past year, is getting £515,700 to get the heritage steam railway running again.
The railway usually has about 110,000 visitors a year but that was reduced massively because of lockdown.
Michael Stokes, events and marketing manager, said: “We could only run a very limited number of passenger trains over the summer and the only real income came before Christmas when we were able to run our Santa service with up to six people in the compartments.
“We had a predicted loss of about £3 million and it should now be less than that but we have had to go into our reserves.”
The heritage railway line set up an emergency appeal that raised £120,000 and also received £250,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
While cash for future projects has had to be spent on keeping the railway going, it is hoped those planned projects can still go ahead thanks to donations and grants.
Michael said: “We’ve had some very kind donations and we have more grants we have applied for. Hopefully those awards refinance our projects for the future.”
Other cash recipients include:
Athena
The venue will get £154,603, funding a Nigerian afrobeat event, folk singers and dance and youth groups, as they move towards a full reopening.
The Attenborough Arts Centre
The centre on the University of Leicester’s campus is getting £39,740 to allow it to safely reopen and pay for a marketing programme to encourage audiences back into the centre and to promote the new digital strand, called Studio Attenborough.
Flambe Circus
The travelling circus based in Loughborough is receiving £9,846 to reopen and set up a new website and social media campaign to promote their Covid-safe performances, including doorstep shows and drivein events.
Phoenix Arts
Phoenix is getting one of the bigger grants - £298,699 - to start running again safely and provide new educational services.
Other projects getting money will include Pinder’s Circus (£18,860), Rocks by Rail - formerly known as Rutland Railway Museum - (£9,057), the Little Theatre in Dover Street, Leicester, (£47,210) and Symphotech Ltd (£60,000).
Symphotech supports cultural events with free or low-cost advice on everything from technical issues to crowd safety.
Julian Spear, Symphotech’s founder and chairman, said: “Events businesses still face a challenging summer as together we all monitor progress along the government’s roadmap to recovery. We remain cautious but optimistic.”
The latest announcement brings the government’s total investment across grants, capital and repayable finance from the Culture Recovery Fund so far to more than £1.2 billion for over 5,000 individual cultural organisations and sites that have suffered because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Peter Knott, area director of Arts Council England, said: “The government’s Culture Recovery Fund has supported a wide range of arts and cultural sector companies across Leicestershire and Rutland – from grassroots music and comedy festivals, to ground-breaking theatre and circus.
“The government’s package is hugely welcome, providing much of the sector with resources to reopen safely.”