Trust gets £317,000 to spark culture revival
CULTURE and leisure trust Link4Life, based in Rochdale, has received a grant of more than £300,000 to help it recover.
Rochdale Boroughwide Cultural Trust has been awarded £317,000 from the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund to help the organisation recover and reopen.
This award will enable the charity to gradually reopen and safely re-start exhibitions, performances and community delivery programmes at cultural venues, including Touchstones Museum and Art Gallery, Middleton Arena and Heywood Civic Centre.
More than £300 million has been awarded to thousands of cultural organisations across the country including Link4Life in the latest round of support from the Culture
Recovery Fund, the Culture Secretary announced on Friday, April 2.
The grant will enable new educational resources and programmes using the collections to be created for schools and will ensure local residents can look forward to an exciting programme of creative events and opportunities as we head towards the summer months and beyond.
The second round of awards made will help organisations to look ahead to the spring and summer and plan for reopening and recovery.
After months of closures and cancellations to contain the virus and save lives, this funding will be a much-needed helping hand for organisations transitioning back to normal in the months ahead.
Darren Grice, Deputy CEO, Link4life said: “This investment is vital to enable us to safely reopen venues and welcome back audiences.
“It also means we can begin the careful reintroduction of face to face community engagement programmes in the coming months and ensure local people remain at the heart of what we do and how we do it.
“Of course, all of this will only be possible because we will have the opportunity to invest in great talent and creativity. Artists will be at the centre of our plans and we hope that, in our small way, we can help to rebuild a creative sector that can continue to provide so much benefit for so many.”
Coun Janet Emsley, cabinet member for a
Safer and Inclusive Community at Rochdale Borough Council, said: “We are really looking forward to continuing with the myriad of fabulous projects that we were planning and had begun before the pandemic hit.
“Rochdale Borough’s diverse community is raring to go, we are looking forward to a future in which we empower all residents to have equal access to our arts and culture; to celebrate and experience our heritage; to cooperate creatively in making new experiences for generations to come.”