Local authorities

The Stoke-on-Trent City Archives are due to be relocated into the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery thanks to a major investment into the city’s historic records and collections from the city council.

The City Archives, which are part of the joint Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service, are currently housed at City Central Library. They are due to be moved in 2023, to enhance the museum’s offering for visitors and residence. 

The archive service is a popular learning resource and knowledge hub for the local community.

The plan will bring together two important historical collections in modern, purpose-built facilities. The museum will create a new reading room in the foyer as part of ongoing plans to invest in and develop the city’s museums.

“The archive service is a much-loved provision that gives visitors access to a wide range of historical records,” said Councillor Lorraine Beardmore, Cabinet Member for Culture, Leisure and Public Health at Stoke City Council.

“One of our priorities is to maintain the culture and heritage of Stoke-on-Trent. By relocating the archives to The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, we will be enhancing the offer of the museum as a hub for local history and heritage.”

She added that the museum and the City Central Library are located next to each other, which will “make the move more cost-effective and efficient than moving elsewhere”.
 

The Royal Cornwall Museum is at risk of closure after Cornwall Council rejected its funding bid.

The local authority received 51 applications for arts and culture funding, totalling just under £7m, but its budget for culture and the arts over the next four years is £1,868,000. The decision means the museum in Truro is the only county museum in the UK that doesn’t receive local authority funding, its directors said.

The museum houses a significant archive of local mining history and materials, as well as the Courtney Library and Archive. 

“This decision will directly lead to the imminent closure of Royal Cornwall Museum and the Courtney Library”, the museum's directors said in a statement, describing it as “the showcase for Cornish heritage”.

“We are still in the process of understanding why, and the decision is even more disappointing considering the great successes we have had over the past two years,” they added. 

“The museum plays an important part in the vitality of Truro city centre and tells the story of Cornwall’s unique heritage and culture.”

The museum has faced financial difficulties in previous years. It closed for eight months in January 2020, citing a “challenging funding climate”.

Carol Mould, Cornwall Council portfolio holder for neighbourhoods, told Cornwall Live that a priority was to “encourage vibrant, supportive communities where people help each other live well”, a goal that can be facilitated by “the great wealth of culture and creativity that is synonymous with Cornwall”. 

She added that that council hopes to work with organisations that were unsuccessful in their funding bids “to unlock other potential funding opportunities from partner organisations in the future”.

A theatre set up in a former shop in Coventry to allow audiences to enter a space and meet artists as equals is to close after 13 years.

Theatre Absolute has run the Shop Front Theatre in City Arcade since 2009, but has said it will close in November, with the premises due to be demolished next year as part of city centre redevelopment plans. 

The theatre, inspired by a model in Chicago, was set up by Theatre Absolute Artistic Directors Chris O’Connell and Julia Negus in partnership with Coventry City Council. 

It was the first, and remains the only, professional shop front theatre in the UK.

O'Connell said: “It will be immensely sad to see the space and the Arcade itself go, it’s been a brilliant home for independents. 

“But we had already decided that Theatre Absolute’s future lay in progressing our work in other ways and we’re excited to start exploring that.”

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has allocated £800,000 to be invested in nine zones across the capital to support jobs and training and to create affordable studio space as part of his Creative Enterprise Zones programme.

Hammersmith & Fulham and Ealing will become the newest Creative Enterprise Zones and London boroughs are invited to apply for funding to become the next three zones.

The £800,000 funding will be split between all the zones to help support 5,000 young people to enter the creative sector and create more than 25,000 square metres of permanent affordable workspace by 2025.

The new Hammersmith & Fulham zone will transform a vacant high street shop into a “Made in Hammersmith and Fulham” hub, designed to support and offer training to local creative entrepreneurs, makers and businesses. It also plans to offer 90 work placements and apprenticeships in the creative sector.

The Ealing zone will help increase creative employment opportunities though working with young people and local business and offer a small grants programme to 30 local creatives to support the development of community spaces through murals and public art installations. 

“We are delighted to be located in a new Creative Enterprise Zone, this is exactly the kind of support our sector needs,” said Angelique Schmitt, CEO and founder of Kindred Studios in Hammersmith. 

“It will help provide much needed artist studios in the borough, boost our profile and improve access to residents showcasing all the brilliant work of local artists and creatives.”
 

Chesterfield’s Pomegranate Theatre is closing at the end of the month as part of a £17.5m restoration project.

The plans will see work completed on the Stephenson Memorial Hall, home to both the theatre and Chesterfield Museum, which has already closed.

Chesterfield Borough Council says the theatre will be extended and the museum reconfigured, with a new gallery space and café bar. New educational and community facilities will also be created.

The project is part funded by the council, with £11m coming from the government’s levelling-up fund.

The Council’s service director for leisure, culture and community wellbeing Ian Waller says the plans will make the Stephen Memorial Hall “even more memorable and enjoyable, creating a modern visitor experience in the heart of our town”.

A £8.7m project to renovate Ipswich Museum is to go ahead despite an online petition against the proposals.

The planned works to the Grade II-listed building include “slight” modifications to the front entrance, modernised lighting, new toilet facilities and a coffee shop.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund awarded £4.3m to fund the project, backed by a £3.6m investment from museum operators Ipswich Borough Council.

An online petition, which argues an “irreplaceable example of cultural heritage will be lost” if plans go ahead, had received over 2,300 signatures by Tuesday (14 June).

“This is a beautiful museum of great historic significance and updates could be made in a much more sensitive, nuanced way,” one signatory wrote.

An Ipswich Council spokesperson said the refurbishment will create a “a more appealing and exciting museum experience to which people, particularly local Ipswich visitors, will want to keep returning to.”

The plans follow a “number of phases of consultation” including an online survey that engaged more than 1,000 local participants, they added.

The spokesperson concluded there is a “process for dealing with petitions,” and confirming “we have not received a petition about the museum and will follow this process if we do”.

The museum is due to close this autumn and expects to welcome visitors back in spring 2025.