Regeneration

Witshire's Trowbridge Town Hall is set to undergo a £8.1m redevelopment next year.

Half of the £16.3m given to Trowbridge from the Future High Streets Fund will go towards restoring the Grade-II listed building's ballroom and creating three smaller performances spaces.

The venue hosts film, music, visual arts and theatre events, welcoming 50,000 visitors annually.

Director David Lockwood hopes the project will reimagine a town centre with community ownership and culture at its heart.

"The Town Hall opened over 100 years ago and pledged ‘for the benefit of the inhabitants of the town for ever.’ A century on, we’re inspired by that history to create a pioneering cultural venue which is deeply rooted in its community."

Crafts charity Devon Guild of Craftsmen has rebranded to MAKE Southwest ahead of redevelopment plans.

A spokesperson said the new name reflects the many women involved in the gallery and its focus beyond Devon.

The charity plans to restore its Grade II-listed mill building to improve accessibility, restore its waterwheel and create new maker spaces for craftspeople. 

MAKE Southwest Chair Louis Victory said the works will turn the building into a “creative place in its own right”

“Although the early months of the pandemic were difficult, we are now operating successfully, having taken the opportunity to modernise and plan for an ambitious and exciting future.”

Huddersfield will get a new art gallery, library, event venue and museum under proposals to create a new "cultural heart" in the town centre.

Councillors' preferred plan involves turning the central library into a museum and using service tunnels beneath the city as an exhibition space.

An event venue could have capacity for up to 2,500 people.

The council will need to borrow to finance £210m in works, slated to begin in 2026.

Cabinet Member for Regeneration Peter McBride called it "a thoughtful risk".

"It's also a huge risk to ignore the issue and to leave things behind and not to invest in our future.

"If we don't, this town will be doomed."

London's Courtauld Gallery has reopened to the public following a three year, £57m refurbishment.

Closed in 2018 for renovations, the Somerset House site has retained its original 18th Century staircases and added improved exhibition spaces for its impressionist and post-impressionist collections.

"We feel we’ve earned a bit of good luck in three years of closure that had its challenges, including Covid," head of the gallery Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen said.

"We hope London and England and the UK will feel that this is a place they absolutely want to come to see and it’s the right time and in the right spirit of the moment."

Reading’s first ever producing theatre has opened following a two-year campaign that raised over £1m.

Reading Rep Theatre is sited in an old Salvation Army building and features a 163-seat auditorium alongside rehearsal and studio spaces.

More than 20 trusts and foundations contributed to the refurbishment, as well as Arts Council England, The National Lottery Community Fund and Reading Borough Council.

Artistic Director Paul Stacey called the theatre “a cultural hub for a town emerging out of isolation”.

“It's a really special moment... we've finally got the resources to realise our ambitions and put Reading on the national cultural map.”
 

London’s Royal Docks is set to become ‘London’s cultural engine’ under plans to repurpose the space as a cultural quarter.

Work has begun on a range of creative spaces, including transforming the Tate & Lyle Sugar warehouses into a community workspace. Planning permission has also been granted for a rotating theatre to open in 2023.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Mayor of Newham Rokhsana Fiaz believe the area can transform into a place where “new ideas are formed and cultural participation is open to all”.

Khan said the quarter has the potential to deliver 35,000 jobs, 4,000 new homes and more than £5bn of inward investment within the next 20 years.

“It is the latest example of London roaring back to life with culture leading the way in our city’s economic recovery.” 

National Museums Liverpool (NML) has announced the winners of a competition to redevelop Liverpool’s Canning Dock.

Architects Asif Khan, Mariam Kamara and Sir David Adjaye will work alongside artist Theaster Gates to transform the area between the Royal Albert Dock and Mann Island.

Competition judges were unanimous in picking the winning team, whose plans start with redeveloping spaces in the Dr Martin Luther King Jr Building “to explore and investigate the transatlantic slave trade and legacies”.

Gates hopes the redevelopment will “give emotional heft to the truth of slavery in the UK”.

“Canning Dock represents one of the most important racialised sites in the UK and it gives me tremendous honour to work with this team to realise the complexity of the site.”