As you may have heard – we have been given a development grant from the Arts Council towards the relocation of the Coliseum as part of a new Heritage Centre on Union Street. The Coliseum will be part of a fantastic Cultural Quarter bringing together Oldham Coliseum Theatre, Gallery Oldham, Local Studies and Archive Centre, Oldham Theatre Workshop in a single linked complex.
This is hugely exciting news not just for the Coliseum but for the whole of Oldham. It will be a large scale regeneration project that will have positive repercussions across the town centre. It’s a key investment in the future of Oldham. Couple that with the arrival of the Metrolink, a new theatre will be on everyone’s doorstep!
These are the same plans that were announced before Christmas when we also confirmed that we had been successful in the first stage of our bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund. Both the Arts Council and HLF have given us money to develop the project with a view to grant us more money the further we go in the planning stages.
Since the announcement on Tuesday a few people have asked me why we are planning to spend money on a new build when we’ve just had the Fairbottom Street theatre refurbished. The work we undertook during 2012 was essential to making sure there was a future for the Coliseum, if it hadn’t taken place then we would have had to close before we had a chance to stage Cinderella. The whole company would have had to shut down without knowing if we’d ever re-open. The planning for the new development was still in the very early stages when we made the decision to refurbish the theatre and it wasn’t guaranteed that we would be successful in the bid to move.
Even if the new build was confirmed before we refurbished it still wouldn’t happen for a few years and there would have been no theatre in Oldham for those years. By refurbishing our current theatre we ensured the company would keep going and we would still be able to serve our audiences.
The plans for the new theatre offers up a huge amount of possibilities for the company and the size will match the quality of what we do on stage in a way our current building does not. They’ll be better rehearsal spaces and more room for our education and outreach groups.
We still need to raise funds to add to the funding that we have already got and that will be part of a fundraising campaign that we’ll explain later on in the process. Oh and yes, we’ll be taking all the new comfy seats with us!
Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director
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