Eden Arts welcomes £80,000 additional funding from Culture Recovery Fund
Eden Arts welcomes over £80,000 in additional funding from the Culture Recovery Fund and further support from Film Hub North
Eden Arts are welcoming the news of an additional £81,269 to bring the organisation out of lockdown and restart their live project delivery. The funding comes from the government’s Culture Recovery Fund designed to protect the country’s vital cultural assets from the impact of COVID-19 lockdown.
Many of our projects have been unable to take place throughout the last 12 months including The Winter Droving, usually welcoming 25,000 people to Penrith; Cine North, a community cinema scheme across 60 venues in the north of England; Young Cumbrian Artist of The Year Exhibition, for 16-24-year-olds taking place at the University of Cumbria, Artist Spare Room, a programme of artist residencies at Penrith Old Fire Station, and Picnic Cinema, The North’s No.1 Outdoor Cinema - nearly all were cancelled or severely impacted.
As well as welcoming the news of the Culture Recovery Fund Eden Arts are also pleased to announce a further £27,500 from BFI/Film Hub North to support the work of Cine North. Run by Eden Arts, Cine North is the north of England’s biggest network of community cinemas, often in village halls, giving small communities events that bring them together.
Welcoming audiences of around 16,000 across 350 screenings in 60 venues through rural towns and villages in the north of England, Cine North provides vital support to village halls, groups and isolated audiences in areas where there is little or no access to cinema or events. During 2020, just 34 screenings were able to take place.
Through their work, Eden Arts have reached 500,000 people as live audiences or participants over the past 5 years and as a vital part of the regional cultural economy they employ around 150 creative freelancers, artists and casual staff each year.
Eden Arts Director Adrian Lochhead said “We know how important our charity’s work is to the community in Eden and across the north and I am sure that people will understand that small organisations such as ours operate on the tightest of margins and are quite fragile. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic we have been working across our projects with a severely reduced staff team. Thanks to the government’s Culture Recovery Fund we can ensure we will be #HereForCulture for 2021 and beyond, and we are able to create more full time and part-time jobs at the company. This will give us the capacity needed to deliver the excellent, high-quality arts experiences the audiences in Eden Valley and Cumbria have become accustomed to through our previous work.”
He continued “In the years leading to 2020 Eden Arts was operating sustainably and continuing on track with its ambitious five-year plan for growth and development. Throughout the pandemic, we have been able to make great strides in our strategic projects at local council and government level, and have a lot of cultural projects on the horizon which will benefit Cumbrians and people across the north soon. We know that people are crying out for connection, cultural spaces, festivals and events after a year of being locked down in our houses.”
The popular Winter Droving festival usually brings around £2million in on the day spending to Penrith and offers Cumbrian bands a chance to perform in front of thousands of revellers alongside nationally renowned and international acts. The event was successfully re-imagined in October 2020 with a projection event in St Andrews Churchyard that took place over 4 nights with around 1000 people visiting the projections under strict Covid-19 guidelines. The event celebrated the local community and previous volunteers of the festival, with over 100 people being nominated to feature in the piece, around the theme of ‘Care’.
Mr Lochhead had special praise for their other funders for continuing to support the company. “Eden District Council, Arts Council England, the County Council, Penrith Lottery and Penrith BID all stood firm and this enabled things like the community care project and the windows in Penrith to go ahead, those bodies should be praised for their own efforts and the care that they have locally.
