The Stage

Plans to resurrect Leith Theatre scaled down

Published Tuesday 7 July 2009 at 15:25 by Lalayn Baluch

Campaigners seeking to reopen Edinburgh’s Leith Theatre have been forced to alter their multi-million pound proposals after failing to secure a £3 million arts funding prize.

Cockburn Conservation Trust - a building preservation organisation representing the city and the Lothians - and residents’ group the Leith Theatre Trust have not made it through to the second stage of the Scottish Community Council’s Arts Funding Prize for Edinburgh.

The news means the £8 million design for the Grade B-listed venue created by Page and Park Architects, the firm behind the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness, will have to be scaled down.

Catharine Kidd, CCT project officer, said the organisations would now be looking to develop a project costing £5 million, or for a way to create a phased scheme, which would see parts of the building opened, and paid for, in stages.

She explained that CCT and LTT are currently undertaking an Options Appraisal study to evaluate alternative plans for the building, which would be completed by December 2009. The organisations will then embark on a two-year funding drive and aim to have the redevelopment completed by 2014.

She said: “The public support has been incredible. We’ve got a lot of political support as well - from MSPs and the local council. There is quite a strong artistic community within that area and everybody wants to see this building being reused, and having a venue they can perform and develop their own artistic programme in.”

Philip Neaves, chair of LTT, said the residents’ group was considering a number of options for the artistic future of the venue, including partnerships with the Scottish Stage and Screen Network and the city’s ethnic communities.

He said: “The plan is four-fold - it is theatre, it is arts in the wider sense, it is educational, it is for the community. We want to create opportunities to access all of those things and for the building to have a continued viable use as a theatre.”

He explained that the venue’s 1,500-seat auditorium would be reduced to 700-seats and studio and rehearsal spaces would be created to allow a greater range of theatre and music shows to be staged.

Leith Theatre was built in 1932 as part of a civic complex comprising the theatre, a library and an assembly hall. It was badly damaged during the Second World War and eventually reopened to the public in 1961 after being restored. It closed again in the late eighties due to financial problems and has been dark since.