Our Patch AUTUMN 2017
Funding boost
for the arts
L
The Lyric is at the heart of West
London overlooking Lyric Square
to find a lot of the funding elsewhere;
it’s important that people keep coming
to the theatre.”
For Janet Ellis, who has lived in
Hammersmith for 27 years, the Lyric
is quite simply the jewel in the crown.
“I love it here; I don’t want to live
anywhere else,” she insisted. “It’s
funny; it used to be a hard place to
arrange to meet anyone. Shall I wait by
the station? Where will we meet? But
now, Lyric Square, and the Lyric itself,
are wonderful. “I love watching the
people in their deckchairs, and I love
the market… and it’s all enabled by the
gorgeous new building next door!”
The novelist, and mother of
singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor, is on the
theatre board and the development
and gala committees, and feels the
new, expanded theatre complex has
something for everyone. “Since the
building’s been enlarged it has doubled
in scope and reach,” she said. “It’s the
vision. It’s got the wonderful 70s foyer,
then the theatres inside, and it also
does so much work in the community
with people in need.”
She believes the theatre fills a gap
which yawns bigger every year – the
teaching of drama in schools. “Usually
there’s no drama at all in schools; it’s
a department that’s been cut back and
cut back. But the work that the Lyric
does is wonderful, and it’s all thanks
to the funders and the council, who
have been so supportive too.”
Janet says that the way to fully
understand and appreciate the work
done at the Lyric is simple. “Go there!”
A self-confessed people-watching
addict, she finds the cross-section of
audience members at the Lyric far more
interesting than in its West End rivals.
“They’re fascinating,” she said. “I go
to the theatre a lot, and I must say I
don’t often enjoy standing about in the
interval with the rest of the audience
in central London, but when I’m at the
Lyric it’s completely different.”
One of 50 volunteers at the Doorstep
Library Network, a project which helps
children appreciate books by reading
to them in their own homes, Janet was
last year made an MBE for her charity
work. After a favourable response to her
first novel, Butcher’s Hook, she’s hard at
work finishing the next, which centres
on a woman who has an affair in rural
Kent in the 1970s. It is due out in the
autumn of 2018.
Learn about volunteering at the Lyric
by emailing [email protected],
while for tickets to Lyric Fest, the
fundraising gala with performances by
Jude Law, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Joe
Stilgoe and Shappi Khorsandi go to the
Lyric’s website, www.lyric.co.uk
ocal theatres and arts groups will
share in an £8.6million funding
boost over the next four years.
Arts Council England has pledged
annual grants to six centres until 2022,
giving financial security into the future.
Two of the biggest beneficiaries are
the local theatres, the Bush and the
Lyric Hammersmith, which are also
financially supported by H&F Council.
The Bush Theatre in Uxbridge Road
reopened in March after a £4.3million
scheme to improve access and build a
new studio. It gets an extra £100,000 a
year from ACE on top of the £495,281
it has received annually since 2015.
£8.6million funding boost
over the next four years
“We’re thrilled,” said Bush director
Jon Gilchrist, pointing to the theatre’s
growth from a space above a pub six
years ago to today’s two-auditorium
complex. “We expect to welcome nearly
four times as many people this year as
we did in 2012.”
ACE’s funding recognises the work
artistic director Madani Younis has
done in representing Hammersmith and
Fulham’s diversity on stage and among
the theatre’s workforce. The Lyric
Hammersmith has gained continuation
funding of £1.1m a year, plus £360,000
to upgrade its studio and refurbish its
550-seat Victorian auditorium; the final
phase of a £20m building programme.
Lyric director Sian Alexander
said: “We are immensely grateful.
This provides 20 per cent of funds
we need each year and gives vital
stability.” Other arts centres receiving
funds are the Bhavan Centre in West
Kensington, the Youth Music Theatre in
Hammersmith, aerial theatre company
Ockham’s Razor and the Koestler Trust,
based at Wormwood Scrubs prison.