The Queen's Birthday Honours List was published on Friday 15th June. The list contains names which are famous - actress Eileen Atkins, for instance, and actor Christopher Lee - and others who have contributed to their respective spheres on a local level.
Among those honoured were:
Follwing the move of Tessa Jowell to Secretary of State at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, other ministerial changes have taken place in the department. Baronness Blackstone, formerly Minister for Education and Employment, becomes Minister for the Arts, and Dr Kim Howells has been appointed Junior Minister.
The Liberal Democrats have appointed Nick Harvey as their Culture spokesman whilst Peter Ainsworth remains Shadow Secretary of State until a new leader of the Conservative Party selects his/her Shadow Cabinet.
London Theatres get Lottery cash
The Arts Council of England has made four major Lottery awards to London theatres. The Unicorn Children's Theatre received £4.5m towards the £10m needed for its new base in Southwark, whilst the Roundhouse gets £2.5m towards its £23m redevelopment. The Lyric, Hammersmith, which needs to raise £2.4m for its redevelopment, gets £1.1m.
Talawa Theatre Company, London’s premier Black theatre company, is now looking for a new home and has found an ideal space in Westminster Theatre in Palace Street, London SW1, which is due to be redeveloped with a new shell theatre as part of a larger social housing project. The proposal is to create a centre for Black theatre by leasing and fitting-out this shell as a 200-seat theatre, rehearsal rooms/studio, information resource and archive, education room, café-bar and offices. It gets £1.8m towards the total cost of £4.5m.
ACE gives £10m to young people's projects
ACE has allocated £10m of Lottery funding for projects which benefit children and young people. In addition to the grant to the Unicorn in London, there is £1.35m for Dance North in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
The Burnley Youth Theatre will get £365,000 towards the £744,000 costs of new building.
£600,000 goes towards the £8m needed by the Chichester Festival Theatre to develop eduaction work and provide a base for its youth theatre.
£3m is to go to Coventry's Belgrade Theatre for its £8m upgrade and redevelopment, which includes the building of a new Studio space.
£2m goes to Doncaster Metropolital Borough Council to develop a new venue for performing and other arts, and for Doncaster College’s performing arts activities which are embarking on a new degree course with the Northern Centre for Performing Arts; and for Yorkshire Youth and Music and South Yorkshire Dance Consortium.
£500,000 is given to the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham towards its total redevelopment which will cost £13,500,000. ACE expects MAC to ask for further funding for specific parts of the project.
Mind the...Gap, a theatre company based in Bradford which works with people with learning, physical and sensory disabilities, gets £50,000 towards a total of £2m needed for a new base.
Newcastle's Northern Stage gets £3m towards the total cost of £6m to redevelop the Playhouse Theatre and Gulbenkian Studio.
Bristol's Kuumba is a development trust which offers a mix of services to artists, including administrative services, arts activities and training resources, as well as hosting the African Caribbean Arts Forum. The proposal is to procure and develop an adjoining site to create an arts ‘centre of excellence’ for the south-west, which will have a particular address to the needs of people of African and Chinese descent. It gets £2,112,500 towards the cost of £3,975,000.