We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded £160,000 by Arts Council England (ACE) via the Culture Recovery Fund. This grants programme is part of the Government’s £1.57 billion package to protect the UK’s culture and heritage sectors from the impacts of Covid-19.
When lockdown happened in March our upcoming exhibitions were cancelled or postponed, leaving a large hole in our cashflow. With support from Rother District Council, our artists, workshop facilitators, friends and family we started working on a new Automata Tinkering Kit, and launched pilot online workshops. Thanks to the generosity of Paul Spooner we have also raised £2545.28 so far for The Trussell Trust, a UK food bank.
Since it was started in 1983 by Sue Jackson, Cabaret Mechanical Theatre has never received any public funding. This is an important moment for us. It is a chance to share the incredible automata in our collection with a wider audience and to inspire more people to get creative and make their own.
This award will provide support over a six month period to continue and expand our work in the following 3 main areas:
- Workshops: design, test and implementation in partnership with schools, arts and museum venues and other charities. As well as specialist masterclasses for artists and facilitators.
- Exhibitions: introducing remote installation to eliminate travel, reducing environmental impact, adapting the hands-on interactive elements of our exhibition in response to Covid and creating new online resources for partner venues.
- Developing our automata kits
Thank you to the Department of Media, Culture and Sport for this support.
#HereForCulture
Here for Culture is a movement that unites the public, government and cultural organisations in support of our fantastic cinemas, theatres, music venues, museums, galleries and heritage.
Sarah Alexander, Director, Cabaret Mechanical Theatre
13th October 2020.
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