 A New Performance Venue for Doncaster
Doncaster is changing steadily – the
evidence is all around, in the airport, Frenchgate and
the new Doncaster
College Hub, to pick three obvious examples. Part of
restoring and sustaining vigorous communities in Doncaster
and the
Borough is broadening the offer for the people who live
here, and in its wide hinterland. The plans for a new
Performance Venue aim to bring about a real transformation
to its leisure
and cultural opportunities.
A long time in the planning, the New Performance Venue
project is close to becoming a reality on Waterdale.
Replacing the Civic Theatre with an exciting contemporary
building, it will include a dance studio, drama studio,
live music café bar, 200-400 capacity flexible
second auditorium, 500+ seat main auditorium, meeting
rooms and excellent film and digital multi-media facilities.
It will be a crossroads, a dynamic and vibrant centre
for live music, dance and theatre, and for film and multi-media
programmes. Drawing on the best practice nationally and
internationally, it will mix in new ideas and emerge
as a new recipe, unique to Doncaster, adding a new dimension
to the cultural mix for the Borough.
It will be a unique learning resource, to support performing
arts and creative curriculum elements in schools, offering
creative lifelong learning and providing a vital professional
focus for the performing arts and media courses within
Doncaster College. It will provide new opportunities
for vocational training and professional development
in the arts and entertainment, and a driver for employment
in the creative industries – one of the fastest-growing
sectors of employment in the UK today
Supported by capital and revenue funding from Arts Council
England, the Venue is part of a far-reaching redevelopment
programme for Waterdale, and the selected developer will
be announced shortly.
The HotHouse Festival
HotHouse is Doncaster’s special mix of quality
arts and entertainment from across the UK and beyond,
and the best of Doncaster’s own. The 2006 festival
brought in over 11,000 people as audience and participants,
for a programme stretching from the Royal Shakespeare
Company at the Dome through to a tour of the mining comedy ‘The
Glee Club’ to local venues round the Borough. It
included Paddy McGuinness, Elkie Brooks, Jeremy Hardy,
Hull Truck, the Angel Brothers and Denis Rollins, Tosca,
Paris CanCan, HMS Pinafore and Goldilocks, with street
dance, lots of schools workshops, music in quiet places
and a ‘can’t miss it’ visual arts fringe.
HotHouse Plus is building on the rapid growth of the
main Festival, piloting new ideas and projects like a
one-day Children’s festival and supporting Yorkshire’s
first Scriptwriters’ Festival at the Little Theatre.
2007’s HotHouse Festival will be from March 9th
to 31st, and the programme will be launched before Christmas
2006. It’s heavily supported by Arts Council England
and local sponsors, as well as Doncaster Council.
HotHouse06 photographs courtesy of Tom Giddins
Working in the creative sector in Doncaster
Did you know there are more than 400 creative businesses
in Doncaster? These range from major computer games
makers, media and design companies to craftworkers
in contemporary furniture and clothes designers,
as well as successful writers, musicians, dancers,
actors and film-makers. net.work, Doncaster’s
creative industries network, has been working to
raise the profile of this mass of skills and talent,
and to encourage more young people and others,
and their employment advisers, to recognise it
as a legitimate career direction. Meanwhile, Doncaster
Council is working with net.work and Doncaster
College on a scheme to develop large-scale studio
and workspaces for creative businesses, including
artists’ studios, a gallery and dance and
drama studios. Watch this space..... |
Doncaster Civic Theatre
The Civic Theatre, opened as one of the first local
authority-run arts centres in the country, nearly
sixty years ago, presents music, dance, comedy
and drama programmes from quality UK and overseas
performers and companies, and a rich mix of Doncaster
voluntary performing arts groups.
It mixes top comics like Ed Byrne, Mark Thomas and
Joe Pasquale with companies like Rumpus Theatre Company
with Dickens’ classic ‘The Mystery of
Edwin Drood’, and Moscow Ballet – La
Classique with ‘The Nutcracker’. The
Civic is known all over South Yorkshire and beyond
for its great pantos, with Pantoni Production’s ‘Sleeping
Beauty’ marking the 2006-7 Christmas season.
It regularly runs theatre for children, is the base
for the Brought to Book schools theatre touring programme,
and is a main venue for the HotHouse programme. The
Box Office is on 01302 342349, and its website is
at www.doncastercivic.co.uk, where tickets can be
booked on-line. |
More information on any of these
areas is available from the Arts Service, Doncaster Council,
at the Blue
Building, 38-40, High Street, Doncaster
01302 737351,
or e-mail sarah.richards@doncaster.gov.uk. |
