Scottish Arts Council - Archive - Eastwood Park Theatre

Eastwood Park Theatre, East Renfrewshire’s newly refurbished theatre venue, opened on 22 February 2007.

Eastwood Park Theatre is home to a thriving amateur theatre scene as well as holding film nights and touring productions. The facility boasts a new cafe, gallery space and art workshop, and is launching with an exciting and varied programme of events.

Eastwood Park Theatre entrance; Photo: Ewan McGill

The Scottish Arts Council is delighted to have contributed £250,000 towards the £1,750,000 cost of the refurbishment. The contribution from the Scottish Arts Council will help to improve the quality of arts provision, artistic production facilities, facilities for people with disabilities, and facilities for children and young people, making Eastwood Park Theatre capable of supporting a wider range of arts activities and serving as a catalyst for arts development across the authority.

The redeveloped theatre has the potential to attract new audiences through its programmes for young people. Education and outreach is a core part of the vision for the project and this will involve young people coming into the building to participate in workshops and performances and reaching out to young people in schools. The redevelopment will increase attendance and participation levels in the arts across East Renfrewshire.

Major improvements through the refurbishment include:

Upgrading the existing auditorium (reformatting of seating creating 30 additional seats, new seats, orchestra pit)
Incorporating exhibition facilities for visual arts
Creating an additional multipurpose workshop space
Improving backstage and technical facilities
Providing barrier free use of the building
Enhancing the entrance and foyers, providing an attractive café, and creating an efficient and customer-friendly box office facility

In particular the Scottish Arts Council contributed towards the cost of specific elements:

Improved production facilities (scene dock, sound equipment, lighting)
Facilities for the exhibition of visual arts and crafts
A multi-purpose space suitable for visual arts and crafts workshops, meetings and small classes
Provision of a more attractive box office and the addition of a café to improve the ambience and entice people into the building here

A significant part of the proposal was to enhance production facilities in the venue. The improvements and enhancements will provide amateur users with high quality production facilities to realise increases in their production values, eliminate the need for professional touring companies to bring their own equipment with them, provide an exhibition space for local visual artists and craftspeople, and create a workshop space where participants can engage with the arts in a ‘hands on’ capacity.

A new post of Senior Arts Manager will be created to oversee the facility and the arts service together with two new Arts Development posts for visual arts and audience development, funded by East Renfrewshire Council.

Eastwood Park Theatre Auditorium; Photo: Ewan McGill

The Scottish Arts Council Drama Department commented that: ‘It is positive to see this underused but valuable local resource being developed, and that the increase in the range of artforms and programmes proposed is good. The staffing structure to manage and develop this should ensure relevant strategic, and hopefully quality based, developments take place. It is good to see that the Local Authority is committed to increasing revenue funding for the posts and there is a long term plan for sustainability.’