And now you can now help too – by joining in the Cinema’s novel fund raiser to ‘Pick a Peck of Pixels’ . For £5 you could win £1,000. [Details below.]
Creative Scotland has awarded Campbeltown Community Business £400,000 towards the major overall restoration and upgrading plan for which it hopes to be able to raise the necessary total to complete by December 2016.
This award is a serious boost to both hopes and to morale, with the company team working endlessly, often through hard times and tough decisions. This is a flying start to a long campaign with many miles still to travel and with another ten funding applications in the pipeline.
This is a huge job, involving the restitution and repair of the building with structural additions – a second screen, cafe and lavatories – and technical upgrading to full modern digital screening standards.
The results of the other funding applications are expected during the rest of this year. If the total required can be raised – and these are nail-biting days – the plan is to see detailed design work and tendering between January and July 2015; work on-site starting in September 2015; and complete restoration and redevelopment by December 2016.
The Creative Scotland award of £400,000 sounds and is a lot of money but it is the tip of the iceberg for the extent of a project designed to offer a unique facility to the lovely south Kintyre town.
The Campbeltown Picture House is one of the oldest and most unusual cinemas in the United Kingdom, A-listed, a visual delight that lifts the spirits just to see – and it will become a fully capable contemporary screening house taking also in its programme live filming of performance events in theatre and opera from London’s west end.
The regenerated Picture House will be the star of the town and will significantly support the experience of visitors.
Jane Mayo, Chair of Campbeltown Community Business, says: ‘We hope folk don’t see this £400,000 award and think ‘Well, that’s them sorted.’ It’s not. it’s just the first with another 10 applications in the pipeline. And we have to survive till we can get the builders in.’
Pick-a-Peck of Pixels
This survival challenge is where we can all help – by joining in the innovative ‘Pick a Peck of Pixels’- digital raffle online here – bringing in vital income which helps to pay the bills.
It will cost you £5 for your selection-or for each of your selections [all for a very good cause]. You could win the top prize of £1,000 or one of the fabulous donated prizes, like flights, a boat trip, hotel accommodation, artwork, cheese hampers etc. The full prize is here in the Pick-a-Peck leaflet: TPH 2.
For Argyll has joined in and anything we might win will go back to the Picture House fund raising campaign. This means we know how the system works. When you go to the Pick-a-Peck site, you’ll see two possible links in the menu bar – ‘Play’ and ‘How to Play’.
The system advises printing off the ‘How to Play’ instructions but we just opened another browser window beside the ‘Play’ window and moved between the two. You select your pixel or pixels – and to choose more than one you just keeping moving the cursor arrow to another location on the image [of the Picture House] and clicking – when it becomes a crosshair and is your selection.
When you’ve completed your selection, you’ll see ‘Proceed to Payment in the menu bar above the image – click it and go on from there. You may need to register – which is the usual name/address/email/phone details so that you can be contacted if you win.
And you win just by entering – because you will have helped in one amazingly inventive local challenge to bring this unique building literally back into play.