Focus Consultants celebrates Royal Transformation Project funding success

Added by Love Business East Midlands | 30 March 2016

UPDATED: 30 March 2016

Funding experts at Focus Consultants are celebrating the news that one of the East Midlands’ key arts and entertainment centres has been successful in securing £1.5m from the Arts Council England.

The grant, along with £1.8m from Nottingham City Council, will support the £3.3m Royal Transformation Project being planned by Nottingham’s Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall.

Focus, which is based in the city, worked alongside the Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall team to create the masterplan to develop the two venues, and more recently has been the project manager, quantity surveyor and business planner for the successful Arts Council England Round 2 application.

Robert Sanderson, managing director for the venue, said:

“We are so delighted in this vote of confidence from the Arts Council England and from Nottingham City Council. I would also like to thank Marsh Grochowski Architects and Focus Consultants who led the professional team, for their expertise, advice and support throughout the bid process.”

Focus, which is based at Phoenix Business Park, Nottingham, and has offices in London, Leicester, and Boston and Aubourn in Lincolnshire, specialises in creative approaches to securing funding packages and delivering high quality projects across the UK. Since its creation in 1994, Focus has helped to secure more than £953 million of grant assistance for a range of projects and businesses across the UK and delivered more than £1.3 billion of projects and programmes – making it one of the most successful companies of its kind.

Focus Partner Steven Fletcher said:

“The ambitious programme of building and development works for the Royal Concert Hall and the Theatre Royal is designed to ensure the sustainable future of two of the largest arts and entertainment venues in the East Midlands, and we are very pleased to hear that the Arts Council England Round 2 bid has been successful, paving the way for phase one of the work to begin this summer.”

The Royal Transformation Project aims to increase daytime use of the venues by improving facilities and underused spaces such as meeting rooms, foyer spaces, the café bar and roof terraces. The project will also see accessibility improvements to ensure that the new facilities can be used by everyone.

Developments include improving the building façade and streetscape on South Sherwood Street by creating a striking two-storey canopy and a new entrance way to both the Theatre Royal and the Royal Concert Hall, remodelling the Box Office and Royal Concert Hall entrance foyer, refurbishing the Royal Concert Hall foyer bars and repositioning the foyer kiosk, enlarging and improving the Theatre Royal’s ground floor café bar and upper floor roof terraces to provide a better dining experience throughout the day, and creating a new street-level outdoor seating and performance area under cover of the new canopy on South Sherwood Street.

Work will take place in two phases - phase 1 during summer and autumn 2016 and Phase 2 during summer and autumn 2017.