Greenwich’s Up The Creek comedy club is among the south-east London organisations to get emergency funding from the government in the latest round of grants designed to help arts groups get through the pandemic.
The Creek Road venue, a Greenwich town centre institution for 30 years, has been given £177,250 from the Culture Recovery Fund, run by Arts Council England. The cash will help the club put on five shows a week as well as open mic nights, live music and life drawing classes.
Greenwich and Docklands Festivals, which is already planning this year’s two-week event from 27 August, was given £66,396. It managed to hold a festival last year, and artistic director Bradley Hemmings said: “Sustaining vital commissioning commitments and Covid health and safety measures for this year was presenting huge challenges. The funding is an enormous boost, which will enable us to work confidently with artists, participants and audiences as we plan towards this year’s festival.”
Woolwich-based Tramshed – the old Greenwich & Lewisham Young People’s Theatre – was awarded £98,968, while Greenwich Leisure Limited was given £292,431. Selladoor, the Deptford-based regional theatre company which recently pulled out of plans to take over the Borough Hall in Greenwich, was given £244,000.
Several organisations featured by 853 over the past year have been given funding. Greenwich Theatre, which took much of its programme online but was eventually forced to cancel its panto, which would have run this weekend, was given £120,000. MDM Props, which produces stage props and art installations from a warehouse at Morden Wharf, was given £123,750.
Across the borough border, Ladywell-based Marcus Hall Props – which started making T-shirts and mugs to raise money for people in the industry who had lost work – was given £155,217; while Deptford’s Sister Midnight Records, which is hoping to take over the Ravensbourne Arms in Lewisham as a community pub and music venue, was given £25,487.
The Albany in Deptford, which also took much of its work online and even created its own radio show for the over-60s, got £160,365; the New Cross Inn music venue was given £112,500.
Blackheath Conservatoire was awarded £99,000, while its next-door neighbour at Blackheath Halls was given £35,352. Eltham Little Theatre – better known as the Bob Hope Theatre – was given a grant of £29,005; Greenwich-based Emergency Exit Arts, the company behind the Blackheath fireworks display, was given £36,079. The Thamesmead Arts and Culture Office got a grant of £38,076.
It is the second round of grants to be given out by the fund, which has so far given out £916 million to organisations across England. Last year the Woolwich Works project – which had been due to open in September – was among the recipients, when it was given £984,000 to tide it through the crisis.
Full details of the 18 organisations in Greenwich and 29 in Lewisham to get grants can be found on the Arts Council England website.
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