Shoreditch Town Hall Receives Donation to Complete Next Phase of Capital Works

Once works are complete the new donation will take to £2.1m the amount raised and invested in the building since Director Nick Giles took over in October 2011 - works to lovingly restore the venue, and enable full use of the entire building.

Nick Giles, Director of Shoreditch Town Hall, today announces that due to the generosity of an anonymous £1m donation, the next major phase of works at the venue - one of East London's last remaining large-scale Music Hall theatre auditoriums from the Victoria era - will now be completed.

The latest £1m donation will contribute to the next important stage of the venues development, primarily the sensitive introduction of technical facilities and infrastructure into the beautiful character main space, alongside other restoration works. The works will be designed to enable the venue to better meet the needs of a contemporary live performance and music programme, community use and commercial events work.

In addition to the capital works in the Assembly Hall, the funding also allows for the completion of passenger lift works, the introduction / expansion of technical facilities across the building and a new coffee / theatre bar opening off the main entrance hall.

Nick Giles said today:

"We are absolutely thrilled to receive this donation which affords us an incredible opportunity to complete the next important phase of our work developing the Town Hall's capacity and flexibility as a unique arts and events space. Building on our progress over recent years this donation will allow us to move our programme up a gear, increasing by around £100,000 per annum the investment we will be able to make into new artistic projects and the building. Most significantly of all our Assembly Hall will be able to take its place once again as Shoreditch's largest theatre space, a key original part of East London's cultural landscape.

Shoreditch Town Hall has come a long way in the past three years, fast becoming the kind of destination non-traditional space for adventurous audiences and artists we envisaged it could be - one of very few of its kind in London. It is hugely exciting to see increasing numbers of audiences coming and being inspired by those wonderful artists and companies that we have presented - Paines Plough's prototype of their Roundabout back in 2012, Philip Pullman's Grimm Tales last year, our upcoming major commission ABSENT from dreamthinkspeak, Kneehigh later this year, and crucially the hundreds of emerging artists and new performance makers we have been able to give a platform to. This investment will not only ensure we can continue supporting some of the most exciting and original new theatre, but also create the kind of production and technical facilities that are vital to sustaining our non-revenue funded model - securing a vibrant future for the building in the years ahead."

In May Shoreditch Town Hall completed a third phase of capital works, which included:

· Improving sight lines and reinstalling 274 bespoke seats into the balcony of the Assembly Hall, as well as purchasing 550 new Matrix system seats for the stalls, raising the overall seated capacity from 499 to 800 in the main house.

· New toilets to allow, along with previous capital works, an audience capacity of 1,100 across the building.

· Installing a new goods lift at the rear of the Town Hall to allow easy street access and level building access for loading into the Assembly Hall for the first time in the building's history.

Prior to this works included:

· Works to gain an unrestricted public performance license for theatre for the first time since the 1960s. These encompassed building wide M&E works, including new fire alarm, emergency lighting systems and acoustic improvements.

· Phase 3 power distribution into all main spaces, sound and lighting to allow 'The Ditch' (basement) to operate multiple performance spaces, plus building wide scalable wifi.

· The first phase of building wide decoration and refurbishment developed with, amongst others, leading interior designers Russell Sage Studios.

· Partnering with The Clove Club, who established a Michelin starred destination restaurant within The Town Hall, voted 55th best in the world, and 11th in the UK.

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