Community Business Crowdmatch has provided £3,000 of match funding
Future-proofing the last Fisher Theatre Phase 2
Bungay, England, United Kingdom
Aim
The people of Bungay have a chance to own the very LAST Fisher Theatre in the country! We have until the end of 2019 - we've nearly done it!
With just a few days to go and donations still coming in, our offline target of £150,000 is looking more and more achievable before the end of 2019!
Gaspard the Fox to the rescue!
The amazing response received to beautiful, original pencil and watercolour sketches of Gaspard and his friends signed by Gaspard the Fox author Zeb Soanes and illustrator James Mayhew have given the campaign that final push we needed to make our Crowdfunder target. Gaspard indeed came to the rescue!
The Story so far...
In April this year The Fisher Theatre received an amazingly generous offer from our lenders - the Architectural Heritage Fund - to pay off a long-standing loan on our building - for good. All we had to do was raise £150K by the end of 2019...
We decided to use Crowdfunder to kick off Phase one of our "Futureproofing the Fisher" campaign. The Crowdfunder ended on May 31st having raised £8850 with a total of 116 supporters. The publicity resulted in donations made directly to the theatre by cheque and in person from our own wonderful volunteers, local businesses and theatre users adding a further c£11K to the fund.
A summer of fundraising from all angles began in earnest: plant sales, peep boards, Mr Fisher Tea Parties, sleepovers at the theatre, meet-ups with local groups, applications to local funding pots, special fundraising performances and an application to Power To Change led to our **current** total of:
£129K
Fundraising box and David Fisher "peep" board created for local art trail
Cake-related evidence from a Mr Fisher Tea Party and young supporter - Arlo- with a plant stall he kept by his front gate for the summer
Phase two (the final push!)
We thought that right now might be a good opportunity to return to the Crowdfunder site and give the Futureproof campaign that final, vital push...
We're going for £6K and hoping this will be match-funded by a special community scheme offered by Crowdfunder, so your contribution could be worth double what you give! With the panto season coming up soon and Christmas markets and all sorts we can do this..Together!
A little about The Fisher
Bungay's Fisher Theatre is a thriving local asset, providing everything from touring theatre, film, live music, livestreamed plays and opera and fine art exhibitions. We have a well-established youth theatre, a gallery space for arts workshops for older people, a cellar for smaller acoustic performances and a flexible auditorium space for community get-togethers and special events. We currently offer this to the local community without the support of revenue funding.
We survive on what we earn because we provide people with what they want.
Our history
Built in 1828, The Fisher Theatre is the last surviving of 13 theatres built by East Anglia’s own ‘greatest showman’ David Fisher (see below) . Thirteen people bought Fisher shares to build Bungay’s Theatre back in 1828 – the original share documents are held in the library archives at UEA. After years of varying uses, the five original Trustees got together in 1996 and brought the theatre back to the town by creating the Bungay Arts and Theatre Society charity which oversaw the renovation and purchase of the building with support from the Architectural Heritage Fund.
A third of the original thirteen theatre buildings are still standing of which none are still in use as theatres; one is a restaurant, one is a nursery, many are gone without a trace other than leaving a Theatre Street or Theatre Road behind. Lowestoft's was last to be developed, as flats just recently finished. The Fisher Theatre is the only one which remains a theatre, as David Fisher envisioned, and is believed to be the fourth oldest theatre still in use in the UK.
This project successfully funded on 29th November 2019