Manchester’s Contact Theatre has announced it has successfully secured a £600,000 funding grant from global charitable foundation Wellcome, as part of a £6.5million capital redevelopment.
Contact is the nationally renowned Manchester based theatre that develops radical new theatre with young people.
The building expansion, due to take place in 2018-19, will see Contact improve its performance venues and facilities, create a new cabaret stage and a recording studio for young people, provide more welcoming community spaces, improve access and ensure the building continues to operate to the highest environmental standards.
Funding from Wellcome will support a new ground-floor venue that will focus on exploring the health and wellbeing issues relating to young people and local communities, informing future theatre productions, and arts and wellbeing projects. Contact is already a leader in developing theatre that responds to health and social challenges, such as cancer care for young people, FGM, pregnancy and abortion, touring widely across the UK and more recently developing work for BBCTV broadcast.
In addition, Contact will recruit a new dedicated Health and Science Producer to manage the Wellcome programme, pioneering new approaches to engagement between young people, scientists, health researchers and artists to create new shows, public debates and discussions and unique training opportunities for health professionals.
Matt Fenton, Artistic Director and Chief Executive at Contact said: “We have been developing new shows exploring health and social issues for many years now, often in partnership with Wellcome. This new space within our expanded building will bring a whole new dimension to this, just as Manchester is rethinking its health and social care in the light of devolution. As a professional theatre on the doorstep of NHS Hospitals, University departments, Manchester Science Park and diverse local communities, Contact is the perfect location to bring together health workers, researchers, artists and young people.”
Tom Ziessen, Engaging Science Manager, Wellcome, said: “We’re delighted to be supporting Contact’s redevelopment to permanently embed research in health and social care in their work. By investing in the space where dialogue between young people and researchers can happen we hope to enable new work to be created about the health topics that matter to Contact’s local communities. This funding will mean that the theatre will have better facilities to develop that work further, addressing challenging issues and sparking debate with the communities and young people it reaches.”
