Save Streatham Hill Theatre from change of use to a church

The Friends of Streatham Hill Theatre’s campaign is calling on creative industry professionals to lend their support.

When we worked to publicise the crowdfund earlier in the year, the Friends were fortunate enough to receive the backing of Simon Callow CBE, Catherine Russell, Lolita Chakrabarti, Lucie Shorthouse, Samira Ahmed, Sir Mark Rylance and Baroness Floella Benjamin DBE, DL.  As we looked to reach out to others, we were amazed to find such strong past and present local creative industry connections, both in front of and behind the scenes.  This led us to put together our Vision Statement to send out to creative industry professionals, mostly, but not all, with Streatham or South London connections, who would want to see our wonderful ‘Sleeping Beauty’ of a theatre restored as a vibrant creative hub for the wider community.

We’re launching our list of individual creative industry supporters on the 91^st birthday of Streatham Hill Theatre on the 20^th November 2020.  In the meantime, we’re contacting creative industry companies and showing that they support the campaign by adding their logos here at our new website.   This is particularly important, as over the coming weeks, FEI, the consultants who won the tender for the viability study and economic impact assessment, will be wanting to look into any opportunities for collaboration as part of their studies.

We’d very much like to encourage any creative professionals or companies to email supporters@streathamhilltheatre.org to be included, and for those on social media to help us spread the word about the Friends of Streatham Hill Theatre’s ongoing campaign!

Helena Breck, Jenny Eastop, Jane Goddard & Matt Haskins
FoSHT’s Creative Vision Statement Group

Thanks to your great support we reached the target before the deadline!

Since then we have been working with the Mayor of London & the GLA to make arrangements for their pledge to be paid – it will be released in stages. Meanwhile your pledge will soon be taken by Spacehive – watch out for messages from them. And Lambeth will be releasing their pledge too.

In recognition of your support, we have made you a member of the Friends – there’s no charge for membership. We have also put you on our email list for our regular newsletters with updates on the progress of the study project and the wider campaign. An archive of messages is available here. If you find you are not getting those newsletters, you can sign up to the list here. If you want to unsubscribe from the email list at anytime you can click the link in any of the messages you receive.

We also hold regular fortnightly online campaign meetings which you are very welcome to join in – details in the newsletters. The next one is also our Annual General Meeting where we elect our committee, and we will also be voting on charity status.

We are working on a tender to send out to potential providers for the viability study, and thanks to a grant from Theatres Trust we can extend the scope of work to include an economic impact assessment to help show the benefits a revived building can bring, especially as we exit COVID-19.

Thanks once again and watch out for updates on saving Streatham Hill Theatre.

Lambeth Council has backed up the commitment it made to Streatham in the recently published Streatham Investment & Growth Strategy 2019-30 by committing £7,500 to the crowdfunding campaign set up by the Friends of Streatham Hill Theatre (FoSHT), as part of their ambition to revive the former theatre.

Councillor Matthew Bennett, Cabinet Member for Planning, Investment & New Homes, wrote to the friends group, congratulating them on running an effective and inspiring campaign that had gained strong local support.

He said: “I‘m delighted this money will see the campaign meet its fundraising target and I look forward to working with the owners, FoSHT, the BID and others in bringing the former theatre back into productive use.”