The Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch has been awarded a £50,000 capital grant from Veolia Havering Riverside Maintenance Trust towards its on-going QNew Transformation Programme.
The Theatre will use this generous grant to upgrade its foyer lighting system to use LED lights, giving its audiences the benefit of an improved experience before the show, whilst enjoying a meal or participating in activities. By converting its current incandescent bulbs to LED lights, the Theatre estimates it will reduce total CO2 emissions by 7.5 tonnes annually.
The funds will also go towards lighting its new Learning & Participation space in the lower foyer. With the Theatre now working with over 30,000 participants ever year, this dedicated new space will enable the team to work with a broader range of participants with varying needs; providing great theatre for all and create new opportunities to engage with adults, young people, community and teachers for a wide range of educational and participatory work.
QNew is an exciting programme of building improvements which will allow the Theatre to make high quality theatre in developed spaces, work with more young people and community groups, offer an increasingly comfortable experience to audiences, be more open and accessible to D/deaf and disabled people, and keep the Theatre alive as a safe and environmentally friendly community hub, well into the future.
So far, the project has delivered a brand new rehearsal space on site at Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch and a stylish new Q Bar on the ground level, offering better accessibility for audiences, as well as making a number of urgent and essential backstage improvements.
Mathew Russell, Executive Director at the Queen’s Theatre says ‘We’d like to say a huge thank you to Veolia Havering Riverside Maintenance Trust for their generous support towards such a crucial part of our QNew project. With this grant we will be able to improve the experience for all our visitors and improve our environmental performance’.
