CLS has  put an application in to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a new archive centre and associated work with our archives & special collections.  The application  process for large HLF projects is in two stages, and we have successfully come through Round One.   A total of £77,800 has so far been approved for working up a Development Plan for the new centre (total stage 1 cost £92,000).  If the Round Two application is successful in Sept 2013 it will amount to total external funding of in excess of £1.5 million.

The project will cover a range of activities, including physical development of a large part of the space on the Central Services Building floors 2 and 3 (Café on Third and Quayside, both of which will be decommissioned once the new Learning and Leisure Centre is up and running), as well as  a programme of educational activities to engage communities with the archives and special collections,  improving access to the collections e.g. through cataloguing, and a range of multi-media technologies.  If successful at Round Two, we would aim to have the new centre ready for business in Spring/Summer of 2014 with the project concluding in autumn 2016.

I’ll be updating this blog regularly so you can follow our progress