Funding boost for Viva’s plans

Derby-based regional professional orchestra Sinfonia Viva is forging ahead with its plans to buy an innovative mobile stage and auditorium that will enable it to take classical music further afield around the East Midlands.

The mobile stage and auditorium are inflatable, highly portable and can be erected in a short space of time by just two or three people, making it very flexible and appropriate for a wide range of spaces.

Viva has secured a £179,585 grant from Arts Council England’s National Lottery-funded Capital programme towards the £211,000 investment programme to buy a large inflatable stage and auditorium seating up to 250 people.

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The orchestra will also purchase lighting and sound equipment, a van to transport the equipment and invest in industrial storage premises in Derby.

Having secured the Arts Council funding, the orchestra has launched a campaign to raise match funding of just over £30,000 to bring the project to fruition which is being headed by Classic FM radio presenter Anne-Marie Minhall.

Sinfonia Viva chief executive Peter Helps explained that the orchestra did not run its own venue and currently performed its concert giving and nationally-recognised education projects throughout the East Midlands and beyond in a wide range of venues from large concert halls..

He said: “This inflatable structure will effectively give us our own venue for the first time and will enable us to take our work out of the concert hall and into the heart of communities – particularly rural areas who do not have performance venues.”

He added: “The announcement of the Arts Council grant has come at the perfect time.”