The new performance area, with its canopy, is being created in the town’s Harbour Square.
The covered stage is replacing the old decking and members of the Kirkcudbright Development Trust are looking to extend the tourist season and provide more community performances for the town.
Rob Asbridge of Kirkcudbright Development Trust said “It’s a long time coming. It was started in, I think, about 2014. We first set off on the project and it was very, very difficult to get the money, to begin with but thankfully we had funders, Dumfries and Galloway Council, SUEZ, the (Kirkcudbright) festivities put money into it and also Galloway Glens helped us out and eventually it all came together.”
‘A big help was Andrew Ward’
Rob continued “A big help was a man called Andrew Ward who sadly is no longer with us. Andrew did a lot to push the thing forward when we couldn’t see a way getting the money to do it but eventually, we got the money”
“it’s all been done under the Kirkcudbright development trust and three members of the trust have done all the leg work on it. The old stage was a wooden thing that was falling to bits and it was lethal – it was quite dangerous.”
“So the old stage is gone and now we’ve got a state of the art canopy which will allow us to extend the season. We’ll be able to put on events later into the year, earlier into the year which will extend the tourist season which is the whole reason for doing it.
“Kirkcudbright is very much dependent on tourists and we want that to continue and the more we can do for the tourist the better. It’ll mostly be used by Kirkcudbright Festivities.”
‘Open to anybody’
Rob added “It’s open to anybody who wants to come along and use it from a busker to a full choir or an orchestra they’re all very, very welcome and what we hope to do is to be able to finance it by donations.
To be able to support the whole thing just by people donating according to what they can afford you know some groups won’t afford much some will be in a much better position to help with it
