21-Living Landmarks Planning and design News 300508

Subscribe to newsletter

Editor's Note: Living Landmarks provide:-

Planning and design

Request Information

Home
Include Article
Advertise

Links
Request Information
Terms of use
Contact

Request Facilities / Interiors product information

Request Architectural product information A-J

Request Architectural product information K-Z

Request Mechanical HVAC product information

Request Electrical product information

MULTI-MILLION POUND LANDMARK PROJECTS GET OFF GROUND

The first steps are being taken to get four major schemes off the ground since it was announced late last year that they had been awarded up to £50 million each from the Big Lottery Fund’s Living Landmarks programme.

The four successful projects all met together for the first time at the Big Lottery Fund’s London headquarters on Thursday 29th May. The meeting provided an opportunity for the projects to meet along with Big Lottery Fund board members and senior managers, including Chief Executive, Peter Wanless and Chair of the Living Landmarks Committee, Anna Southall.

Kerrier District Council’s Cornwall’s Heartlands (awarded £22.3million); The Greater East Belfast Partnership’s Connswater Community Greenway (awarded £23.5million), Falkirk Council’s The Helix (awarded £25million) and Sustrans’ UK-wide Connect2 (awarded £50 million), were all successful in securing the Living Landmarks funding in November and December 2007.*

As the projects get work underway, the meeting provided a basis to identify areas of similarity and best practice, as well as ways in which BIG, in its role as an intelligent funder, can facilitate the sharing of learning and best practice.

Peter Wanless, Big Lottery Fund Chief Executive, said: “All of these organisations are at an exciting stage in which they have now secured the funding and are in a position to make a start on their projects to transform local communities. Bringing all the successful Living Landmarks projects together along with representatives from BIG provided an ideal opportunity to open up dialogue between the parties and discuss the best possible ways to work together in taking these major multi-million pound projects forward.”

The Living Landmarks programme was launched in June 2005 to capture the imagination of communities and increase their involvement with the Lottery by re-connecting people with the good causes they support. The programme was designed to inspire communities to transform, revitalise and regenerate the places where they live, through social and community projects and major infrastructure investments.

Projects that applied were extensively scrutinised by the Living Landmarks Committee, which included experts in the areas of architecture and regeneration, and have substantial professional experience of large-scale capital projects.

Sustrans’ Connect2 project was the winner of the People’s £50 Million Contest in which ITV1 viewers voted it as the Living Landmarks project they wanted to win a £50 million Big Lottery Fund award above three other competing projects.

Living Landmarks’ Project Descriptions

£50 million Sustrans’ Connect2 is a UK-wide project that will create new cycling and walking routes to improve local travel in 79 communities. Connect2 was awarded the grant after winning a public vote televised on ITV1 in December 2007.

Connect2 will revitalise walking and cycling in communities across the UK by creating new routes for local journeys made every day. Crossings and bridges will be created over busy roads, railway lines and rivers, linking into new networks of local paths to get people to where they want to go by foot or bike. Connect2 will make it possible for people to travel to the shops, school, work, the park or to see family and friends, benefiting both health and the environment.

£22.3 million, Cornwall’s Heartlands is a community-led vision to transform Cornwall’s most derelict urban area into a truly inspirational cultural landscape. Heartlands will transform 7.5 hectares of former mining land into a World Heritage Site and beautiful new parkland. The site will include formal gardens, exciting play-space, performance space for events for over 4,000 people and new cycle links to local trails. Heartlands will include stunning new public art with a range of water features, sculpture and contemporary architecture directly complementing the Grade 2* Listed Robinson’s Shaft mine complex.

£23.5 million, Greater East Belfast Partnership will use the grant to connect 379 acres of public open space, build 43 bridges and create 19kms of cycle and walkways. The project will benefit more than 40,800 people living in the area, improving the living environment and providing opportunities for leisure, exercise, recreation and supporting healthier lifestyles.

The £23.5 million grant will also be used to develop a 9km linear park through east Belfast, following the course of the Connswater, Knock and Loop rivers, connecting people and places from Castlereagh Hills to Belfast Lough.

£25 million, The Helix project will transform over 300 hectares of unused urban scrub into an environmental resource for the thousands of people living in Falkirk and across Central Scotland. The finished project will see:

Over a quarter of a million new trees on the site
34 kilometres of paths and cycle tracks
A new section of canal linking and extending the Forth and Clyde Canal into the Forth Estuary
The creation of the outstanding 30 metre high sculpture, ‘Kelpie’

Big Lottery Fund
· The Big Lottery Fund rolls out close to £2 million in Lottery good cause money every 24 hours which together with other Lottery distributors means that across the UK most people are within a few miles of a Lottery-funded project.

· The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since its inception in June 2004. It was established by Parliament on 1 December 2006.

· Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to Good Causes. As a result, over £20 billion has now been raised and more than 280,000 grants given out across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.

Email: james.nicholls@biglotteryfund.org.uk