Storyhouse has temporarily closed its doors as per the new national lockdown.

We count ourselves lucky to have had A Christmas Carol and the building open for so long and made it to Christmas Day itself. Christmas wasn’t quite cancelled at Storyhouse.

We’ll move our community programmes back online. We’ve already found new audiences in France, Palestine and America thanks to our live streaming: this is a unique chance for us to connect internationally and share our work overseas, as well as reaching shielding and isolated communities in our own neighbourhood We have already made live streams available free to care homes and to vulnerable individuals nominated by our community at Christmas.

We know this is a blow, but rest assured we will come out of this better, stronger and more proudly together.

Storyhouse was the first cinema, first library, first theatre to re-open. Twice. We’ve put more home-produced theatre on (130 dates) than any other UK theatre since March. We’ve run soup kitchens, drive-in movies (even in defiance of international loos) outdoor cinemas, open-air theatre, and we’ve still got the longest opening hours of any library in the country. We’ve run over two-thirds of our huge community programmes online and maintained a lifeline connection with hundreds of our young people.

Over 5,000 people have joined as members, mostly just to give us a hand. That hand is holding us up. One way or another, we raised over £2m to keep us afloat this year. We really, really hope we don’t have to do the same again in 2021.

But whatever we need to do, we will do together. Thank you all for your continued support, patience, good humour and we wish you a very Happy New Year.