Penicuik Cinema in the Town Hall
Nominated for the British Federation of Film Societies 2008 Awards
Category: Best New Society
Story of Penicuik Cinema in the Twenty First Century
The Trust
Penicuik Community Development Trust was set up following a public meeting in 2005 to save Penicuik Town Hall as a focus for community regeneration. In the end the local
council decided to refurbish the Town Hall rather than close it. But our strong community movement was under
way, and resolved to continue to promote the building for fuller community use. From summer 2005, the Trust opened a weekly
Open House with coffee and home baking and a series of exhibitions. Our rental
of the space for Saturday Open House continues to this day. By spring 2007, the
pattern was very well established, we had organised other events and brought
out a popular range of postcards of the town, and some of our community formed
a Foundation to take over the Penicuik Leisure Centre at Ladywood which the
council had declared surplus to requirements –this too is going from strength
to strength.
The Cinema Group
In the early summer of 2007,
under the wing of the Trust, a small group began to look at the possibility of
showing films in Penicuik once again. We
are a large town, the largest in Midlothian, once famous for papermaking, and now a dormitory for Edinburgh. And we have had no cinema for far too long. It has been decades
since the former picture house became a snooker hall; its last showing was
Kramer vs Kramer.
We examined the possibilities. Deciding to operate as Penicuik CDT
Digital Cinema under the PCDT’s organisational
umbrella, we chose to go for an open theatrical rather than a membership
approach. We got a lot of encouragement and help from BFFS Scottish arm, and we
sought, and won, funding to help us purchase a big fourteen by eleven foot
demountable screen for the Town Hall proscenium stage. We chose Sunday nights
to avoid conflict with other Town Hall events and dances. and made arrangements
with the council to rent the hall on a regular basis. We joined BFFS. With a band of dedicated
volunteers for booking, projection, front of house, publicity and refreshments,
and a careful choice of fortnightly films (see www.kosmoid.net/penicuik/cinema)
to take us through autumn to the end of 2007 we were in business! Our accounts
were meticulously watched, and we had the rigour of operating through the
accounts and treasurership of the Trust and in
fulfilment of its charitable aims and responsibilities (charity SC037990). And that
first season was very successful. It gave us the confidence to continue with a
full programme till June 2008, to run an autumn season for 2008-9, and to
arrange a 4-film Masters of World Cinema mini-season during Penicuik
Arts Festival 2008.
Post-nomination…
The first flush of enthusiasm for film has carried our big screen audience
on through 2008-2009 and 2009-2010. We have always put on extra films during
the annual arts festival, and we’re running weekly films in December 2010. You
can see the complete playlist of Penicuik films since
2007, with posters, at
PENICUIK CINEMA FILM SEASON TO DATE