We’ve kicked off February with some wonderful news. Garfield Weston Foundation have awarded Wales Millennium Centre £823,000 as part of its Weston Culture Fund.

The new, £30 million, one-off fund aims to support the cultural sector, and has been launched in response to the devastating impact of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Established over 60 years ago in 1958, the Garfield Weston Foundation is a family-founded, grant-making charity which supports causes across the UK and gave over £88million last year.

This grant is the latest chapter of our relationship with the Foundation, which started 15 years ago when they made a significant investment in our Weston Studio.

Our grant – a year’s worth of funding for 2021 – will fund WMC Productions and supports not only our ambitions to create innovative new work, but also our plans to reach new audiences and the digital platforms on which we’ll do this.

We have big ideas that showcase Wales to the world, and we know there’s no shortage of stories and voices with which to do this. We look forward to working with artists and freelancers across Wales and beyond to bring them to life.

Some of you will have read about the Creative Associate roles we announced in January; others might have seen The Beauty Parade which we staged just before the pandemic hit.

You may have signed up for a place on our Creative Voice courses or have read about the award-winning Es & Flo; one of several exciting shows we hope to put on stage as soon as we can reopen.

These give you a flavour of our ambitions for the sector in Wales; not only for more of our own, diverse productions in the short term, but for mentoring, nurturing and providing meaningful opportunities for Welsh talent, from initial ideas through to full production on our stages in the long term.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the many individual donors whose kindness has buoyed us through this very difficult year.

This new grant from Garfield Weston Foundation takes us several steps closer to our goals. It enables us to create a strong, resilient palette of work to share with hungry audiences as soon as we’re open.

We are sincerely thankful to Garfield Weston Foundation for their generosity, and we cannot wait to get cracking.

Sian Morgan, Director of Development and Partnerships