Woolton Cinema invites community to help decide what to do next with funds

A campaign to purchase the building was about to smash its deadline target back in May when an anonymous benefactor stepped in to buy Woolton Picture House and give Woolton Cinema Community Interest Company (CIC) a 101-year ‘peppercorn’ lease.

The lease will cost just £19.27 a year – a nod to the Picture House’s original opening date, Boxing Day 1927.

That meant all the money raised could go instead towards refurbishing the building, so now the CIC’s directors are asking local residents and businesses who were so fantastic in supporting the campaign to help shape the cinema’s future.

With repairs underway, it is hosting a series of community meetings in June and July

Iain Christie explains: “The idea of the meetings is to find out what people want the building to look like and what they want the money to be spent on.

“Right from the start we’ve said it’s not our building, it’s a community building that belongs to everybody. Initially we were talking about raising about a couple of hundred thousand pounds to do some repairs, but then we found ourselves in the very strong position of having about half a million pounds in the bank.

“We see this as a brilliant opportunity to use that to leverage some more money from funding bodies, people like Arts Council and National Lottery. 

“We think there’s a chance to spend the money wisely now and have the building set up for the next 60, 80 or 100 years, but we want to find out if that’s what the community wants too.

“If they say, let’s just spend the money we’ve got and get it open in whatever way we can, then we’ll go with that, but judging by the first meeting we had people do seem very excited about trying to do as much work as we possibly can in the short and medium term.”

In the run-up to Christmas, the cinema is spending three weeks of every month doing essential repair work to electrics and toilets, as well as levelling paving to the rear of the cinema to make it more wheelchair accessible.

The last weekend of the month will be dedicated to films, with ‘70s favourites like Saturday Night Fever and Freaky Friday making up the June programme, and ‘80s at the end of July when they’ll screen classics including The Breakfast Club, Big and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. 

Iain says the rest of 2026 is about doing what’s necessary in between screenings, then they could be focusing on a bigger picture.

He said: “In the short term, our attitude is let’s improve what we can improve and repair what we can repair while still leaving enough in the bank to leverage more funds to do more if that’s what the community wants,” he adds.

“We’ve already put out a call to the local community for contractors, builders to work on these projects, and we’ve been bombarded with people offering their time free or at cost.

“So many people are really keen to help out, it’s something they want to be a part of, and we like the idea that they might be in at Christmas to watch a film and be able to go ‘I fitted those lights’ or ‘I tiled those toilets’.”

Having raised a staggering £532,884 with its campaign, Iain says Woolton Cinema CIC should be an attractive proposition for funders so there’s a chance to capitalise on that.

“It’s a very appealing community project from a funding point of view because we’ve got money in the bank, we’ve shown we can sell a lot of tickets – we sold 18,000 tickets while we were raising the funds – and 2,500 people donated so there’s a big community demand for it.

“We really want to strike while the iron’s hot and try and raise as much as we can – how we spend that is down to the community.

“We’ll get feedback from the community meetings and we’re going to send out a survey to our full mailing list, then we’ll take all that onboard and put some plans together. Hopefully once we’ve got the plans we’ll show them to the community at the July meetings, make sure they’re happy and then we can start work.

“When we launched the campaign to save Woolton Cinema, the community as a whole stepped forward and said we want this. This belongs to them, so we’re not just here to talk in these meetings, we’re here to listen.”

The next community meeting at Woolton Cinema is on Wednesday June 24 at 6pm, then there’ll be a further two in July, on Sunday July 19 at 2pm and Monday July 20 at 6pm.

Get more from Woolton Cinema here.

Find out more about Woolton Picture House being saved by surprise donation here.

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