The Broadway Cinema is one of the greatest remaining examples of a small-town golden-age cinema in the country. Designed by renowned architect Alister Gladstone MacDonald, the Broadway opened on 29th April 1935 as Ayrshire’s new luxury super cinema. Seating 1,060 patrons, featuring a beautifully furnished tearoom, and with a full stage and dressing rooms for live performances, the Broadway thrived during the golden age of cinema and provided joy, respite, and vital charitable services for the community of Prestwick through the Second World War, and beyond to the 1960s.

The Broadway then began a slow transition to bingo, becoming a full-time bingo hall between 1966 and 1976, before a final attempt to bring back cinema ended on 20th November 1976. The building next became a leisure centre in 1981 with an amusement arcade to the front, and squash courts and fitness facilities to the rear, operating as Prestwick Leisure Centre until 2003, when the building would be sold to a private hospitality chain. Now in 2025, after 22 years of dereliction, the Broadway has entered community ownership for the first time with Friends of the Broadway Prestwick and celebrated its’ 90th anniversary with major milestones achieved in removing the squash courts and revealing the original cinema auditorium with a screen installed for the first time in almost half a century. Holding great significance for our community, the Broadway is fondly remembered by generations of local residents, with enormous support for the Friends of the Broadway project. Throughout every operational era of its history, the Broadway created a safe, warm, and comfortable space for its community. After decades away, we aim to restore those crucial services that the Broadway can provide for the people of Prestwick. Friends of the Broadway Prestwick want to operate the Broadway for and on behalf of the community for everyone. We want it to be a cinematic living room for the town. A socially inclusive community facility offering accessible, sustainable, and cultural opportunities for all of Prestwick’s citizens. The Broadway’s incredible surviving architecture and atmosphere will be beautifully restored to create an environment entirely unique and evocative of the golden age of cinema-going. Our original 1,000 capacity auditorium will return for cinema, and yet also theatre, music, comedy, conferences, and more. We will construct additional screens to the rear of the property for programming flexibility and additional rentable space for local groups. Our community hub at ground level as well as hosting our concessions and box office, will act as central hub for Main Street. A varied events programme will be complemented by local exhibits, heritage tours and presentations, and hireable meeting space. We aim to preserve not only the Broadway's history but the history of all cinemas across the country, in our nation's first ever Museum of Scottish Cinemas. Our heritage work will include extensive oral history projects, multiple interactive exhibits, and result in the first fully accredited museum in the town’s history. We will also incorporate Scottish Gaelic throughout the building, creating a leading culture and learning hub for the preservation of Gaelic in Ayrshire and Galloway and supporting South Ayrshire Council’s commitments to increasing awareness and usage of the language. In successfully bringing the Broadway into community ownership, we have undertaken additional responsibilities to care for our C-listed building and protect and preserve its current condition until our restoration work can begin. This includes core operating, utility, and maintenance costs that are crucial to our project’s sustainable development. We are now ready to commence Phase One of the building’s redevelopment, to deliver the re-opening of the Broadway in 2025. Phase One will restore the Broadway’s original auditorium to cinema use, with inaugural major events currently under development, and a new visitor experience created in the foyer with a pop-up museum and exhibit space that brings an immersive cultural learning environment.

To achieve this, additional health and safety works, facility upgrades, and accessibility improvements are necessary to grant public access and enable events and community use. We are asking for capital funding support from the Community Empowerment Fund to initiate essential safety works to the canopy at the Broadway’s front entrance to ensure safe public access to the building, improvements to a former toilet block in the Broadway’s auditorium to bring safe, accessible, and usable facilities necessary for events, and additional accessibility aids for the foyer including a ramp, secondary handrails, and signage, to ensure the Broadway becomes a fully accessible and navigable venue. Together, with additional health and safety measures we will implement with matched maintenance funding, we can deliver the re-opening of the Broadway with your support in 2025.

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Being awarded funding to open our studio space will align with UK Shared Prosperity Fund’s goals by strengthening the resilience of our community through creative learning and reducing isolation in our communities by bringing people together in a space that they can take ownership of. By providing accessible and affordable quality arts and entertainment we will be tackling inequalities and improving life chances for people living in our community and beyond

The Iris currently delivers creative learning workshops where people can learn how to express themselves and have their voices heard about things that matter to them by learning how to create film and theatre. By teaching people living in our community creative writing and film productions skills, we can empower people to learn and help them to improve their mental health. The Iris is a multi-award winning production company, having produced 100s of creative learning pieces with people living in our community since 2019. By having a studio space open we can empower the community to create more, bring more people together and access free or reduced cost creative learning and entertainment.