Restored cinema wants to add honours to its rave reviews

Oct 5 2009 by Tony Henderson, The Journal

A RESTORED cinema is in the spotlight again, winning through to the finals of a prestigious national award.

The judges in this year’s Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling Prize have shortlisted Newcastle’s Tyneside Cinema for the special award for conservation.

The Crown Estate Conservation Award is given to the project which best demonstrates the successful restoration and/or adaptation of an architecturally significant building. The other projects to be shortlisted are: St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, No 12 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, also in London, and the Midland Hotel, Morecambe.

The Tyneside Cinema re-opened in May last year after an 18-month restoration and extension of the 1937 listed building.

The £7m project extended the listed Pilgrim Street cinema to provide state-of-the-art screening facilities and more space for its community education and screening programmes. Today it is the only purpose built newsreel cinema still screening film full-time in the UK and is regarded as the finest surviving example of a newsreel cinema in the UK.

Tyneside Cinema chief executive Mark Dobson said he was thrilled by the news.