Challenging times for the Old Low Light Heritage Centre

Over the next few months your support will be more important than ever for the Old Low Light Heritage Centre.

The pandemic and the cost of living crisis have greatly impacted on our viability. Visitor numbers have more than halved from 60,000 during 2019 to less than 27,000 in 2022, resulting in much less income. This is compounded by the fact that like everyone else, we are facing increasing costs and we are struggling financially.

The best way to help us is by:

• Visiting our centre and cafe
• Volunteering at the centre
• Becoming a member 
• Attending our events 
• Making a charitable donation

We hope to see you soon.

Some background to our current challenging position

As a small independent charity, we don’t receive operating support from any local or national organisation. We’re funded by our own commercial efforts, donations from members of the public, supplemented by grants. In 2020 and in 2021, despite the pandemic, grant support from organisations like the Sir James Knott Trust, National Lottery Community Fund, and National Lottery Cultural Recovery Fund meant we were able to pay our bills. However, grant applications are not always successful and in 2022 we operated at a loss for the first time since 2018. Our financial situation means that in the coming months we really need successful grant applications to stay afloat.

This is despite having taken difficult decisions, such as reducing our opening hours from seven days a week to Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 3pm and limiting our activities and events to those we’re reasonably sure will generate a profit.

We’re often asked why we can’t open on a Sunday, which was never a profitable day as understandably it was difficult to get volunteers to give up their Sundays on a regular basis, so we had to have more staff on duty. While in 2019 we could afford the extra staff costs this is now currently out of the question. Instead on Sundays we open only for private hire groups or one-off special events.

So, for these reasons, your continued support is so important.