‘Back to the Gaiety’ is a three year Heritage Lottery Fund project, which intends to preserve the history of the Gaiety Theatre in Ayr, as well as collecting people’s memories and stories. 

Through partnerships with Heritage Lottery Fund Scotland, Ayrshire Archives and University of the West of Scotland, the ‘Back to the Gaiety’ project has to date listed the complete Gaiety archive and catalogued this (this will be made available online later in the year). 

A spokesperson for the group said: “We hope that at the end of the three years we will be able to highlight the significant impact that the theatre had and continues to have in many people’s lives.”

The project have digitised a proportion of the archive material and made this accessible to all and available to view for free online via the Gaiety website.

In addition they have been engaging in outreach activities with care homes with the creation of memory boxes. 

These boxes have been used to great effect with older residents and people living with dementia, acting as reminiscence tools. 

At the moment they are also holding an exhibition at Rozelle House, Ayr where they are showcasing some original archive material as well as visitors having the chance to explore our new digital archive.

Also, one of their volunteers has started the process of creating a coffee style book containing memories and archive images of the Gaiety. They hope that this will be published by 2019. Other projects in the pipeline will be working in collaboration with local Ayrshire schools in developing a playbox education resource.

Their PhD student will end the project in 2019 with a performance based on the material collated and findings collated during the course of the project.

These are delivered by a team of two people, 5 regular volunteers and other helpers.