Chester’s Storyhouse celebrates over one million visits in its first year

Chester’s Storyhouse celebrates turning one this Friday, May 11 – the cultural hub in the heart of the city has seen an astonishing 1m customers passing through its doors in the past 12 months.

The restored 1930s Odeon is the only building of its kind in the UK: unifying a cinema, library and theatre building – it houses an 800-seat auditorium, a 150-seat studio theatre, a restaurant and two bars plus a 100-seat boutique, independent cinema and cost £37m.

Friday will see the Storyhouse celebrate its first year success with the community, there will be film screenings and a series of features across the building including performances by schools, choirs, acoustic singers, dance, storytelling and cake!

There’ll also be a performance of A Little Night Music, the Tony award-winning musical by Grammy winner Stephen Sondheim.

The Storyhouse is now officially one of the UK’s largest cultural visitor attractions and has won several prestigious awards including the Building Award for Best Refurbishment, the Brick Award for Best Public Building, it was also highly commended at the RICS awards and was nominated for Best Building at the Stage awards.

The building has also has made it through to the grand final of BBC People’s Choice – ‘Building of the Decade’

BBC North West Tonight asked its viewers to vote for their favourite modern building constructed in the last 10-years.

The Grandstand at Aintree Racecourse won the coveted title back in 2008, when the competition was first held.

25 unique eye-catching buildings were shortlisted for the title, five nominations from each of BBC North West Tonight’s five regions – Cheshire and north Derbyshire, Merseyside, Manchester, Cumbria and the Isle of Man and Lancashire.

Storyhouse was up against Planet Pavilion Joddrell Bank, the Mersey Gateway,  Buxton Natural Mineral Water Factory and Time Square Multi-storey Car Park in Warrington – the winner will be announced later this month.

“Storyhouse has made the city of Chester even more of an exciting place to live for artists, creatives and its communities. The building is fizzing with creative ideas and debates, people come from all walks of life to connect and tell their stories.” Said artistic director Alex Clifton.

The first year numbers:

– sold over 180,000 tickets to theatre shows and events.
– over 250 cinema screenings, and 30,000 cinema tickets bought.
– 150 community groups use Storyhouse as their home.
– the library loaned 258,000 books.
– Children’s book loans have increased by 50% since Chester library moved to Storyhouse.

Andrew Bentley, CEO, Storyhouse said:

“It is with enormous pride that we look back at the first year at Storyhouse. We’ve only been open for a year but feel Storyhouse has already had a huge impact on the life of Chester.

The community has whole heartedly embraced the building’s spaces. We have some truly exciting plans for 2018 and beyond and more great reasons for people to visit and take part.’

During its first year, as well as its seasons of repertory theatre (the largest outside of the RSC and National) and touring productions such as Cilla, Evita, Blood Brothers, The Play That Goes Wrong and Frantic Assembly’s Things I Know to Be True, the cinema has screened a diverse film programme and Storyhouse has run a number of social impact events and festivals, including WOW in partnership with the Southbank.”