Young Vic director hits out over lottery funding

The Young Vic theatre's plea for £6m in lottery cash for urgent rebuilding and to repair its leaking roof has been met with a grant of only £250,000 from the Arts Council. "I am surprised and disappointed," the London theatre's director, David Lan, said yesterday.

"We really have a crisis. The building is falling down. It was built in 1970 as a series of breeze blocks on top of each other, a temporary structure. We have to spend £80,000 each year on repairs just to keep the building open. We had been led to believe we would get more."

He said the director Peter Brook had agreed to bring his production of Hamlet to the theatre this summer only if dressing rooms were upgraded at a cost of £10,000.

But Mr Lan and many others were pleased that £29m of the lottery awards of £390m was going to black, Asian and Chinese projects. A centre built to the memory of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence to help underprivileged youngsters has been given a kick-start in Britain's biggest investment in ethnic arts.

But casualties among the Arts Council's traditional clients are unhappy. In the South-west, officials said people in the region would receive 31.5 per cent per head less than the national average in this round of funding.

Nick Capaldi, South West Arts chief executive, said, "For years the Arts Council has been telling us it understands the needs of the South-west and is committed to putting things right. The evidence clearly suggests otherwise, and we are tired of being promised that things will get better soon."

Big winners include a Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester, which landed £2.1m, and among the non-ethnic minoirty organisations, the Turner Centre in Margate, Kent, which received £4.1m.

The Stephen Lawrence Technocentre, an £11.5m project offering educational opportunities to young people in Deptford, south-east London, has been given £1m. The centre, which will specialise in teaching architecture and design, has been proposed by a charity set up in the name of the teenager murdered in 1993.

Doreen Lawrence, his mother, said: "The area is deprived, and we are hoping the young people studying there will get the opportunity to look at education as a way forward to eventually go into architecture and design. It will give them the foundation to go on to gain formal qualifications in a field that can often be difficult for deprived youngsters."

The Unicorn Children's Theatre in London was given £4.5m to build a permanent home and Liverpool's century-old Bluecoat Arts Centre picked up £2.75m towards the £6m cost of enhancing gallery space, studios and offices.

Kala Sangam, the Academy of South Asian Performing Arts in Bradford, West Yorkshire, has been given £1.5m of the £3.5m total for establishing a centre for its music and dance. The artistic director, Dr Geetha Upadhyaya, said: "This is fantastic news. From modest beginnings in 1993, Kala Sangam has nurtured great dreams and ambitions. This major grant from the Arts Council will enable us to translate our initial vision into reality and work towards Kala Sangam becoming a national centre for excellence for South Asian arts and a real asset to Yorkshire."

Peter Hewitt, the Arts Council's chief executive, said: "I believe there are certain times when you need to make a statement or create an impetus."