Fire-damaged art school given £450,000 donation

A view of the mackintosh building before it was badly damaged by fire

A charity has donated £450,000 to help the Glasgow School of Art (GSA) repair the fire-damaged Mackintosh building and expand its Garnethill campus.

The Wolfson Foundation's award means £18.5m has now been raised towards the £32m Mackintosh Campus Appeal.

The Mackintosh building was badly damaged by fire on 23 May 2014.

The appeal is part of an £80m plan to restore and upgrade the The Mackintosh building along with the purchase and conversion of the former Stow College.

Original sketch of the Stow building from the 1930s

The library in the Mackintosh building was gutted in the blaze on 23 May 2014

Work on the Stow building is now underway and contractors are currently removing the stone piers in the library of the Mackintosh Building.

GSA said the latest donation was the largest grant to a non-science project in Scotland in the past five years.

Prof Tom Inns, GSA director, said: "We are hugely grateful to the Wolfson Foundation for this generous donation."

Wolfson Foundation CEO Paul Ramsbottom said the charity was delighted to help "revitalise an outstanding building".

He said: "We were impressed not only by the bravery, ambition and energy with which the School has responded to the traumatic events of May 2014, but also by the sensitivity with which this restoration has been conceived - not in isolation, but as part of a wider strategic vision for the School's future."

After the Mackintosh building blaze, an investigation by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service concluded it was caused by flammable gases from a canister of expanding foam.

The report said the gases ignited as they came into contact with the hot surface of a projector.