People’s Palace gets £850,000 National Lottery funding

The People's Palace has housed a museum of Glasgow's social history since the 1940s

A project to restore the People's Palace and Winter Gardens in Glasgow has secured £850,000 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

The money will go towards transforming the museum and glasshouse on Glasgow Green into a museum and thriving community space.

It will be used to focus on making the building more accessible and improving its environmental sustainability.

The renovations are expected to cost £35.9m in total.

The development phase is expected to take about 16 months and will facilitate work with Glasgow's diverse communities to discover how the museum can best tell the city's stories, making sure more people's heritage is on display in the refreshed museum.

It will lead to a Heritage Fund application to secure an additional £6.65m of support. This would be amongst the largest Heritage award made to a single project in Scotland.

Eilish McGuinness, chief executive of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, said: "I am delighted we are supporting this inspiring project, which is not only about redeveloping a much-loved building, but also rediscovering the story of Glasgow and putting the People's Palace and Winter Gardens back in the heart of local communities."

• Glasgow seeks £36m for future of People's Palace

• People's Palace reopens to the public

• Winter Gardens to close for £5m repairs

Set in Glasgow Green, the building is home to collections documenting the city's social history from 1750 to the present day.

The Winter Gardens closed in 2018 after structural issues where identified in the building. The People's Palace was also temporarily closed due to the issues with the Winter Gardens but reopened in 2019 after £350,000 of modifications were carried out.

The restored People's Palace and Winter Gardens is described as a "dynamic community-led museum and flexible space". It is being designed to help inclusion and access and to minimise its impact on the environment.

The Winter Gardens were closed in 2018 after structural problems were discovered

An ambition of the project is to better connect the museum and its visitors with nature and the surrounding park.

Councillor Ruairi Kelly of Glasgow City Council said the funding announcement is a "massive step closer to the goal of revitalising the People's Palace and Winter Gardens".

He said: "We remain fully committed to exploring every avenue to raise the remainder of the funding required to bring this major part of Glasgow's working-class history back to life.

"We want to see the People's Palace and Winter Gardens fully restored and functioning as a great cultural attraction for Glasgow's residents and visitors alike."