08.08.06
Lottery award puts Eden Project closer to The Edge

The next great chapter in the building of Eden, to be known as The Edge, comes a step closer today (August 8) with the news that the Project has been short-listed for a major new National Lottery award.

The Edge is one of six projects to be awarded a development grant by the Big Lottery Fund's Living Landmarks: The People's Millions programme.

The Eden Project now has nine months to prepare its detailed bid for a £50 million award to build The Edge. Ultimately the winning venture will be chosen by the public in a nationwide TV vote. Welcoming the announcement today, Eden's chief executive Tim Smit said: "This is fantastic news and we are delighted to be on the shortlist. This is a great opportunity for Eden and Cornwall but for us to be chosen as the Landmark Project we will have to win support from all around Britain.

"The Edge will explore what it is to live with the grain of nature. It is a project for our time and is arguably the most challenging and essential call to arms for our generation. By exploring how great social transformations have happened in the past, and how societies have at times failed to transform when the need came, The Edge will tackle the great issues we need to face today – energy, water supply and climate chaos.

"It will feature the arid and semi-arid areas of the world because it is in those regions where climate, energy and water-related tensions are experienced in their most acute forms; where the extremes of wealth and poverty, abundance and scarcity, live side by side on the edge. The Edge will define what skills, capacities and ambitions we need in order to resolve conflict and to foster and maintain healthy, adaptable and cohesive communities into the future."

In the coming weeks, Eden will put together a sustainable business plan and reach out to engage the community in the development process and the outcome.

"Cornwall played a vital role in the Industrial Revolution but subsequently experienced all the consequences of decline through resource depletion. It is the ideal place within Europe to pioneer the changes for a post-industrial age," said Tim Smit.

Big Lottery Fund's Living Landmarks: The People's Millions programme is seen by Eden as the perfect way to advance The Edge. Plans for The Edge have been devised by the Eden team led by managing director Gaynor Coley, who said today: "There is overwhelming evidence from our visitors that they want to see Eden used as a positive agent for change.

"With the development grant award we believe the Big Lottery Fund have recognised that. We are hugely excited at getting through to the second stage because it represents the chance to be able to persuade the British public to get behind what we believe will be one of the most transformational projects in the world. The next stage now is to take our ideas and preliminary designs and build them into an inspirational and sustainable project.

"Our challenge is to create an experience that moves people and makes the hair stand up on the back of their necks. The challenge for the architects will be to provide a building worthy of its contents. What we can say at this stage is that the building will be a landmark construction in the tradition that Eden has established – a beautiful, dynamic and exemplary fusion of architecture, technology, science and the arts.

"It will excite and engage visitors, and challenge them to step out of their established daily patterns and be open to new ideas. Its scale and setting will be a new icon of regeneration, showing that people are capable of amazing things, most of all, making the world a better place."

Since Eden fully opened in March 2001, it has generated more than £700 million for the regional economy and now employs 500 people. The Project, based in a former china clay quarry at Bodelva near St Austell, Cornwall, is ranked as one of Britain's top five paid-for visitor attractions.

So far capital funding of £135 million to develop Eden has been raised from a combination of £58 million from the Millennium Commission Lottery Fund, £50 million in regional grants from the South West Regional Development Agency and European Regional Development Fund, and £27 million in the form of loans, lease finance and Eden's own revenue generation.

The Edge will be true to the Eden Project tradition of finding ways of relating serious issues to the daily lives of the general public, without jargon and with a positive outlook.

Gaynor Coley added: "The Edge will be the start of a new era. It will allow Eden to engage directly and powerfully with the key issues facing our communities over the next 20 years."

For further information please contact David Rowe, Head of Press and Public Relations on 01726 811901 or email drowe@edenproject.com.

The Objective One Programme for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly has invested in the Eden Project through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Editor's notes:

The Big Lottery Fund is the joint operating name of the New Opportunities Fund and the National Lottery Charities Board (which made grants under the name of the Community Fund). The Big Lottery Fund, launched on 1 June, 2004, is distributing half of all National Lottery good cause funding across the UK.

The Big Lottery Fund's Living landmarks Programme will award £140 million across the UK to initiatives that have been designed to inspire communities to transform, revitalise and regenerate the places where they live, through social and community projects and major infrastructure investments.

Eden Project Limited is owned by the Eden Trust, which is a fully registered UK Charity (No. 1093070).

Immediate information may be obtained from our website: www.edenproject.com.

Clare Morgan
Media Relations Manager
Objective One Partnership Office
Castle House
Pydar Street
Truro TR1 2UD
Mobile: 07973 813647
Telephone: 01872 223439

cmorgan@cornwall.gov.uk

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