Funding will directly support the UK Shared Prosperity Fund’s goals by strengthening community resilience, tackling inequalities, and improving life chances for vulnerable men affected by addiction in Girvan and South Carrick — as part of Harbour Ayrshire’s Bridge to Shore project.The Bridge to Shore pathway supports individuals from crisis through to stability, community integration, and ultimately, independence. This proposal focuses on the early and middle stages of that journey, providing essential support where it's needed most.

Harbour Ayrshire currently delivers a vital weekly support group led by staff and volunteers with lived experience. The group offers a safe, trauma-informed environment where men can share openly, build peer connections, and learn practical coping strategies. By addressing root causes of addiction — such as poverty, poor mental health, and intergenerational trauma — the project empowers participants to break negative cycles and build long-term resilience, both personally and within the community.

This funding will cover essential delivery costs including venue hire, refreshments, and holistic therapies. These elements are key to removing barriers to engagement and ensuring all participants feel welcomed and supported.

In addition to sustaining the current group, funding will enable expansion into surrounding villages where need is high but services are scarce due to poverty, digital exclusion, and lack of transport. Development work — under the Bridge to Shore framework — will focus on:

Increasing outreach and engagement in rural areas of Girvan and South Carrick

Supporting individuals to access central services and digital resources

Building local capacity by helping communities create peer-led support groups

Fostering community cohesion and empowerment through shared learning and lived experience leadership

By supporting this project within the Bridge to Shore model, you are investing in the creation of healthier, more inclusive communities, reducing health inequalities, enhancing social capital, and empowering individuals to contribute positively to their local areas — fully aligning with the aims of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

The Broadway Cinema is one of the greatest remaining examples of a small-town golden-age cinema in the country. Designed by renowned architect Alister Gladstone MacDonald, the Broadway opened on 29th April 1935 as Ayrshire’s new luxury super cinema. Seating 1,060 patrons, featuring a beautifully furnished tearoom, and with a full stage and dressing rooms for live performances, the Broadway thrived during the golden age of cinema and provided joy, respite, and vital charitable services for the community of Prestwick through the Second World War, and beyond to the 1960s.

The Broadway then began a slow transition to bingo, becoming a full-time bingo hall between 1966 and 1976, before a final attempt to bring back cinema ended on 20th November 1976. The building next became a leisure centre in 1981 with an amusement arcade to the front, and squash courts and fitness facilities to the rear, operating as Prestwick Leisure Centre until 2003, when the building would be sold to a private hospitality chain. Now in 2025, after 22 years of dereliction, the Broadway has entered community ownership for the first time with Friends of the Broadway Prestwick and celebrated its’ 90th anniversary with major milestones achieved in removing the squash courts and revealing the original cinema auditorium with a screen installed for the first time in almost half a century. Holding great significance for our community, the Broadway is fondly remembered by generations of local residents, with enormous support for the Friends of the Broadway project. Throughout every operational era of its history, the Broadway created a safe, warm, and comfortable space for its community. After decades away, we aim to restore those crucial services that the Broadway can provide for the people of Prestwick. Friends of the Broadway Prestwick want to operate the Broadway for and on behalf of the community for everyone. We want it to be a cinematic living room for the town. A socially inclusive community facility offering accessible, sustainable, and cultural opportunities for all of Prestwick’s citizens. The Broadway’s incredible surviving architecture and atmosphere will be beautifully restored to create an environment entirely unique and evocative of the golden age of cinema-going. Our original 1,000 capacity auditorium will return for cinema, and yet also theatre, music, comedy, conferences, and more. We will construct additional screens to the rear of the property for programming flexibility and additional rentable space for local groups. Our community hub at ground level as well as hosting our concessions and box office, will act as central hub for Main Street. A varied events programme will be complemented by local exhibits, heritage tours and presentations, and hireable meeting space. We aim to preserve not only the Broadway's history but the history of all cinemas across the country, in our nation's first ever Museum of Scottish Cinemas. Our heritage work will include extensive oral history projects, multiple interactive exhibits, and result in the first fully accredited museum in the town’s history. We will also incorporate Scottish Gaelic throughout the building, creating a leading culture and learning hub for the preservation of Gaelic in Ayrshire and Galloway and supporting South Ayrshire Council’s commitments to increasing awareness and usage of the language. In successfully bringing the Broadway into community ownership, we have undertaken additional responsibilities to care for our C-listed building and protect and preserve its current condition until our restoration work can begin. This includes core operating, utility, and maintenance costs that are crucial to our project’s sustainable development. We are now ready to commence Phase One of the building’s redevelopment, to deliver the re-opening of the Broadway in 2025. Phase One will restore the Broadway’s original auditorium to cinema use, with inaugural major events currently under development, and a new visitor experience created in the foyer with a pop-up museum and exhibit space that brings an immersive cultural learning environment.

To achieve this, additional health and safety works, facility upgrades, and accessibility improvements are necessary to grant public access and enable events and community use. We are asking for capital funding support from the Community Empowerment Fund to initiate essential safety works to the canopy at the Broadway’s front entrance to ensure safe public access to the building, improvements to a former toilet block in the Broadway’s auditorium to bring safe, accessible, and usable facilities necessary for events, and additional accessibility aids for the foyer including a ramp, secondary handrails, and signage, to ensure the Broadway becomes a fully accessible and navigable venue. Together, with additional health and safety measures we will implement with matched maintenance funding, we can deliver the re-opening of the Broadway with your support in 2025.

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The purpose of Troon Men’s Shed is to provide recreational facilities and advance the social needs, health and well being of men of all ages and backgrounds living in Troon and surrounding areas.  

Troon Men’s Shed was established in April 2024 and has a growing membership with 75 members, and currently meet fornightly in a hired hall with guest speakers. Our members have volunteered to help out at community events in Troon at Wintertainment, Troon Round Table Fireworks and Santa Float, and we are currently assisting Ayrshire Cancer Support with practical DIY work in their new Ayr Centre.

Members benefit by meeting with other men in a safe environment, reducing their social isolation and providing mental stimulation, which also benefits their families. The acquisition of the Hosiery Park Pavilion will enable us to meet more regularly and undertake practical workshop activities which we are unable to do in a hired meeting hall. The establishment of workshop activities will enable men to utilise their practical skills, and to pass on their knowledge to others.

A Stage 1 Community Asset Transfer Request was submitted to South Ayrshire Council in November 2024, and the Stage 2 request is currently being prepared, with a target date to submit of 31 May 2025.

The Hosiery Park Pavilion building is in poor condition as it has been unused for several years, and once acquired would be repaired and converted into a suitable facility comprising of an activity workshop area where woodworking and other similar practical activities can be undertaken, and a separate multi-use social space.