Sir Ken Dodd £15m Happiness Centre shelved over lack of funding

A multi-million pound scheme to create a “happiness centre” in honour of legendary Liverpool comic Sir Ken Dodd is not going to go forward after failing to safe funding. Proposals for the £15m centre, slated to be constructed subsequent to the Royal Courtroom Theatre within the metropolis centre, had been signed off by Liverpool Council final 12 months. It had been meant to exhibit the late Sir Ken’s huge private assortment of artefacts and joke books, in addition to offering efficiency areas for budding entertainers. Nonetheless, the trustees of the scheme, together with his widow Woman Anne Dodd, have “with a heavy coronary heart” confirmed it is not going to go forward after failing to safe funding by means of the Nationwide Heritage Lottery Fund.Consequently, the charitable basis arrange in Sir Ken’s title mentioned it was “reluctantly” withdrawing from the challenge.The trustees of the Ken Dodd Charitable Basis (KDCF) and the Royal Courtroom Liverpool Belief (RCLT) had been working collectively for eight months to safe various funding avenues. However each cited a difficult public funding backdrop for brand new capital initiatives, regardless of having already invested within the growth, design and planning of the challenge with a pledge from KDCF to cowl two thirds of the price of a brand new construct. Earlier than he died in 2018, aged 90, Sir Ken had arrange the muse to help performing arts charities and organisations throughout the UK, notably on Merseyside.Confirming the choice to not transfer forward with the “implausible concept”, Woman Anne mentioned: “Comedy was Ken’s life, and he was all the time keen to assist, advise and provide encouragement to new comedians and new expertise.”An iconic museum and heritage attraction the place entertainers might rehearse and carry out, linked to a everlasting exhibition of Ken’s treasured artefacts and joke books, would have been a most becoming tribute to a person who was seen as a nationwide icon, not simply in Liverpool.”It’s a disgrace, regardless of the perfect efforts of the Royal Courtroom Theatre and the Ken Dodd Charitable Basis, that we couldn’t appeal to the extent of funding essential to show our imaginative and prescient into actuality.”Gillian Miller, chief govt of the Royal Courtroom Theatre, added: “There merely aren’t adequate funds obtainable to fulfill the calls for of so many initiatives like ours at this second in time.”