Dingles Fairground Heritage Centre in Lifton is set to reopen next spring thanks to lifeline funding of £70,000 from the Government to help museums and art galleries reopen after the finanical ravages of the pandemic.

The Fairground Heritage Trust, which runs the venue, is among 925 recipients to benefit from the latest round of awards from the Culture Recovery Fund.

The grant will allow the venue to reopen in April after a worrying 18 months with no income â?? complete with a new building showcasing the museum’s collection of fairground art which has been in storage for some time.

Dingles press officer Guy Belshaw said: ’This will help us create a hugely improved visitor experience in a new building and allow us to exhibit more of our unique collection of our fairground heritage, historic rides, artwork and living vans.

’Without this award we would struggle to open next spring as hoped. We have had no income for the past two summer seasons and are committed to fitting out a new museum building.

’Luckily the museum world does recognise that our museum is very important. It is also a very important museum for the travelling show community, who support us very well. Not all the museums did get a grant but we did because we are doing something completely different. We are safeguarding this historical fairground collection,’ she said.

Together with £50,000 raised from a fundraising auction, the popular venue now has enough money to refit a completely new hangar with exhibits dedicated to historical fairground art.

’We are absolutely delighted about it,’ he added. ’We had to write over 5,000 words and fill in forms and give them a long-term view of how we are going to spend every dime. We managed to fulfil the criteria and we now have this new museum building to fit out.’

He said he was hugely grateful to the volunteers who come in regularly to keep the collection shipshape - and will be contributing their skills and experience to get the new building ready.

’We do have a big team of volunteers who give up every Saturday from 10am to 5pm to work on our museum,’ he said. ’We couldn’t have done it without them. We have a team of 20 volunteers and they give up their valuable leisure time to do this. We have got tradesmen - elecricians, carpenters - and there are doing a lot of work to get the museum up and running again for us to free. If we had to pay somebody we wouldn’t be able to do it.’

He explained that the museum collection was a place of pilgrimage for those interested in fairground history as well as a draw for local children and those from further afield who would like to try out the vintage dodgems.

’Some of the collection goes back to the 19th century but the majority of our collection goes back to the first half of the twentieth century and the working machines from the 1930s. We have to stress that they are all maintained to current health and safety standards. The new exhibition will have lots of fairground artwork which is currently stored in containers. We also have one of the oldest fairground rides, the Radio Switchback, from the 1890s, and we are currently restoring that.’

The charity is among hundreds of cultural organisations who have benefited from £100 million given out across the country in the latest round of support from the Culture Recovery Fund to get cultural venues back on their feet.