Her Majesty the Queen opens CURVE with Ross and Adam Cooper

17th December, 2010

It was one of the proudest moments of my life when CURVE was officially opened by Her Majesty the Queen in 2009. It was 10 years since I first had the idea for a new theatre and Cultural Quarter for Leicester.  On becoming leader of the council in 1999 I inherited plans to replace the Haymarket with a library where the car park is in the Haymarket centre. This followed failed lottery bids to refurbish the existing Haymarket Theatre. I thought we should keep a producing theatre for the city, as it was something Leicester had that other cities didn’t. It’s work had a national reputation that we should cherish. If we were going to invest a lot of money lets have a building we could see and be proud of. The rest, as they say, is history. All of which is well documented elsewhere. It’s tremendous that CURVE is now going from strength to strength with fantastic reviews under the direction of Paul Kerryson. And it has helped to bring back to life a forgotten corner of our city.