Dumfries’ Moat Brae has closed its loss-making commercial arm in response to a 70 per cent drop in visitors last year.
The centre is now on an enforced public lockdown until March and has axed its bistro, causing a small number of job losses.
However, centre director Dr Simon Davidson said Scotland’s Centre for Children’s Literature and Storytelling has a bright future post-pandemic and will be at “the front and centre” of the country’s Year of Stories 2022 when it reopens in the spring.
This includes a new partnership with Wigtown Book Festival, a major world class exhibition planned for July, the launch of a new Festival of Imagination in August and hosting Scotland’s first Children’s Literature Conference in November.
A £9million fundraising campaign over many years by the Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust helped save the building in Dumfries’ George Street from demolition and patron Joanna Lumley officially opened the centre in 2019.
It attracted 26,000 people in its first nine months before Covid-19 struck leaving the trust with an uphill struggle since for the commercial side of the site which includes a bistro and gift shop as numbers of visitors dwindled all last year through the pandemic.
It closed its doors this month with a Facebook post early declaring it would be shut for the rest of January for “maintenance after a busy year” but it is now understood that five staff have lost their jobs through closing its loss-making bistro.
However, yesterday, Dr Davidson confirmed that Moat Brae will not open to the public until the spring but will reopen next month to schools, community groups and pre-arranged tours.
He said: “Our bistro and shop really suffered as a result of the successive lockdowns and restrictions and recently we took the very difficult decision to close the bistro indefinitely, which resulted in the sad loss of several key staff.
“Our visitor numbers last year were down 70 per cent on 2019 figures and with our quietest months still ahead it had simply become unsustainable.
“We looked at every option but, as a charity, the trust was not able to subsidise its commercial wing indefinitely and so it had no choice but to close the bistro until the visitor numbers recover.
“People loved the bistro and I am hopeful it will come back one day.”
He said that the trust has “welcomed” the recent Scottish Government announcement about the lifting of restrictions for hospitality “as it brings more certainty to our forward planning”.
The trust’s chairman Flora Burns acknowledged that the past two years had been “extremely challenging” for Moat Brae.
She said: “Like any business so dependent on footfall, 2021 was a year of serious setbacks in establishing viable commercial operations designed to support our charity.
A programme including Benjamin Zephaniah, Nick Sharratt, Mara Menzies and Aardman Animations will launch in April as part of a new partnership with Wigtown Book Festival.
