The Eden Court Appeal has received a substantial lift with an award from the Garfield Weston Foundation.

The generous award of £50,000 will go towards the construction of the second theatre at the venue. This 250-seat theatre will sit alongside the existing auditorium and has also been supported by local company LifeScan Scotland who last year announced a sizeable donation of £650,000.

The Garfield Weston Foundation has helped a wide range of organisations with grants of varying sizes in the arts, community, education, welfare, medical, social, religion, youth and environmental projects. Previous projects have included the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Galleries of Scotland’s Playfair project, Wales Millennium Centre, the National Youth Orchestras of Scotland and the Arches in Glasgow.

Founded in 1958 the Garfield Weston Foundation is a UK based, grant-giving charity endowed by the late W Garfield Weston, a Canadian businessman who arrived in the UK with his family in 1932. Mr Weston was the creator of Associated British Foods and the Foundation was endowed with the donation of family owned company shares. Direct family descendents of Mr Weston remain as trustees.

The second theatre at Eden Court is part of an ambitious and exciting development project that will also see the construction of two new state-of-the-art cinemas and the restoration of the historic Bishop’s Palace.

Construction work began in November last year on the project and the completion date is expected in summer 2007 in time for the venue to play a major role in the 2007 Celebration of Highland Culture.

The overall cost of the project is £19.3million and this has been largely financed by public sector funding awards. The Eden Court Appeal is part of this funding package and has a target of £2million to reach by the end of the construction period. The current total for the Appeal is £1.55million.