Above: 14 years of hard work - this amazing facility is the result!

The Roxburgh Entertainment Centre Improvement Committee (RECIC) is a long-standing community organisation. This group of volunteers has been working to refurbish and renovate the Roxburgh Entertainment Centre for the past 14 years.

In 2000 the RECIC attended the inaugural TrustPower National Community Awards in Tauranga, an opportunity they received after winning the Supreme Award at the TrustPower Central Otago Community Awards.  This recognition was for completing the first two stages of their refurbishment project.

Nine years later, these golden-hearted volunteers were back at the Nationals again – this time in Palmerston North from 13 – 15 March 2009.   The RECIC had finished and successfully opened the rejuvenated Roxburgh Entertainment Centre, won for the second time the Supreme Award at the TrustPower Central Otago Community Awards and were representing their district nationally once again.

The judges at the TrustPower National Community Awards made comments like “fantastic for the area – huge sustained effort”, “Great asset for community”, and “you are helping lift the viability of small communities”.

This is their story, as presented at the TrustPower National Community Awards…

The 14 year history of the Roxburgh Entertainment Centre Improvement Committee (RECIC) has been notable for three things: persistence, patience and commitment. Established in 1994 with the express purpose of bringing the complex into the 21st Century, the small governance group – usually about 10 people – have delivered a modern, functional, sustainable, multi-purpose complex, with the collective help of almost every individual, and every organisation of significance, in the valley.    

RECIC set out to extensively refurbish and renovate the Roxburgh Entertainment Centre, including the auditorium/theatre, foyer, movie projectors and sound system, town hall, supper room, ablution blocks, dressing rooms, make-up room, piano/storage room, and roof – and supply and fit lighting and other fixtures throughout.

Before restoration the Town Hall space – the only hall suitable for large functions in the valley – was dilapidated and always looked untidy. The acoustics were unbearable, to the point where musicians refused to appear there, and the kitchen was antiquated and inconvenient.

Completed in four stages, finally drawn to a conclusion in 2008, the project has been 100% successful.

Funding

Almost $1m in cash has been spent on this project.

Principal funders have been Central Lakes Trust ($209.5k), Community Trust of Otago ($130k), the Roxburgh Community Board (63k), Pub Charity (9.14k), and the Alexander McMillan Trust ($7.22k).

Many local organisations, personal donations, and endless fundraising contributed another $138k. The RECIC committee ran weekly movie screenings for 10 years, including the New Zealand premier of locally-filmed In my Father’s Den. Weekly Housie in local venues, run for 15 years, made $3k annually, with a pub-charity-funded computerised caller known as ‘The Enchanter’. More than $5,000 came from recycling old batteries. RECIC held the district council’s cleaning contract for the complex, hosted The Otago Cavalcade in 2001, and was actively supported by every service organisation in the valley, including Rotary, Lions, the Teviot Masonic Lodge, and the Teviot Women’s Institute.     

Project activities

The committee broke this huge project into four stages. Stages 1 and 2 (the auditorium/theatre, foyer and ablution blocks), completed and opened in 1997, were the essential foundations, recognised with the Supreme Award at the TrustPower Central Otago District Community Awards. Stages 3 and 4 (the Town Hall, dressing rooms/makeup room, piano room, supper room, kitchen and ablution blocks) are also now complete and in active daily use.

The committee acted as both hands-on workers and project managers – operating projection machinery and manning stalls, filing funding applications, and the myriad of activities that happen around a project of this scale – while maintaining consistent and responsible project oversight and governance.

Details of volunteer involvement

All members of the RECIC committee and up to 40 co-opted helpers are volunteers – there are NO paid employees. Committee member Bob Fairhurst was employed by the district council as project manager during the construction of stages 3 and 4 to protect the community’s investment. Minuted RECIC committee time amounted to 2,700 hours, and 1,500 hours for the Ways and Means committee. A total for all volunteer time over the life of the project easily runs into tens of thousands of hours, from a valley population of about 2,100 people.

Results achieved and benefit to the region

RECIC has delivered a sustainable community asset that has become a genuine centre of attraction – gathering audiences for events as diverse as family funerals, birthday parties and weddings, movie premiers, and concerts for the town’s youth and senior citizens. Regular school activities such as prize-giving ceremonies, musical and dramatic shows and the annual school formal are held and the venue is well-received and respected by the students. The annual flower show looks spectacular in the new environment, and recent art exhibition participants, from home and away, rated the venue ‘best ever’ for display purposes.

The complex has become a multi-use facility that meets almost all of the entertainment and public-assembly needs of the Teviot Valley. It’s an historical, visually striking, professionally-equipped, centrally-located, highly functional collection of spaces that is held in high regard by both audiences and event organisers and performers.

The separate Town Hall is now worthy of its name, and is ideally suited to conference scale meetings. The kitchen and ablution blocks are well appointed, modern and clean and the halls are welcoming, bright and attractive with wonderful acoustics and a new heating system. The dressing rooms are spacious and functional, enhanced by a separate makeup room compete with a ‘Hollywood’ type lighting and mirrored wall – a  big plus for backstage preparation for on-stage shows. The auditorium stage is one of the largest and best in New Zealand.  

The Theatre is Central Otago’s only regular movie venue – with a heritage that goes back to October 1898 when films arrived by stagecoach – ten years before the motor car, two years after the first radio transmission. Those were the days of silent movies, with actors such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford, and Laurel and Hardy, accompanied for many years by local pianist Olive Gordon.

110 years of continuous cinema was proudly celebrated in October 2008, with a call from London confirming that Roxburgh’s is the longest running cinema in the Southern Hemisphere.

As well as its many functional benefits, the entertainment centre is a source of great community pride. The extended life of this project has injected faith and confidence into the people of the Teviot Valley, making the point day by day that this is a community which can and does look after its own.

For more information about the Roxburgh Entertainment Centre Improvement Committee please contact Doug Dance on 03 446 8108 or email jdance@xtra.co.nz .