Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Foreign Trade

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The Birmingham-based Afro Caribbean Resource Centre (ACRC) (and New Style Radio) officially opened its new £2.5 million Millennium centre less than a week ago, but already, it is moving to start working on a major expansion programme.

Armed with a £1 million grant from the Arts Council the ACRC plans to expand its existing building on three floors to accommodate an additional studio, resource centre, archive and storage facility.

Chairman of the Afro Caribbean Centre, Martin Blissett told JIS News that the expansion would allow the organization to accommodate both full time radio broadcasting with New Style Radio and its radio training programme.

"Before New Style Radio, we had short-term radio licences where we would broadcast for a month or so as part of a training and community development project aimed at getting people involved in radio. However, now that we have the licence for a community radio station and we are broadcasting 24 hours, seven days a week we realise that we did not have enough space for full time broadcasting and for our radio training programme," he said.

The planned expansion will be on three floors to house additional resource areas, a radio archive, reading room, additional storage facilities, a new studio and a technical room.

He said because the project was being developed with funding from the Arts Council, it had to have the creative involvement of artists. He said the Centre had already received several expressions of interest and a short list of five artists would be interviewed and receive a grant of £500 to prepare a submission. The best two artists will be selected and commissioned to work with the architect to integrate art into the new building.

Meanwhile the Afro Caribbean Resource Centre's Millennium Building has been praised for kick starting the regeneration of the Dudley Road area of Birmingham. The centre has been described as a beacon in the community.

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