Skinners boosts arts sponsorship

July 13, 2005: Truro-based Skinners Brewery has boosted its support of the arts with its first sponsorship of the Miracle Theatre Company and additional help for the Last Night of the Cornish Proms, at the Hall For Cornwall on July 29.

To assist with Miracle’s fundraising, the brewery is donating two barrels of Betty Stogs beer for sale at each of the 19 tour performances of The Case of the Frightened Lady in Cornwall this summer - adding up to a total of nearly 2,000 pints of beer.

Skinners have also become major sponsor of this year’s Proms event after the withdrawal of two other sponsors with whom they had supported the previous two years’ events on an equal footing.

“Although our main sponsorship activity remains in the sports sector, we are particularly pleased to be able to expand our involvement in the arts in Cornwall in this way,” said brewery managing director Steve Skinner.

“Miracle have made a very big impression with the reputation they have established over the past 25 years, while the Last Night of the Cornish Proms once again promises to be a truly spectacular event.”

Miracle’s The Frightened Lady will be staged at various outdoor Cornish locations - parks and gardens, dramatic castle ruins and superb amphitheatres - through to the end of August. It sees the company taking to the road again with a “very British” thriller - a tangle of dodgy criminals, false clues and foreigners with mysterious pasts, to the accompaniment of a jazz-age sound track.

Hosted by former BBC Radio Cornwall celebrity Chris Blount and presented by Truro Boscawen Rotary Club, the Proms will be a gala charity concert featuring Suzanne Manuell, St Keverne Youth Band, Mevagissey Male Voice Choir and a surprise speciality act. The evening will conclude with a rousing, flag-waving proms-style finale of traditional Cornish songs and music.

Cornish charities benefiting are Doubletrees Special School, St Blazey, supported by the Wooden Spoon Society; Headway supporting brain damaged people in Cornwall; and the Bishops Forum and Shelterbox.