A Vibrant Centre

Part of the regeneration of the City Centre will see the creation of a vibrant multipurpose art space in Elgin City Centre.

Elgin is currently lacking a contemporary art facility, with sufficient footprint to attract national and international exhibitions. The creation of a new community art space would address this need and enhance the evening economy and cultural activity offering in Elgin, complimenting the investment of the Moray Growth Deal, Cultural Quarter project. 

There is currently no physical central hub for community creativity and visuals arts in Moray. This inclusive facility will create opportunity for all members of the community to engage in creative leisure activities to boost health and wellbeing. The aspiration is for the community art space to be located in one of the vacant or derelict units within the city centre, supporting the wider regeneration of central Elgin.

Development of the new art space will provides an opportunity to support the local creative sector through the provision of facilities to host workshops and skills development initiatives.

The new arts space will built around a sustainable business model with self-supported programming, a focus upon community creative learning, high quality exhibitions and access to professional facilities.

The new community art space aims to:

• Be Moray’s primary provider of creative facilities, equipment, and gallery space
• Provide career opportunities for local artists and creative practitioners 
• Become the known, respected, and loved creative home of Moray

As part of making Elgin city centre an attractive place to live and visit we intend to install access control measures to enhance the existing pedestrian areas on The Plainstones and Thunderton Place and to limit access to Batchen Street and Commerce Street during the day. Existing traffic regulation orders apply to all of these areas limiting access to certain types of vehicles and in some instances for deliveries only. However the existing traffic regulation orders are often ignored by unauthorised vehicles and some areas on The Plainstones are now being parked on by vehicles on a regular basis.

Within the centre of Elgin there are a number of existing pedestrianised areas where it has become evident that drivers are unaware of or ignoring the restrictions. Access control measures would be introduced to ensure that only permitted vehicles entered the pedestrianised areas. The space would be ‘reclaimed’ for pedestrians and could be utilised by businesses to support their activities, e.g. outside seating for cafes, creating a safe and pleasant environment for residents and visitors to Elgin.

It is anticipated that the control measures would be in the form of automatic ‘rise and fall’ bollards. Rise and fall bollards have been installed across the UK by many local authorities. They are installed to provide a physical barrier to access for unauthorised vehicles. They are commonly used to enforce traffic regulation orders in restricting access to particular types of vehicles and/or certain times of the day.

The bollards generally use an electric or hydraulic mechanism installed under the road and are raised or lowered automatically in response to a trigger either from a driver or vehicle. A nearby cabinet contains the control and communication equipment. Adjacent to the bollards would be warning signs and red/green warning lights which would indicate to drivers of authorised vehicles when they should stop and when it as safe to proceed.

Authorised vehicles would be provided with a transponder or a key fob which would be read and trigger the bollards to go down. When it was safe for the authorised vehicle to proceed the warning lights would shine green. After the vehicle has passed the bollards would automatically return their original raised position.

The control measures would enable access by delivery vehicles, emergency services, and in some locations licensed taxis and residents with off-street parking provision. Eligibility would be determined by the existing traffic regulation orders.