BRIDGWATER Arts Centre has won National Lottery support a year-long architectural history project.

The arts centre has received £26,800 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to undertake a research and exhibition project where they will revisit CIAM 6, an important architecture conference held at the centre in 1947.

Hosted by the Bridgwater Arts Centre, the project also brings together expertise from Somerset Film, RIBA Somerset and Knightstone Housing and extra funding from Bridgwater Town Council and Sedgemoor District Council.

The CIAM 6 Revisited project will explore how the Congress International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) informed radical and everyday visions for towns and cities over decades in the UK & Europe, India, North Africa, South America and the USA.

In September 2017 on the 70th anniversary an exhibition will tell the story of this hidden, though significant; art,

architecture and urban design history.

A schools programme will offer architect led design workshops leading to create content for the exhibition and prepare for a young people’s conference re-enactment at Bridgwater Arts Centre.

A series of community workshops and crowd research opportunities will also enable people in Bridgwater and Sedgemoor to participate in explaining and interpreting this valuable heritage and learn about design and communication.

Schools and community members who would like to take part in the project development and workshops in spring/summer should contact Bridgwater Arts Centre.

The project’s aim is to reveal the inspiring associated mid-20th Century design heritage linked to the conference, capturing the value of this legacy for Bridgwater at a time when the town is undergoing massive change.

The exhibition and a digital archive will recount the stories of the eighty-seven delegates which included many influential architects, urbanists, writers and photographers including Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius (founder of the Bauhaus), Erno Goldfinger, Jorge Hardoy, Ernesto Rogers, Aldo Van Eyke and more.

It will explore how design culture migrated with the delegates across the world before and after the Second World War and find out more about the roles of pioneering women designers.

A spokesman for Bridgwater Arts Centre said: “We are delighted to have the opportunity to explore Bridgwater’s international design legacy and tell the story of what happened when eighty world leading design thinkers met at the Arts Centre to debate urban futures.

"We are looking forward to exploring how this can inspire young people and their communities and inform the way we think about the future today.”