A historic theatre just got smart - and the Creative Foundations Fund could help yours do the same

Until recently, keeping Watford Palace Theatre at a comfortable temperature meant walking the building and turning 120 radiators by hand, one valve at a time. For a beloved community theatre with a beautiful, irreplaceable interior, that’s a lot of daily effort just to keep audiences and performers warm – especially when you have very little say over where the energy was actually going.

Today, the same venue runs as a smart theatre. Here’s how it happened, and why now is a good moment for other not-for-profit cultural organisations to think about doing the same.

A beautiful building with a very manual problem

Watford Palace Theatre is a historic producing theatre at the heart of its community. Like a lot of heritage cultural buildings, it paired an irreplaceable space with ageing building services: controls that were reaching the end of their life, systems that could not talk to one another, and offered almost no visibility of energy use. Comfort was hard to guarantee, running costs kept climbing, and staff time disappeared into jobs that should have been automatic.

None of that’s unusual. In fact, it’s the reality for many theatres, galleries and arts venues housed in older buildings. What they need isn’t a patchwork of new gadgets, but a single foundation that ties everything together.

Giving the building a nervous system

Working with ecoDriver, we set out to give the theatre exactly that. At the heart of it is a new smart building energy management system (BEMS), built on a Beckhoff controller, that brings the building's key plant together - the air source heat pump, the gas boiler, five air handling units, a chiller and five air conditioning units. The 120 hand-turned radiators now have wireless thermostatic valves on a low-power network, and new sensors track temperature and air quality while sub-meters measure where energy is really being used.

Sitting over all of it is Smart Core BOS. Think of the building in three layers: it senses what’s happening through those meters and sensors, controls the plant through the smart BEMS, and lets people understand and run everything through Smart Core's simple, floorplan-based interface. Alongside it, ecoDriver turns the energy data into action, helping the theatre cut waste and work towards its sustainability goals.

The result is a building that anyone can run with confidence - not just specialists.

What changes for a theatre

The most immediate difference is the obvious one: no more walking the building to set radiators by hand. But the real value is in the shift from guesswork to a single, clear view of how the building is performing, with the tools to act on it.

For the people running the theatre, that means real-time visibility across systems and one place to control them. For audiences, performers and staff, it means a comfortable, well-managed environment. And because Smart Core is an open platform, the theatre isn’t locked in - the same system is ready to bring in lighting, AV, occupancy and access control in future, without starting again. It is a foundation the theatre can keep building on.

The Creative Foundations Fund: open now

Here’s the timely part. Arts Council England's Creative Foundations Fund is open now, and it exists to help not-for-profit cultural organisations in England upgrade and future-proof their buildings.

Its Strand 1 supports capital projects from £100,000 to £1 million - exactly the kind of building services and smart infrastructure upgrade delivered at Watford Palace Theatre.

A few things worth knowing if you’re considering it:

• Expressions of Interest close at noon on 7 August 2026. Before you can start, you need a validated applicant profile, and that can take up to ten working days - so it’s worth registering straight away.

• It funds the physical works. The fund supports capital equipment - the controls, sensors, metering, and heating and cooling systems - rather than software subscriptions, so it’s the smart infrastructure that fits the remit.

• Applicants contribute a minimum of 5% in Strand 1.

• It is genuinely competitive. The fund's first round was heavily oversubscribed, so a strong, well-prepared application really matters.

Thinking about your building?

This is where we can help. We’ll work with you to shape the technical scope and design of a smarter, more sustainable building, so you can put the best possible case to the Arts Council and, if you are successful, deliver it.

If your theatre, gallery or arts venue is weighing up a building upgrade, let's talk about what’s possible, and whether the Creative Foundations Fund could help you get there.

Get in touch to find out more.