BARNSLEY ballerina Tala Lee-Turton has added her name to those backing the £5m campaign to give The Civic ‘back to the people’.

Tala captured the headlines when she became only the third British female to graduate from the elite Russian academy, the Bolshoi, in its 243-year history last year.

Tala is currently based in Astrakhan, Russia, after being snapped up by the Astrakhan State Theatre of Opera and Ballet after her graduation from the world’s most famous ballet academy.

Now Tala is stepping up for her hometown as an ambassador and patron for The Civic, backing its ambitious fund-raising campaign.

When The Civic reopened at the height of the recession in 2009 after years of abandonment and then restoration, it did so with a third of the building remaining unfinished and unused.

Eight years on the charity Barnsley Civic Enterprise Ltd is ready to be ambitious and push The Civic to achieve its full potential. It has launched a £5m fund-raising campaign, to open up the whole of The Civic, add a new theatre, cafŽ, and extended gallery, and reopen 22,000 sq ft to complete a ‘world-class destination for the arts’ by 2023.

“Access to culture is less than in the capital and cities, but it’s just as important,” said Tala.

Read more in this weeks Barnsley Chronicle