 To win the National Lottery Project of the Year award by public vote is phenomenal. It's not just our project, it's Bangor's project. We started off as a festival in Belfast. We were part of the regeneration of Belfast and that kind of new shared identity for Northern Ireland that the arts sector were trying to create. But we lived in Bangor, I'm from Bangor, so we moved the festival here in 2013. But unfortunately, despite about 80,000 plus people living here, there was no venue, no dedicated music, cultural or arts venue. Then the old courthouse in Bangor was lying empty. We got involved in a campaign to save the building and local people put their money into the project which gave confidence to other funders like National Lottery Heritage Fund but also gave us huge confidence that there was real public support that people wanted this building. There's been talk of refurbishment in Bangor for years and like there's been nothing, nothing done about it, you know? So to see somewhere like this pop up is just fantastic. We need more things like this because Bangor's got so much to offer but people just don't recognise that yet. One of the key things for us is through the courthouse and also through our festival is to support as many local musicians as possible. So we're trying to introduce people to new music as well as new musicians. That's something that's always been really important for us. It's very much a community venue and that covers music, film, comedy, theatre. We have a 72 strong community choir that rehearse here every week. It's helping to develop arts audiences but for lots of different genres and lots of different tastes and age groups. I've recently taken on the Open House Choir and that's a very much community choir and you can see the connections people are getting through the choir. For myself as a musician it's given me work. It's made it much easier to connect with community and peers. National Lottery were by far the biggest supporter, the biggest funder. We wouldn't have opened the doors without their funding. It was a seven-year process really to take ownership of the building, to raise all the rest of the money and to get the restoration done. It was a massive job. This is a 150-year-old Victorian building needed to be turned from a redundant magistrates' court into a modern arts venue. But I think we've been able to hold on to the character of the building. This really helps an awful lot of areas here in musicians' local employment to have that funding to mega-change. It's brilliant to see it coming. Local people are really proud of the fact that we've managed to you know get the courthouse over the line and hopefully help other projects do something similar. We hope that this is the trigger for further regeneration on Bangor Seafront. I think it's really important to put places like this on the map. It's given us a venue where we feel like we're at home.