A DUNFERMLINE architect has been chosen to lead a £450,000 community project to transform the town centre.

Sam Foster is fronting the partnership that won the tender to run Design Dunfermline – a four-day event next month where local residents will help create a better place.

West Fifers have already let their imagination run wild, with suggestions including a viewing tower with a restaurant on top, a glass roof over High Street, a ‘posh bar street’ and an enchanted forest, and some of those dreams could become reality.

Sam, who runs Sam Foster Architects in East Port, said: “Last October, we invited the public to a short and informal design consultation and we got an overwhelming response – not just in numbers but in terms of the ambition of ideas from local residents.

“Creating a public square behind Bridge Street was just one of the suggestions.

“Now Dunfermline Heritage Partnership has secured funding from the National Lottery Great Places scheme and the Scottish Government to take that to the next level and run this event.

“We’ll be looking at a variety of ideas in the town centre but this means we have funding to develop a feasibility study and fundraising plan for at least one project identified during the four days.

“When these have run in other parts of Scotland it has led to local community groups leveraging funding from elsewhere to progress capital projects.

“In Prestwick, they secured funding to save an old cinema and Tranent got funding to do a conservation project.”

There’s more than £300,000 of lottery money and cash from the Scottish Government while Fife Council, Fife Cultural Trust, Dunfermline Carnegie Trust and Dunfermline Delivers have boosted the total to just over £444,000.

At the event in October, more than 150 people came up with suggestions and complaints about housing, heritage, shopping, green spaces, anti-social behaviour, the public realm and transport.

Ideas included re-introducing trams to the town centre, converting half of the Glen into an amusement park, a West End zone to link the theatres, more squares and plazas, electric bike stations, better use of historic attractions, a boating lake in Public Park and turning Bruce Street into an area like The Shambles in York or Ashton Lane in Glasgow.

Design Dunfermline will run from April 25 to 29.

Sam added: “In the lead-up to the April event we’ll be speaking to locals to find out what they want.

“Today (Thursday) and tomorrow our team will be out and about at Dunfermline High School, in Dunfermline town centre and at a meeting of the Dunfermline community councils.

“We hope to capture views on camera with short vox pops that will be shown in April.”