MALVERN Youth Centre is set to receive a financial boost thanks to a local artist and town centre hotel.

Maggie C, who was formerly known as Marriane E Collier, is currently exhibiting paintings from her Elgar collection in the Great Malvern Hotel, Graham Road, and the commission money from each piece of artwork sold will be donated to the Albert Road North-based centre.

Most of her pieces are painted freely with her fingers at great speed to the sound of music.

She said: “I have always wanted to help with charity and it’s a brilliant way of generating money. I thought it was a lovely idea.”

Lisa Bircham, events manager at the hotel, said the charitable move was a continuation of fund-raising events they have staged for the centre.

She said: “We have been backing them for quite a while now and we have a really good relationship with them, which we want to continue.”

The Malvern Community Collective was recently given a 30-year lease to run the youth centre by the cabinet of Worcestershrie County Council.

The artwork, which mainly consists of prints and watercolours of local landscapes, will remain on show in the hotel’s lounge between 10am and 11pm until the end of January 2012.