Margate’s regeneration, based on its £17 million Turner Contemporary Gallery, is under threat because of the recession.
Plans for a top quality hotel and new leisure centre have been abandoned and English Heritage, one of the main partners behind the arts-based regeneration programme, fears that revised plans will not be enough to attract and keep visitors to the town.
Developers dropped out of building a four-star hotel next to the gallery last year - but Kent County Council, which has been the prime mover in the regeneration plan, wants to place a budget hotel there instead. Even then the hotel will not be ready in time for the gallery’s opening in 2011.
But English Heritage’s urban panel says that a luxury hotel is “critical” to the success of the Turner Contemporary and warned the county council to “resist cheap and inappropriate development”.
The panel added that plans to re-open Margate’s iconic Dreamland leisure and amusement centre should be allowed to go ahead without the need to build flats and houses on the sit. The panel said: “We see no merit in delaying the scheme because the grander development package can no longer be built. The remainder of the site can be brought forward, with minimal investment, as an events space.”

Derby Playhouse is to be renamed Derby Theatre in a deal between the city council and the University of Derby which will see the council take over programming for the venue.
The deal has been announced after months of negotiations between the University, which has taken over the lease of the venue from the Playhouse’s former artistic director, Stephen Edwards and the city, which has been running its own theatre programme at other venues.
It means the former Playhouse theatre will reopen in September- nearly two years after it closed in December 2007 following a decision by the city council and Arts Council England to withdraw their financial backing.
The theatre’s studio will become a resource for students while the city’s arts and entertainment arm, Derby Live, will be responsible for the main auditorium, producing its own work and inviting touring companies.
Students will also have access to the main stage five times a year. Huw Davies, University of Derby dean of faculty for arts, design and technology, said the university would establish a postgraduate course in theatre production, based at the Derby Theatre. The arrangement would allow students to work in a professional environment, he said.
The move spells the end of the Playhouse’s former board to stage a comeback at the theatre. Jonathan Powers, chair of Derby Playhouse Ltd, said he was disappointed that their bid to take over the programming of the venue had been unsuccessful. Powers said the company would maintain theatre production and planned to remount five productions.

Major names are backing a plan to revive the stricken Civic Trust, which closed in April after a financial crisis.
The National Trust, Royal Institute of British Architects and English Heritage are supporting the creation of the Civic Society Initiative, which aims to take over the Trust’s role in support small heritage and amenity organisations in England.
Speaking at a launch event for the CSI, BBC personlality and former president of the Trust Rhys Jones, slammed politicians for their lack of interest in Britain’s heritage. “What I think is that politicians believe is that heritage and conservation are not political issues. They don’t think they need to be answerable, to be held to account and they don’t care.”
Rhys Jones said a national umbrella body was needed to give a louder voice to the hundreds of small local bodies which looked after local heritage because, “the worst things that happen [to heritage] in Britain don’t happen at a local level, they happen as a result of central policies”.
He added that the Civic Trust, which was founded more than 50 years ago, had saved London from urban motorways and helped save Covent Garden from demolition in the 1970s.
The CSI needs to raise £50,000 for a “fighting fund” says its director Tony Burton, who has stepped down from a senior post at the National Trust to head the new body. A convention for the UK’s 700 civic societies and groups is to be held in October to set up the new organisation and a national roadshow will canvass the opinion of regional societies. Meanwhile, English Heritage will run the trust’s Heritage Open Day schemes

News focus

Four arts partnerships across the UK involving 23 organisations have been awarded a share of £260,000 to develop future leaders.

The money comes in the second round of the Meeting the Challenge initiative run by the ACE-based Cultural Leadership Programme (CLP).

All the projects will run for 18 months using activities including placements, secondments, networking, coaching and mentoring, and will benefit from the support of a lead advisor provided by the CLP.

It is the second manfestation of the scheme launched at a closed conference in April of last year as the first major programme after CLP’s one-of funding of £12m for two years direct from the Treasury was confirmed with a further £10m , after which 20 cultural instituions shared £200,000 so that organisations like Tate Modern, the Royal Opera House, Farnham Maltings, the National Theatre, the PRS Foundation and the Serpentine Gallery were able to work together to bring on their brightest leadership talents and open a way ahead for them.

The four are:

Four York, a partnership between York Museums Trust, York Theatre Royal, Pilot Theatre and York City Archives and City Library which will spend £51,000 to “bring our four organisations together to help to raise cultural ambition and practice in York”;

The Leadership Lab, a north-west-based partnership of three performing and music organisations, the Performing Arts Network Development Agency, the Greater Manchester Music Action Zone and Music Leader North West, has been put together with Substance, a leading IT specialist, and gets £60,000 to develop a programme for leaders both within and outside the partner organisations.

The Associate Company Scheme is a combination of three producing companies working at the Young Vic, The Opera Group, Fevered Sleep and B3Media, which gets £50,000 for formal mentoring, consultation and advice sessions from senior Young Vic staff to create work in new collaborations which build capacity and expertise.

The Leadership and Organisational Development Programme is led by Tate and has been awarded £100,000 to develop a programme in 11 museums and art galleries in England - all of which are starting or are in the middle of capital development projects – including The Hepworth, Wakefield; BALTIC, Gateshead; Firstsite, Colchester; Ikon, Birmingham; Kettles Yard, Cambridge; mima, Middlesbrough; Newlyn The Art Exchange, Penzance; Nottingham Contemporary; Tate St Ives, Cornwall; Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne; and Turner Contemporary, Margate.

More than two decades after live drama disappeared from our television screens, Sky Arts are bringing it back.

In echoes of Armchair Theatre and Play for Today of previous eras, starting in July Sky Arts: Theatre Live! will bring six new half-hour pieces from established writers – though not necessarily established as playwrights – and with a specially assembled company.

“The current debate around cultural television programme will rage on, of course, but we’re absolutely convinced that a project as innovative and entertaining as Sky Arts Theatre Live! proves just how committed we are at Sky Arts to ensuring that arts on TV thrives” said John Cassy, Sky Arts channel director, the subject of a forthcoming AI Profile.

Writers include novelists Kate Mosse and the duo Nicci Gerrard and Sean French who write as Nicci French, Michael Dobbs and comedian Jeremy Hardy. Directors will include John Alderton and among the cast will be his wife, Pauline Collins.

Each play will feature between two and four characters who will rehearse at The Orange Tree Theatre for two weeks before moving into the Sky studio. Each performance will be broadcast live in front of an invited audience of about 140 people, and performances will not stop for any reason (line fluffing, set issues, technical difficulties, actor illness) exactly as would occur in a live theatre..

Doubling as artistic producer and presenter of the series is Sandi Toksvig. “For the first quarter century of British television drama was live” she said. “Live drama has a rawness and immediacy in which anything can and did happen, including on one sad occasion the death of the leading actor (Gareth Jones in ‘Underground’ on Armchair Theatre in 1958). Now Sky Arts brings back genuine ‘reality’ television – drama as it happens, whatever happens. Vibrant, immediate, warts and all. I started my career in live television. It has an energy that cannot be found elsewhere and I am delighted to be going back.”

Too many major arts organisations are not committed to the importance of creativity in forming the British citizens of the near future. Nor is the Department of Schools Children and Families, and unless they do commit “we are doomed”.

This is the view of Paul Collard, chief executive of Creativity Culture & Education, the new identity of the recently made independent Creative Partnerships, expressed in a frank exclusive interview with AI (see page 12).

He says that too many cultural organisations believe involvement in creativity among young people is not their responsibility, and that they want to confine their activity to their own production. He also says many schools are afraid to commit to creative activities because they believe they will distract from securing the good exam results their futures may depend on.

“The question is whether art wants to make a claim to having a contribution to make to creativity - I think it’s got a massive contribution to make - or it can decide that it doesn’t want to play that game, in which case there are all sorts of other people who will do that, like scientists, mathematicians, fashion designers” he says.

His view follows the findings of a report, Get It, by the new Culture and Learning Consortium which calls for central and local government, and cultural organisations to ensure, for instance, that there is specialist training for teachers.

He also says that DCMS has been too anxious to keep the creativity agenda to itself, when the need was for all government departments to sign up to it.

Up to 10,000 new jobs for young people in the cultural sector are to be created in a new joint initiative between the DCMS and the Department of Work and Pensions.

Part of the £1.1 billion Future Jobs Fund announced in the recent Budget, the scheme will allow local authorities and arts organisations to bid for funding to create new, innovative jobs.

Already UK Music, set up six months ago as a new umbrella organisation for all those involved in the music industry, has developed a programme with Jobcentre Plus to offer 200 jobs to young unemployed people in this summer’s music festivals.

Launching Lifting People, Lifting Places, culture secretary Andy Burnham said: “International recognition and awards for British talent and content show what we’re really good at. But getting in to these sectors can be hard, especially for young people and those coming from disadvantaged groups and deprived communities. The Budget announcement of a £1 billion jobs fund provides a real chance to help put this right.”

Four museums and galleries have been shortlisted for the £100,000 Art Fund Prize for 2009, which will be presented at the RIBA on June 18.

They are the Centre of New Enlightenment at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow; Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham; Ruthin Craft Centre, Denbighshire, Wales; and the Wedgwood Museum, Stoke-on-Trent.

Chichester’s Pallant House Gallery is dropping its entrance fee for one day, May 16, to launch its campaign for free admission.

The gallery, which won the £100,000 Gulbenkian Prize (now the Art Fund Prize) in 2007, hopes to be able to scrap admission charges by 2012 by raising £4m.

“This will be our contribution to the cultural and sporting celebrations which will take place in that Olympic year” said director Stefan van Raay. “It’s something we’ve always hoped to offer: free entry to everyone, for ever. It would be a lasting legacy to Chichester and the UK.”

The gallery has been building an endowment for th last seven years with the support of individuals and the Friends of Pallant House to generate the funds which will cover the costs of free admission.

Although visits went up to 35% of Britain’s museums in the six months September 2008 to March 2009, budgets were cut in 65% according to a survey for the Art Fund.

The fund expects the disparity to widen, with visitor numbers continuing to rise and budgets tightening further over the next six months.

However, the survey found that donations of money and of objects were holding steady for museums, though many are worried about future fundraising prospects and corporate support. And as visitor numbers rise, there is more reliance on volunteers to help with stretched staff resources.

David Barrie, the fund’s outgoing director, said: “It’s not good news to hear that so many museums have suffered or expect cuts, but the fact that visitors are on the up shows how much museums matter to people, especially now that times are hard.

“There is a really important message here for our political leaders: think very carefully before you risk doing lasting damage to organisations that cost relatively little to run but matter such a lot to the communities they serve.”