Manchester could get a Royal Opera House in what culture secretary Andy Burnham says could be the most significant development in British arts for a generation – but at a cost which is almost certainly out of reach for the foreseeable future, according to a report for ACE.

Covent Garden and Manchester City Council have proposed that the Palace Theatre could be rebuilt as a northern branch of the Royal Opera House.

Consultant Graham Marchant’s evaluation says that “potential exists for a huge step change in artistic provision for the region, the largest conurbation outside London - with 10 million people within an hour’s drive time of Central Manchester. Whether audiences will grow to the extent needed remains untested but such significant changes can lead to massive new audiences for the arts”. But it says that it would be likely to cost £100m to create, and revenue costs of at least £15m a year.

Twelve landmark works of art across the country are to be commissioned in a national competition as the major Cultural Olympics initiative so far.

Arts Council England’s £5.4m or the scheme is the biggest single arts commitment to 2012, and the Artists taking the lead programme is being developed in association with the arts councils of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The commissions will be worth up to £500,000 each and artists working in any medium will be eligible, said Moira Sinclair, executive director of ACE London, who is taking the lead in the project.

‘The London 2012 bid was always about more than England’s capital city and more than about sport” she said. “Artists taking the lead illustrates that bigger, bolder vision – or art inspiring people up and down the UK to celebrate the Olympic Games, of nurturing and developing our artistic talent, and of culture and creativity at the heart of our national life.’

In 1987 Robert Hewison’s controversial The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline showed how a boom in museum openings indicated Britain, having destroyed its industry, turning to the past to manufacture a completely misleading future. This week, in a keynote address to the English Heritage conference, he revisited the theme, we have an extract.

If The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline forecast terminal decay, I was clearly quite wrong. We are still here, and until recently the economy was booming. Now, as we seem to be approaching conditions similar to those of the early 1980s, what has changed since 1987?

First of all, the Heritage is no longer in Danger. In the 1980s, one of the ways in which something came to be seen as part of the heritage was that it had to be under threat. A hundred factory chimneys was prosperous pollution, ten cold factory chimneys were an eyesore, but the last factory chimney, threatened with demolition, was a proud symbol of the industrial past.

But it is plainly not enough. The Taking Part survey (the government’s garnered data about engagement and non-engagement in culture) shows that the heritage is still largely the preserve of those who have been lucky enough to have educational, social and physical mobility. The Scottish Household Survey of 2007 tells a similar story. In Scotland in 2007, 79 per cent of those holding a professional qualification had visited a heritage site, compared with only 32 per cent of those with no qualifications. I have to say that it is not just access to the heritage that we should be worried about. There is a devastating report from the Arts Council, which also analyses the Taking Part statistics. It has the rather odd title From Indifference to Enthusiasm - odd, that is, until you understand that what the Taking Part survey tells us is that most people are indifferent, and only 4% of the population can be called enthusiasts. 84% cent of the population fall into the ‘little if anything’ or the ‘now and again’ groups.

The message about the arts is the same as what I believe is the message about the heritage. I quote: ‘Two of the most important factors in determining whether somebody attends arts activities are education and social status – the higher an individual’s level of education and social status, the more likely they are to have high levels of arts attendance.’

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Sebastian Scotney’s rant about jazz at Covent Garden

20 Minutes with Peach pafrticipant Melanie Abrahams

‘Male, pale, stale’ - arts boards

Roy Clare, chief executive of the Museum Libraries and Archives Council, makes no bones about it: the boards of museums and galleries are generically “male, pale and stale” – white middle-aged men – “and it just isn’t good enough”.

The difference, he says in an interview with Simon Tait, is not so much between the heritage sector and the visual and performing arts, as between the public and private sector, and the crucial factor is Nolan – specifically, the rules about appointments to boards following the Nolan Committee report on standards in public life.

Nolan was concerned to eradicate the “tap on the shoulder” process of recruiting to the boards of public bodies, to ensure appointments on merit. But what is happening is that the “pool” from which board members, particularly for national museums and galleries, is drawn has solidified. “So the inherent problem in the public sector of self-generating ruling class maintaining this ‘male-pale-stale’ environment in governance” he says, meaning that too few women, two few young people, and many too few from the black, Asian and multi-ethnic sectors on boards (BAME).

The effect is that the many different stories a museum collection can tell that would appeal to the growingly diverse sectors of modern British society are not drawn out, because of the boards’ un-diverse make up. “We’ve got collections really with huge potential to represent diverse stories, but the governance of the board does not reflect that” he says. “That’s the key starting point for me”.

It is changing, however. DCMS has an advisory board on heritage comprising the likes of Clare, Carole Souter of the HLF, Mark Jones of the V&A and National Museums Directors’ Conference, and English Heritage CEO Simon Turley, which recently presented a key paper to the head civil servant in the department, Jonathan Stephens. “He has reacted positively” Clare says, and in April the first ever networking session involving chairs and chief executives from the sector will take place at DCMS.

“The private sector has got more freedom in terms of how to appoint trustees, and that freedom when used well can extend to bringing onto a board people who can make difference for you in one sector or another. Private sector charities have brought in very imaginative people who wouldn’t compete under Nolan for public sector jobs” Clare says.

AI Profile: David Kershaw, group chief executive of M & C Saatchi and chairman of the Cultural Leadership Programme

David Kershaw’s introduction must have been like walking into a governance nightmare for a businessman, even one working in the cultural industries.

The model he was used to has the board appointing the chief executive, the chief executive hiring the staff, with the board answerable to the shareholders. He found himself on the board of an organisation in which the shareholders were also the employees who hired their own chief executive.

“You’d think it couldn’t happen, it was crazy” he says, “but it was also very exciting – we had a marvellous time.”

Not many set-ups compare with the governance pattern of the London Philharmonic or the capital’s other independent symphony orchestras, and while the boards of arts organisations can be idiosyncratic there are also many fundamental likenesses with governance in the business world, as Kershaw has discovered.

“Most of my life has been spent in the grubbier commercial world and clearly there are distinctions between there and the arts, but the fundamentals are not that different: the boards decide the ultimate direction of what the strategy of an organisation should be, and I guess both in the commercial and cultural sector there’s an interface between the boards – non-executive directors in business, trustees or governors in the arts – and the executive which is the lynchpin that determines whether an organisation works or doesn’t”. There can be crucial differences, however, so that it is vital to find the right chairman who understands the cultural world and can fit into an easy partnership with the chief executive; this can take time and an exhaustive trawl that does not rely on the services of headhunters.

And the key nuance is risk.

“It’s what boards spend most of their time talking about” Kershaw says. “In the arts, risk defines what the organisation is about, and then getting clarity of strategy about how you’re going to fulfil that mission”. The board’s job is to ensure the arts organisation is in the best state to deliver on the risk.

“But you don’t find people sitting around a commercial boardroom saying ‘why aren’t you being more experimental’, you certainly don’t have your shareholders saying that. The greatest challenge to a cultural board is how you balance the accounts and the risk, and it’s also the most interesting aspect.”

Plus

Graham Devlin’s governance healthchecks

Sue Hoyle and Clore’s helping hand

Pitmen profit
The hit play Pitmen Painters, currently delighting sell-out houses at the Lyttelton, features one of the character doing a lightning sketch of another, in full view of the audience. The actor is Ian Kelly, a bit of a polymath who is a graduate of Cambridge and the UCLA Film School as well as a biographer of the likes of Beau Brummel and Casanova. But if you’re wondering what happens to the drawings after the curtain comes down, you need only saunter past the National theatre ship on your way out. They are for sale at £40 a go.

Working La Sistema
At long last British audiences are gong to be treated once more by the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, which wowed the Proms three years ago. They and their director Gustavo Dudamel, products of Venezuela’s much envied La Sistema which gives money and years to training poor kids to become accomplished musicians, are to take up residence at the South Bank Centre. Watch out for them in April.

Hughes’s lost story
An interesting discovery comes to light at the Orange Tree Theatre later in the month when Georges Schehadé’s The Story of Vasso opens. It is the lost adaptation of the late Ted Hughes who had been commissioned to write an opera libretto of the piece, written by the French playwright in the 1950s and loosely based on the Algerian war. It was discovered by the production’s director, Adam Barnard, in a batch of Hughes’s papers which were being archived by the Emory University of Atlanta. ‘There was page after page of material, much of it written in Hughes’s own hand, that no-one had seen for years. Hughes’s imagination was clearly sparked by the source material, but his is a very free adaptation” he says. ‘While the original is in prose, his is in verse, and while he roughly follows Schehadé’s story, the dialogue is substantially different.’

French leaving
Sadly, Adam Gatehouse’s adventure with Festival de Valloires has come to an end. After three years, Gatehouse – the subject of a 20 Minute profile here two year ago – has had to call it a day for the summer event in the gorgeous medieval Picardy abbey because of the recession and the decision of French authorities to discontinue grants. He won’t be idle, though: he is also also editor of Live Music at BBC Radio 3 and executive producer of the BBC’s Wigmore Hall lunchtime concerts.

London’s first purpose-built playhouse, The Theatre, has been found by archaeologists in Shoreditch.

Built by James Burbage in 1576, Shakespeare performed here and write for the company between 1594 and 1597, and his Romeo &Juliet was almost certainly first performed at The Theatre.

Museum of London archaeologists have found the inner wall of the polygonal theatre, which would probably have had a series of brick piers supporting the upper floors. A sloping gravel surface uncovered by the archaeologists would have been the yard in which audiences stood, exposed to the elements. The direction of the slope suggests that the stage is likely to have stood just south of the current site, where flats now stand. Finds within the yard include a fragment of 16th-century pottery featuring the image of a man with beard and ruff.

A row with the site owner in 1597 led to the wooden structure being dismantled and taken south of the river to become part of The Globe theatre.

But drama will appear on the Shoreditch site again. The Tower Theatre Company, amateur theatre organisation, is planning a 21st century equivalent of the original with the encouragement of both Hackney Council and English Heritage. So far £1.9m has been raised towards the £3.3m building costs.

The museum devoted to the 250-year-old Wedgwood pottery company in Stoke-on-Trent is one of the ten institutions long-listed for the £100,000 Art Fund Prize for museums and galleries.

Also on the list is the Kelvin Grove Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, the favourite two years ago when the Pallant House Gallery won, this time for its Centre of New Enlightenment.

The Art Fund, sponsors in succession to the Gulbenkian Foundations since 2007, have decided to sponsor year to year, and have committed to continuing their support at least into 2010. The Fund said the unexpected resignation of director David Barrie, who lives at the end of Ma, was not connected with the prize.

Also on the list to be visited by the judges, chaired by Lord Puttnam, over the next three months are:

The Braid: Arts Centre and Mid-Antrim Museum, Ballymena, Co Antrim, a £20 million new museum, arts centre and exhibition space exploring the history of the region.

The Centre of New Enlightenment at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, inspired by the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment and using the museum’s collections to inspire young people.

Outside the Box at the Museum of Reading which entrusts more than 20,000 precious objects from the museum’s collections packed into more than 1,500 boxes and loaned out to h schools, colleges, care homes, libraries, and local community groups.

Scotland: A Changing Nation at National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh, five major themes affecting life in Scotland from the First World War to the present.

National Trust Museum of Childhood, Derbyshire, which offers the rare chance for kids big and small to get their hands on with its collections in this museum set in the 19th century servants’ wing of 17th century Sudbury Hall.

Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham, transformed from a group of decaying buildings into a thriving and inspirational community hub for heritage, arts and learning.

Rotunda – The William Smith Museum of Geology, Scarborough, one of the oldest surviving purpose-built museums in the country.

Ruthin Craft Centre: The Centre for the Applied Arts, Denbighshire, the most important gallery for contemporary craft in Wales in a stunning new building.

The Sackler Centre for arts education at the V&A, London, one of the most innovative museum education spaces in the world.

Arts Council England is cutting its staff nationally by 24% and streamlining its nine regional offices to save £6.5m a year. The savings are to be reinvested in the arts.

“We need to truly become one organisation which is confident and ambitious and shares knowledge internally and externally” said ACE chief executive Alan Davey. “I want to create a culture that moves away from the false polarities of national versus regional; that has real ambition for the arts and what the arts can do, and knows how to realise it. This proposal outlines a new Arts Council where responsibilities are clear and creative input at all levels is encouraged.”

Administrative costs are to be reduced by 15% in the next year. The national office will remain in Westminster with ACE London moving in to share, and the nine regional arts councils are to be grouped together in four areas - North, Midlands and South West, and East and South East. Four area executive directors would sit on the main board, rather than the current nine regional executive directors.

There will also be a smaller head office; an executive board reduced from 14 to nine; a centralised “grants for the arts” team based in Manchester; and a redefined staff structure with a new focus on customer relations.

A period of formal consultation with all ACE employees has started and will run until May 26. Final plans will then be drawn up and submitted to the ACE National Council in July, and it is expected that all the changes will have been implemented by the end of March 2010.

“This proposal outlines a new Arts Council where responsibilities are clear and creative input at all levels is encouraged” Davey said.

AI PROFILE - Marcus Davey and The Roundhouse taking a chance on youth.

Grand up north Leeds’ Howard Assembly Room is
back.

The Lime answer to alcohol - Kim Wiltshire.

CultureLabel Radar and the race against recession.

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Ewan Kindom’s rant.
20 Minutes with Naz Koser

The theatre was going ‘down the Swanee’ until the partnership of Alistair Spalding and Chrissie Sharp got a grip. The partnership is ending with the project floating triumphantly free.

Five years ago Sadler’s Wells was beleaguered, losing money, audiences and its reputation as the unofficial national theatre of dance.

Its chief, Jean-Luc Choplin, had ambitions to establish opera to the venue and bring “a major performing arts company”, but he had just announced he was leaving to take over Paris’s Le Chatelet. Shortly after the chair, Denise Kingsmill, also quit, and the place which had reopened in 1998 after a £48m rebuild was starting to look like another lottery white elephant.

“We were losing money at a rate of £50,000 a month, because there were certain bits of the programme which were overambitious but also because Jean-Luc made some big changes to the staffing structure so that key posts missing, like the marketing director” says the then artistic director Alistair Spalding, “and we are 70% dependent on box office – if you take that main function of marketing away then it’s pretty tricky, so the sales were going down the Swanee”. It only survived by digging into its reserves.

Now its bank balance is healthily in the black, the Wells is overflowing with enthusiastic young and old audiences and it has just announced its latest manifestation of confidence, taking the brand off-site to art galleries, theatres and even warehouses.