Transforming a one time political club into an exhibition centre is the start of creating a cultural quarter for a quiet county town.

Bedford needs to rediscover itself, Frank Branston decided, and The Mound, near a museum devoted to John Bunyan who wrote Pilgrim’s Progress in Bedford Jail, is where the project started. Branston created the local paper, the Bedford Times, and formed the Better Bedford Party of which he is leader. He is also the first elected mayor of Bedford. “We needed a new centre that says something about who we are” he says.

The Mound had been a rather awkward overgrown green lump interfering with car parking arrangements just off the High Street, the remains of what had been an 11th century castle, and in 2004 it was excavated. Little detail was found but the shape and design of old Bedford Castle was established, and a local fascination with what it had meant to townsfolk’s forebears.

“That was the place to start with the cultural quarter” says the mayor, and cars have largely been banished to a few yards nearer the river, the Great Ouse, and The Mound has been planted and turned a garden and a kind of preface for what lies beyond.

Beyond is the museum and art gallery, well established and the beneficiaries of enlightened collecting, but more recently relegated in civic thinking and funding, “and rather tired and uninspiring” says its director.

But for Mayor Branston, together the Bedford Museum and Cecil Higgins Art Gallery are the core of his cultural quarter, while a few yards to the west the town centre itself is braced for a major remake. They are the subject of a £11.3m remodelling, the first phase of which has just been completed.

AI Profile – Paul Hobson, director, the Contemporary Art Society
There is a new prize in the spectrum of arts awards; a generous one in terms of its value, and one which its creators hope will change the contemporary art in this country once and for ever. Not how the arts is made of course, explains Paul Hobson, but how it is appreciated, exhibited and, at least as importantly, bought.

It is the slightly cumbersomely titled Contemporary Art Society Annual Award for Museums, but it is worth £60,000 and is to support museums to commission new work to remain in their permanent collections. It is a waymark for a new phase for the CAS as it enters its second century, and signals the latest and perhaps most significant change to the CAS since Hobson became its director two years ago, in succession to the respected Gill Hedley.

Coming from a series of fund-raising and development roles in large and small art institutions, 38-year-old Hobson is moving forward the innovations his predecessor put in place, he says, and building on them, as the fund steps into its centenary year.

THE OTHER POINT OF VIEW

Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museum, was at the Whitechapel opening too
I don’t like to boast, but I was at guest at the uber cutting-edge opening of the newly refurbished Whitechapel Gallery, although I was probably the only person in the mwa-mwa throng dressed in high street. The fashion on conspicuous show was intimidating, with Originality and Impracticality in evidence in equal measure. Never mind the art, it was the artists and their milieu we were all asked to gaze upon.

But I did manage to catch a glimpse of some tall sculptures standing in the gallery, most of them seeming to be made of old concrete blocks and discarded picture frames. They looked rather like the sort of constructions local kids on my street make of the discarded building junk, which might well have been the point. They were also, like our street sculptures, very tactile. But, unlike our street sculptures, we weren’t supposed to touch them.

Kids in Museums is naturally very interested in the “Don’t touch” debate. We’re talking to museums and galleries about how young people can be guided in finding ways to interact with objects that should not be fondled. Point 10 on our Kids in Museums Manifesto is – “Teach kids respect, for the objects and other visitors. Help them to learn there are things they shouldn’t touch.”

So I was curious to find out from the gallery assistants patrolling the sculptures at the Whitechapel how they would prevent them being tapped by toddlers and stroked by ten year olds? I asked several assistants to imagine I was a child with an outstretched hand which looked as if it might, at any moment, land on one of these works of art. “I’d go up to you and say, ‘Don’t touch, please’,” said the first assistant. So I went to a second, and put the same question to them. “Don’t touch!” was the answer, without a please this time. “Our job is to make sure no one harms the art” they continued.

And there was me thinking their job was to assist the visitor, whatever their age.

I don’t have a problem with a gallery assistant asking anyone not to touch. But I do have a problem with them saying that first, and with it being the only thing that they say. I would like some recognition from the gallery assistant that the reason the young person – or any person – is reaching out towards a work of art is because they are responding to it. Isn’t that what the gallery or museum wants them to do? So how about starting their interaction with the miscreant visitor by saying, “Yes – it’s a really exciting piece of art, isn’t it? I like it, too. How about taking a look at it from back here, so it doesn’t get harmed and you get a better view?”

I put the suggestion of starting with such an uplifting comment to one of the gallery assistants. They replied, “But our job is to keep the art safe”. They clearly didn’t understand what I was going on about.

It’s a mystery to me, as a museum visitor, why gallery assistants aren’t simply taught to make their first words positive, rather than a reprimand. Then the visitor won’t leave feeling they’ve been told off, but feeling they’ve been valued. It would take two hours training – maximum - to have every assistant signed up to such a simple, welcoming, inclusive script.

Apart from anything else, only saying “Don’t touch!” just doesn’t work. Shortly after the Whitechapel opened to the public it was reported that, “a young boy, overcome with excitement, managed to knock over a monumental Totem Sculpture by Germany’s leading contemporary artist Isa Genzken, whose pieces are on show in the main gallery downstairs. One witness described how the six foot exhibit teetered, wobbled and fell”. Some members of the press seemed to somehow hold Kids in Museums responsible, as if we urged children to rove around galleries doing damage. Of course, that’s absurd. What we urge is that museums and galleries interact positively with children and young people, welcoming and valuing their responses.

And what this single incident at the Whitechapel demonstrates is that saying “Don’t touch” doesn’t prevent harm being done. Let’s rewrite the conversations gallery assistants have with visitors, then they’ll be no disgruntled kids and no more teetering Totem poles.

You can download a copy of the Kids in Museums Manifesto from www.kidsinmuseums.org.uk, or order a free printed copy.

Its birth was troubled and it almost didn’t survive to celebrate its third birthday, yet the Wales Millennium Centre has just unveiled a triumphant fifth anniversary programme.

The Wales Millennium Centre was pretty restrained about announcing its five birthday celebrations, but it’s a big programme with the almost inevitable Bryn Terfel, Valerie Gergiev, both Matthew Bourne and Mark Morris, the first sighting in Wales of the musical Les Miserables, a new musical based on the group Take That, and the input from residents at the centre such as Welsh national Opera and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales

But there’s been no press conference about what will happen in the celebratory month of November, no producer named, almost no congratulatory quotes from key politicians and celebrities. All that is being saved for later, says the WMC’s chief executive, Judith Isherwood; there’s still work to be done. For now, a simple press release would do.

The truth is that if it was a triumph to get the huge £106m lyric arts centre open in 2004, it has been at least as great an achievement to have kept it open.

Eighteen months ago the place was £13.5m in debt, facing insolvency and closure, with its auditors, KPMG, casting “significant” doubt about whether it could continue as a going concern.

Now it looks forward to its fifth birthday, clear of debt and actually working to a surplus when it had seemed to be one of those ill-starred millennium lottery milestones that was going to be an eternal embarrassment.

Ill-starred because it had been expected to be opening in 2000 as the Cardiff Bay Opera House, a crystal palace of a building by Zaha Hadid which would launch the derelict bay area into a glittering future. The design was turned down and the Millennium Lottery Fund, because the perception was that however much Wales is the land of song, opera is not the art form of the people.

A new competition was launched for a multi-discipline performing arts centre that would be host to both visiting shows and residential creative organisations, residents from the august Welsh National Opera to Touch Trust, the arts organisation working for and with those with autism and profound disabilities - there are eight in all. Even then, funding was thin and the Welsh Assembly had to be bullied into providing as much as they did, which was still inadequate.

But Cardiff-based architects, Percy Thomas, were appointed, and Judith Isherwood was brought from the Sydney Opera House just a year before opening.

It was a frenzied year which got the place open on November 26, 2004, followed by three years of holding two ends of the budget in outstretched fists and failing to make them meet.

It’s a complicated picture, Isherwood says, involving the £10m donation from the South African Donald Gordon which was to be paid over five years, other capital receipts coming in staggered over periods, and a woefully inadequate revenue grant to run the place. The centre was operating a turnover of £14m a year with a subsidy of £750,000, about 6%, which compares with the Lowry and Sage at around 20%.

“Once the true costs of running the building and of building an audience and maintaining commitments to all of our operations, we started to run a deficit” she says, and it took about three years for the Welsh government to get its time frames in sync with the WMC’s, while the latter was serving loans at £1m interest a year and its debt ballooned to £13.5m.

She praises the board of the centre at that dark time, who had to consider not only the viability of the centre itself but there own personal liability as charitable trustees, and it was this that crystallised the political thinking, so that at around the third birthday the £13.5m was written of by the Assembly, and the subsidy went up to £3.7m, or 26% of turnover, “in our view a comfortable level of funding – not generous but not skimping, and it allows us to do the things we have always aspired to”. They have just entered the second year of the new arrangement with what she calls a substantial surplus.

But through all the tribulations, the centre has been doing its job: the programmes have been varied, innovative and popular, audience has been building, and the residents have been largely content (an awkwardness about publicity bearing the names sponsoring businesses in competition with the centre’s own has been resolved, Isherwood assures).

“Prior to opening a lot of nay-sayers inside and outside Wales felt the size of the market and the chequered history of the project probably meant it was not going to live up to its expectations, and its kind of exceeding all those expectations.

“At 1.5m visitors a year we’re coming up to 6m since opening, which is so far beyond what any of the myriad consultants advised on”. The overall view had been that if ticket sales could get to around 300,000 and casual visitors to 250,000 they’d be doing pretty well for the size of the South Wales population of two million. But tickets are at 360,000, nearly capacity, and the casuals are coming at a rate of 1.2m a year.

“Why? Well, the bay itself has taken off, the completion of new Assembly building (which opened on St David’s Day 2006 having cost £67m) has created a heart in the bay that people do want to come and visit. And out building has been successful as an iconic building - like Sydney Opera House, many people refer to it in that way”.

There is still work to do. The centre itself was only phase one of three, and second opened in January: the Hoddinott Hall, named after the Welsh composer Alan Hoddinott who died a year ago, which is the new home of the BBC National Welsh Orchestra which cost £16m. A third space needs to be developed, at a possible cost of £14m, for which there is time-sensitive planning permission, which could be a thrust stage theatre – there is not enough rehearsal space in Cardiff. On May 5 the Arts Council of Wales moves into the centre, making it even more of a hub for the arts of Wales: Isherwood is working with new partners in central and north Wales to give the WMC more of an off-site presence throughout the principality.

So while she and the WMC may seem a little coy about the fifth birthday, the autumn events will be truly celebratory. Cape Town Opera’s unique production Porgy and Bess will be part of it, marking an association through Donald Gordon – the once thriving company has been all but strangled by slashed subsidy, and its survival and continued innovation is thanks to such partnerships. The WMC also has a five-year association with Gergiev and his Marjinsky Theatre ensembles which has been renewed and there will be concert performances from them, Karl Jenkins wrote the opening music for the centre, and to mark his 60th birthday this year there will be a concert of his work.

And there is, I fact, an early encomium from Bryn Terfel, reflecting the legend written by the poet Gwynneth Lewis carved in Welsh slate and set above the main entrance: “In These Stones Horizons Sing: five words that sum up five magnificent years” he has written. “The centre is an inspiration to artists, audiences and the world. Five years is just the beginning. As we wish Wales Millennium Centre the happiest of birthdays, we pray its horizons will sing forever.”

Empty shops can be converted into local art displays with the help of a £3 million fund to combat the recession in local high streets.
The fund is a joint initiative by government departments including the Department for Culture Media and Sport, to find creative ways to reduce the negative impact empty shops have on the high street and business confidence.

Under the proposals, planning application waivers, new types of lease and allowing local councils to temporarily take over empty shops woukld enable the spaces to be used for cultural, community or learning services, says Hazel Blears, whose Communities Department is spearheading the plan.

Chorley plan to set up a semi-permanent exhibition because of how popular turning empty shops into craft exhibitions, informal learning, and summer music workshops have proved.

The Department has published a practical guide Looking after our Town Centres which suggests ways of keeping town centres thriving.
Culture Secretary Andy Burnham, who flagged up the idea at a local government culture conference last month, said:”.By transforming otherwise empty town centre premises into hubs for culture and creativity, we can regenerate both the physical space itself and the hope and ambition of all those that have a stake in them.”

Belfast’s arts Festival at Queen’s now makes over £8 million a year for Northern Ireland’s economy new figures reveal.
A survey shows that over 1,300 audience members stayed in hotels during the festival, together with 479 visiting artists. The number of hotel bed nights occupied as part of the festival was more than 4,000. The number of festival visitors from outside Northern Ireland has also grown to 7 per cent of the total audience, a 250 per cent increase on the previous year
Ticket sales for the festival, now sponsored by Ulster Bank, have doubled since 2005 and last year’s total of 43,500 tickets sold made it the festival’s most successful year to date.
The research showed 90 per cent of audiences rated the 2008 Festival experience as excellent or very good. An even higher percentage thought that the quality of the programme was excellent or very good.
As a proportion of its turnover, Festival receives a modest level of public subsidy. In 2008 public funding accounted for 25 per cent of turnover with the remaining 75 per cent coming from private investment and box office income. This level of subsidy is low when compared with other comparable UK and Irish festivals and equates to just 5 per cent of the overall economic impact generated.
“The Festival is in excellent health,” director Graeme Farrow said. “Audiences have soared. We are now running a £1.75 million turnover business which brings fantastic benefits to Queen’s University, to Belfast and the region. The 16 day Festival, and the months leading up to it, create the annual full-time equivalent of 311 jobs, providing an important role in business development, particularly for smaller cultural enterprises.”
Roisin McDonough, chief executive of Arts Council Northern Ireland, said: “One of the lessons from the Festival is that public subsidy of the arts makes good economic sense. A relatively small investment goes a very long way “

An historic vessel is to be scrapped after its main source of income, the Friends of National Musuems Liverpool was disbanded by the museum.
The Wincham Preservation Society, which owns the preserved coastal cargo ship, Wincham, says it has had no money to keep the ship since the Friends organisation was closed down in January. The society was faced with a £40,000 repair bill and could not meet the cost of dry-docking facilities. The ship had been on display at Liverpool’s Albert Dock following a £47,500 Lottery grant in 2001.
Bruce Porter, secretary of the Wincham Preservation Society, said: “We have no money and we have had to say goodbye to the vessel. It’s a decision that was not taken lightly and has saddened us all.”
But National Museums Liverpool said that it was unaware of the decision. The NML had been in discussions with the preservation group about finding extra funding to ensure the ships future, until a few weeks ago.
Tony Tibbles, director of Merseyside Maritime Musuem, which is part of NML, said “National Museums Liverpool is disappointed to learn that the Wincham Preservation Society has decided to scrap MV Wincham. National Museums Liverpool was willing to co-operate with others, and explore options for her future preservation. National Museums Liverpool was not consulted or informed about the results of the survey or the repair costs until after this decision was made. Contrary to reports, the scrapping of the Wincham is completely unrelated to any issues around the Friends of National Museums Liverpool.”
Martyn Heighton, chairman of the UK’s Historic Ship Register committee, said,”The scrapping of the historic Mersey estuarial coaster Wincham is an unbelievable state of affairs. Wincham is in the top 300 of the 1,200 ships in the UK National Historic Fleet Register. “

Figures just released for Scotland’s arts and culture sector show that the Lottery squeeze has hit the country hard.
Scotland has already lost £44m of Lottery funding with three of the main lottery distributors the Scottish Arts Council (SAC), Scottish Screen and the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) - having significantly less money to spend.
The Scottish Arts Council will see a cut from £19.2m to just over £12m this year while Scottish Screen will see its lottery cash fall from £2.6m in 2004/5 to just over £2m this year.
The HLF has already been hit by a drop in grant cash available from a high of £62m in 2004/5 to £25m in 2007/8.
Iain Munro, the head of lottery funds for the SAC says that big capital projects are a thing of the past: only up to £250,000 is available for these types of schemes in the future.
Scottish Screen has had to cut a skills development scheme and business development loans for film makers.
Michael Russell, the Scottish Culture Minister, said that the drops in lottery cash were a “huge concern”.

I gather the Arts Council was as surprised as the rest of us at the rapid turn-round of the news of how the arts had fared in the Budget, and if what I suspect is true it says a lot for the power of the arts lobby. There was relief all round that the cut which might have been as much as £14m was actually only £4m, less than 1%, and that ACE will not be passing it on to its clients. We all expected that the DCMS would have to absorb its own £20m cut and then work out where the damage would be most felt, a process which, experience tells us, can take a week. But the explanation seems to be that culture secretary Andy Burnham knew that speculation would become rumour would become outrage, and whatever he said then would either be a confirmation of worst fears or a climb-down in the face of a barrage of accusation, so he persuaded the Treasury to let him get this rare piece of good Budget news out to this so-powerful sector before that corrosive process could get started. There was an easier way. He could have just left it on a train.

ACE this morning (April 24) announced a £44.5m fast track initiative to help recession-hit artists and art organisations over the next two years. The money will be generated by radically reducing lottery spending over the period.

The main tranch will be an open application fund called Sustain, £40m available to organisations suffering directly because of the recession. There will also be a £4m increase in the lottery-fuelled Grants for the Arts budget, which partly targets individuals, and £500,000 to enable empty retail spaces to be used for artistic activities as part of the government’s Town Centres Initiative.

‘The real challenge for the arts sector is not to ask “what is the government going to do to help us?” but “what can we do to help the country weather and recover from this downturn?”’ said Liz Forgan, ACE chairman. ‘Showing that we can make a real contribution in even the most difficult of times will be the best case we can make for continued public investment in the arts through – and just as importantly – beyond the recession.’