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.

AND
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.

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

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.

A number of senior scientists are calling on the Science Museum to cancel the celebration of Israel’s scientific achievements in March.
More than 250 academics, including Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire, writer Ahdaf Soueif, scientist Steven Rose and historian Charles Jenck have signed letters to Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry and London’s Science Museum calling for the cancellation. They say that Israel is using science in its attacks on Palestinians.
The event showcases the work of seven Israeli universities, which claim the protestors, “are complicit in the Israeli occupation and in the policies and weaponry so recently deployed to such disastrous effect in Gaza.” They added that the events are a ”scandalous piece of misguided PR for Israel”.
But the National Museum for Science and Industry (NMSI) has refused to cancel the event. A spokesman said that “not to proceed with the event would mean taking a political stand, which would be wholly inappropriate.”
The spokesman added that the event was a corporate booking by the Zionist Federation and was not co-hosted or sponsored by the Museum. The Museum would be working very closely with the Metropolitan Police over security issues.

Creative Partnerships has backed a call for more creativity in the school curriculum.
The arts and culture education agency, has welcomed a critical report which says there is too much emphasis on testing in primary schools and not enough on music, arts and creativity.
Creative Partnerships director Paul Collard said “We welcome the review’s emphasis on creativity in learning and believe that creativity empowers young people.” He added that the Cambridge Primary Review’s proposals for a new curriculum which includes ‘celebrating culture’ as one of 12 aims for pupils, showed “a welcome emphasis on including arts and creativity in learning.”
Collard’s comments follow a damning indictment of current educational policy in the Cambridge review, which is authored by the UK’s foremost educational academics.
The review said that half of school time was taken up by literacy and numeracy, with everything else crammed into the time left. It added: “In these severely utilitarian and philistine times, it has become necessary to argue the case for creativity and the imagination on the grounds of their contribution to the economy alone. The most conspicuous casualties are the arts, the humanities and those kinds of learning in all subjects which require time for talking, problem-solving and the extended exploration of ideas.”
The review suggests a new curriculum with 12 aims, including celebrating culture and ‘exciting the imagination’.
However, the government has commissioned its own review of primary education, which is expected to report later this year.

Confusion reigns about the future of this year’s popular Brecon jazz festival after the Arts Council of Wales and Brecon’s mayor disagreed about a rescue package for the event.
The mayor, Martin Weale announced that a group of arts organisations had agreed to set up a festival this year, after the previous company running the jazz festival went into liquidation in December.
But the Arts Council of Wales insisted it was still in negotiations with two arts groups about organising a festival for 2010, not 2009.
The dispute over the future of the Jazz festival erupted when Brecon Jazz Festival Ltd, which had organised the 25 year old festival ran into financial difficulty following poor weather and lost ticket sales in the 2008 event.
Arts Council Wales was asked by the Welsh assembly government to draw up a plan to rescue the event, which attracts 70,000 visitors annually, and ist the third biggest cultural draw in Wales. But ACW chief executive said last month that organising a top class event in just 6 months was impossible and bidders would be asked to run a festival in 2010.
But Brecon residents say that they cannot afford to lose the event this year and pressured local representatives to come with a smaller scale vent this summer. Mr Weale said that promoters Celtic Spirit, Theatr Brycheiniog and Porthcawl Jazz Festival have agreed to work together to provide a jazz festival and acts and venues had already been booked.
But Arts Council Wales, which contributes £125,000 to the event said that it was “surprised” at the announcement which appeared to “jump the gun” ahead of discussions with its preferred bidders for 2010.
A spokesman said ACW was not against the idea of a small scale event this year but wanted to ensure that one of the bidders for 2010 should be involved in organising it.

English Heritage has warned that historic sites are being systematically plundered by “nighthawkers,” - unscrupulous metal detectorists who operate by night.
The heritage body has just published a survey which shows that more than one-third of the 88 historic sites designated as “scheduled monuments” have been attacked between 1995 and 2008 - along with at least 152 undesignated sites. One in 20 archaeological excavation sites is targeted by the thieves.
Their activities are causing enormous damage to the country’s archaeological record, said acting EH chairman Barry Cunliffe. “Nighthawkers, by hoarding the finds or selling them on without recording or provenance, are thieves of valuable archaeological knowledge that belongs to us all. ”
English Heritage wants a central database of reported incidents, antiquity sellers to be forced by law to prove the origin of their goods and has called for a tightening of the Treasure Act of 1996, which requires all those who come into contact with treasure finds to report them to the local coroner.
The British Museum is backing an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill which would establish a dedicated coroner for Treasure. The Museum says the existing system for reporting treasure means that here are delays of up to a year before a coroner’s inquest can be heard on artefacts discovered and reported by metal detectorists and others. As AI went to press, MPs were discussing amendments to the Bill.

Derby’s troubled Playhouse theatre is to be taken over by the University of Derby.
Senior officials from the university have pledged to take over the lease, currently in the hands of former artistic director Stephen Edwards, for a “significant” sum.
The university will use the building to run its theatre arts programme and other drama related courses but it will also be available for professional and amateur productions.
University vice-chancellor Professor John Coyne said: “I am delighted that the university has been able to reach an agreement that can keep the Playhouse in the public domain as a valued performance space. It is an important cultural asset in the city.”
Derby Playhouse Ltd went into administration in 2007 after Derby City council and Arts Council England withdrew their grants in a dispute with the theatre board about the direction of the theatre.
The theatre closed early in 2008 and has been the focus of a continuing wrangle over the future of live theatre in the city. Derby City Council, supported by ACE, set up its own drama programme, using other venues in the city.
Chairman of the Playhouse board Professor Jonathan Powers, a former pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Derby, said he was delighted with the deal, and hoped that performances could start as soon as the summer.
Derby City council chief executive, Ray Cowlishaw, said he welcomed the university’s move. “I am relieved that it didn’t end up in the hands of a developer.” He added that he did not see that the university’s purchase of the Playhouse would have a negative impact on the Derby Live programme, but he hinted that some of the Derby grant for the old Playhouse might return to the new regime. “We see it as an integral part of live theatre in the city. Obviously we will have to work out the details with the university but we have money earmarked for professional theatre, provided we were happy it was properly operated.”

Arts Council England has announced a national administrative restructure which will save £6.5m a year, to be reinvested in the arts.

A 24% staff reduction will reduce admin costs by 15% in the next year, with nine regional offices becoming four in the North, Midlands and South West, East and South East, and London, and ACE London moving into the national offices in Westminster.

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.

CEO Alan Davey said: ‘We need to truly become one organisation which is confident and ambitious and shares knowledge internally and externally. 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.’

Colin Tweedy on A&B

Ulster Bank, portrait of a corporate sponsor

HighTide, Halesworth’s edgy drama take son London

NEW COLUMN
Dea Birkett of Kids in Museums with The Other Point of View