AI Profile
Ruth Mackenzie, director, Cultural Olympiad

Here’s a thought. Why not give Olympic medals to artists? Part of the “Olympic Truce”, say?

Ruth Mackenzie, the new director of the Cultural Olympiad, likes to go back to the ancients for inspiration, and then adapting what she finds to the 2012 job she has to do.

“At the first Olympics the Greeks laid down their arms and watched athletes and artists – and artists! – performing ‘beyond their personal best’. Who could quarrel with that? Olympian values are great” she says, and the thought continues.

It’s not well known, but until the last London Olympics in 1948 medals were handed out to artists, why not now? They got them for architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture, and that year the British engraver John Copley won a silver at the age of 73. But it was incredibly complicated and, and in 1952 there has a single music medal awarded, one Josef Suk, and it was only silver.

The Cultural Olympiad itself has been under way since the end of the Beijing Games, though you may not have noticed, and Mackenzie and her team have taken on the role of “editing” what occurs up to Midsummer’s Day, June 2012, when Festival 2012 gets under way and continues over the summer covering both the Olympics and the Paralympics. It will, she says, be three months of the best British artists can offer, programmed by her with commissions coming from her £75.5m budget (not enough, she says, and she hopes there will more contributions).

Her appointment came more than a year after the outgoing Arts Council chairman, Christopher Frayling, had called for a “ringmaster” to get the arts element of the Olympics under control, after the cultural promises are thought to have been a major reason why London beat Paris for the 2012 Games.

There have been lots of myths to be dealt with – such as that Boris Johnson tried to veto her appointment when, she says, the London mayor’s cultural adviser, Munira Mirza, had actually been on the panel that appointed her – and hurt feelings needed to be salved. The person who had held the title, motiroti co-founder Keith Khan, lost it in 2008, and though her job is quite different from his, Mackenzie says, she has “had a nice dinner” with him and he will be making a new piece for the Festival. He is, after all, and old mate, and Mackenzie has an impressive network of old mates that seems to lattice the world.

Some of them she has gathered around her as her paid advisers: “Martin (Duncan) I’ve worked with for ever, Brian (McMaster) I have worked with for at least ten years maybe 100, Alex (Poots, with whom she founded Manchester International Festival) I’ve worked with for at least 100 years. Craig (Hassall, a veteran of the Sydney Olympics and now running English National Ballet) is the only one I didn’t know well, but already it feels like we’ve been together for a century”.

Apart from a musical career as a schoolgirl French horn player, briefly revived as a saxophonist for a play she was putting on once (“I lent it to an actress friend who took it to Southampton and I haven’t seen it since – but I forgive her”), Mackenzie has never been a performer. Her life has been making the arts happen.

Her nine year tenure at Nottingham Playhouse – the last five of them with Duncan as artistic director – put the regional theatre on an international plane with bold programming, which they continued when they ran Chichester Festival Theatre together.

The audience loyalty she earned in Nottingham is wonderfully illustrated by the gamble she took in 1997 when she brought the French director Luc Bondy and the film star Emmanuelle Béart with an obscure Strindberg play, Playing with Fire. “They were here for seven days, ours was the only booking in the UK, and we suddenly realised that opening night was election night – even Emmanuelle said ‘nobody will come’. But it was an incredibly loyal and passionate audience, Nottingham. We were asking them to pay to see a play they’d never heard of by an obscure company, and on election night. And it was a sell-out.”

The friendship with Bondy, incidentally, continues: she is consultant dramaturg for the Vienna Festival of which Bondy is artistic director, and she has leave to complete her contract with this year’s events in May and June.

She will have the last word on programming, the buck stopping with the new Cultural Olympiad committee under the chairmanship of Tony Hall that appointed her. Lessons, she says, were learned by politicians and bureaucrats from the Millennium Dome when there were too many cooks stirring an increasingly thin yet obscenely expensive pot. The Cultural Olympiad has not had that problem, more “no cooks at all, with all the ingredients rolling around” Mackenzie says. “But 200 events in two years and 4m people is not nothing, in fact it’s rather good for a banquet with no cooks”.

There was a debate on Hall’s board about the title, Cultural Olympiad, “which doesn’t say anything immediately to anyone”, but culture is more significant in these Games than in any in the modern era. “Festival” on the other hand “is about having a great time and seeing marvellous things. What we have to do is make sure everybody thinks this adventure is worth buying tickets for”.

“My strength” she says “is in artistic programming and leadership”, and finding new funding partners inspired enough to take on the convoluted sponsorship rules set by the International Olympic Committee. “People fund exciting projects so you’ve got to have some”. An outline for the festival will be announced this autumn and the programme in October 2011. The opening and closing ceremonies, happily, will be none of her business.

Her biggest funder is the Legacy Trust which has had criticism for apparently doing its own regional Cultural Olympics programming, but Mackenzie will have none of it – “what were they supposed to do with two years to go?” Apart from contributing £33m to her own budget, the trust has been working assiduously “below the radar” on community projects. “It’s about community empowerment” she says, “not the sort of stuff journalists are very good at noticing and appreciating, but it’s the kind of stuff that changes lives”.

As for her message to artists taking part in the Cultural Olympiad, Mackenzie returns to the Olympic Truce theme. “It’s a very powerful idea to say to artists coming to this festival, ‘Imagine the Olympic Truce when the eyes and ears of the world are upon you. What would you like to be saying?’”

And what about those medals. It couldn’t be the old system, the one abandoned for very good reasons 60 years ago. But there are awards given by outside organisations – media sponsors, for instance – to acts, individuals, events and productions in festivals such as Edinburgh’s Fringe and Glasgow’s Mayfest. Couldn’t some outside sponsor come up with a scheme that gave awards to, say the best concert, painting, play, stand-up, circus performance, you name it? “That’s a very interesting idea, very interesting. But no-one has come forward with it yet, and it’s not my idea – don’t you dare say that it is!”

Artists will be an important driver for the post-election economy. New Deal of the Mind, a coalition of artists, entrepreneurs and opinion formers who believe in the value of creative talent, have just launched a report for the Arts Council to show how artists should be brought into the centre of the economy. Founder and chief executive Martin Bright outlines the proposals

May 6 is the date of this year’s election but it is also the 75th anniversary of President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, which created 8.5m jobs in the midst of America’s Great Depression.

The vast majority of people employed under the WPA worked in construction, manufacturing and civil engineering. However, one aspect of the genius of Harry Hopkins, the man who ran the WPA for Roosevelt, was that he recognised it was crazy employing artists, writers and musicians to dig roads and build dams. Instead he decided that creative individuals should be engaged in creative work. As a result of this insight, he helped launch the careers of painters Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and writers Saul Bellow and John Cheever among others.

Half a century later on this side of the Atlantic, Margaret Thatcher brought in the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, which helped a host of artists, designers and creative entrepreneurs set up on their own. Among them Julian Dunkerton of the Superdry fashion label and Alan McGee, founder of Creation Records.

New Deal of the Mind - possibly the only organisation to be inspired by Roosevelt and Thatcher - is campaigning for the reintroduction of such a scheme, and that’s reinforced by a report we’ve just published for the Arts Council.

Creative Survival in Hard Times is a snapshot of the obstacles and barriers that young artists face and the things they believe would make life easier. Quite simply, they don’t want hand-outs, they want a helping hand in the form of space to work and rehearse in, access to business and financial advice, mentoring from established artists and entrepreneurs and recognition that being self employed or freelance is a valid choice.

The £50 billion value of the UK’s creative sector is well documented and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) believes it will be “the key driver for the UK’s recovery from recession”. It is likely that it will employ more people than the financial sector within four years. The CBI has recently added its voice to others across the political spectrum who recognise the importance of the creative sector to economic recovery. Yet we treat those who are striving to work in the creative industries abominably with long unpaid internships, low pay when they get a job and little help with professional training.

The young artists and creative entrepreneurs interviewed for the report wanted work space, access to information, mentoring and business skills. Small interventions that could make a big difference were far higher on their list of priorities than money.
Some argued against public financial support because as one put it, “hard working midwives and teachers” should not have to pay for them to follow their dreams. Neither did they want Jobseekers Allowance but a more flexible approach to freelancing where any financial help should encourage productive self-employment. As one said: “If someone becomes a lawyer or a doctor they fill an existing job. An artist who starts their own business creates a new job”.

The level of personal commitment and sacrifice made by young people who would rather struggle financially than abandon their creativity is awe inspiring. Many criticised the bureaucratic, inflexible attitude of Jobcentre staff who fail to recognise self employment and freelancing as a valid choice. The report argues “Self employment is not just a quick fix solution. It is Britain’s best chance of capturing the talent of a generation of creative entrepreneurs”.

Aspiring artists spoke of the difficulties entering a job market where vacancies are rarely advertised and exploitation of interns is rife, reinforcing it as the preserve of the well off or well connected.

Mindful of the historical significance of the May 6th anniversary, New Deal of the Mind calls on the next government, whoever it may be, to harness and nurture the creative talent upon which we may all depend to rebuild and reshape the UK economy

Among the recommendations in Creative Survival in Hard Times are:
An Enterprise Allowance Scheme for the 21st century
Simplification of self employment regulations, help setting up as freelancers and small businesses
Space to work, rehearse, network and access business advice
Strict control of unpaid internships

Hannah Kozich on how a local council’s funding cut has hit a thriving arts centre in Cumbria

I reached for my calculator when I heard that Allerdale Borough Council intended, from April 1 this year, to end its grant to the Kirkgate Arts Centre in the Cumbrian market town of Cockermouth.

The council does not regularly fund the Kirkgate: every year we have to go cap in hand, never quite knowing whether the centre will have enough cash to continue the work that is valued so much in the community.

Now we know that for 2010-11 we will receive nothing. Last year Allerdale gave us £3,600, which works out at less than one penny per week per head of population in the town. We know that Allerdale, like many councils, faces major budget pressures. But in return for a tiny local authority investment, the Kirkgate has developed into an arts centre that estate agents boast about as they sell their houses to incomers; it is, say those agents, one of the things that makes Cockermouth “a great place to live, work or visit”, which just happens to be Allerdale Council’s motto.

Allerdale’s penny-pinching comes at a particularly cruel time for Cockermouth, which is still recovering from the appalling floods that swept through the town last November. The Kirkgate was not affected, although its neighbouring beck rose dangerously high.

We knew then that we had to help the people of the town. We offered space to groups whose regular meeting places had been flooded. We also soon realised that flood victims, scattered in emergency housing across the region, desperately wanted to stay in contact with the friends and neighbours from whom they had been separated.

So we launched a series of drop-in social nights at which people could meet. Nothing exotic; just food, drink, music and talk. But their value has been huge and people have pleaded with us to keep running them. We will if we can. But we are not sure we can find the time. If we were not so preoccupied with Allerdale’s cut to our funding, we might be better able to continue to support local people.

Those socials proved Kirkgate’s worth in the community. The centre was established 15 years ago in a sturdy former school by a team of enthusiasts and now welcomes more than 6,000 visitors a year whose ticket money and room rents help us survive. The centre has a minimal staff and a part-time development manager was appointed only three years ago. Without a team of 100 dedicated volunteers who run the box office, act as front of house staff and help with publicity and marketing, we could not function.

We run a regular programme of independent films, live music, contemporary dance, children’s theatre and professional touring theatre shows in our intimate auditorium. Amateur groups stage their shows here. We provide opportunities for our volunteers to train and develop their skills and we are now developing a programme of arts activities for young people, including weekly Krazy Arts workshops for those aged 11-16.

So why has Allerdale abolished our grant? How do we persuade other bodies to fund the Kirkgate when our own council won’t?

But the problem does not stop there. The Kirkgate also delivers Arts Out West, the rural touring programme that takes high-quality arts events into 25 village halls and community centres in West Cumbria, from Millom to the Solway. Till now, Allerdale has regularly funded AOW and last year gave a grant of £5,000. AOW also receives grants from Copeland borough council and Cumbria county council, and is regularly funded by Arts Council England.

We fear that Allerdale’s abandonment of its responsibilities to AOW will have an impact on those other funders. The end of the grant means not just a reduction of 40 per cent in the number of professional shows that can be offered to village halls in the borough but endangers the survival of the Rural Touring Scheme as a whole.

To remove funding at this time from both the Kirkgate and Arts Out West shows a real lack of understanding of the benefits of the arts, both to those who attend performances and to those who give up their time to arrange, promote and host them. If Allerdale’s councillors believe that bringing pleasure to thousands of people is not a good enough reason to fund the Kirkgate and Arts Out West, perhaps they should consider the economic impact of the two organisations and their role in the recovery of a town and region battered by a natural disaster.

Meanwhile we have a simple message for the council: Give us our penny back. Please.
Hannah Kozich chairs the boards of Kirkgate Arts, Kirkgate Centre and Arts Out West

Simon Tait almost misses London’s newest theatre venue

You could walk past this new theatre, mistaking it for another glass investment bank or another glass gym in this sort of urban Grand Canyon created by British Land.

Peer through the tint at 15-16 Triton Street NW1, though, and instead of a uniformed receptionist there is the legend, in capital letters, New Diorama Theatre.
A giant Julian Opie walking woman on the office building opposite helpfully seems to be heading towards it.

It owes nothing but its name to the ground-breaking Diorama of the 1820s, built a few yards away on the edge of Regents Park as a forerunner to cinema. But the chutzpah and belief in audiences’ willingness to be beguiled by honest fantasy is the same, and the New Diorama’s own legend, “epic stories intimately told”, could easily have applied to the original.

The New Diorama has just opened its “construction season” with a two-hander by Robert Gillespie, Love, Question Mark, about sex at the other end of the age range. Even the 80 seats are a long way from being sold out, but it’s early days. There’s no shortage of optimism.

“We want it to be the theatre that small theatre companies can call home” says David Byrne, the New Diorama’s programming manager. “There are plenty of theatres for new writing now, but we want to be the theatre for new companies because although everybody in Europe seems to be opening them, there’s nowhere comparable here”. The nearest, he says, is the Farnham Maltings, “and that’s a huge community resource, everything from farmers markets to films to jewellery makers’ studios, but it’s got the closest thing to our policy”.

That artistic policy is closely defined: to present “the work of theatre companies and artistic collectives within a variety of arts disciplines” and to support them; to link up with festivals and be a London hub for their work; to be a debating forum; to include established and emerging artists; to develop a network of producers.

The theatre is the result of the Regents Place development by British Land of the area on the north side of Euston Road from Warren Street tube station as Section 106 planning gain. The development meant the abolition of the old Diorama Arts Centre and so included a theatre. Diorama Arts were offered the new venue but, when the building of planned additional rehearsal studios had to be put back because of the credit crunch, they felt they were unable to take it on and British Land looked elsewhere.

In Hackney, the young people’s touring theatre company Quicksilver was about to lose its headquarters to development, and when the possibility of a playhouse of their own was offered they leaped at it. David Byrne is also Quicksilver’s marketing officer.

“Quicksilver is essentially a touring company and will continue to be, but we will be one of the residents at the New Diorama and present our shows here at either end of tours, as well as running the venue” he says. They have a 15-year lease and while Guy Holland and Carey English will continue to run Quicksilver, Byrne takes charge of the venue.

“We’ve no idea how much the new theatre cost to build, into the millions, but British Land have been more than great to us and we’re nominating them for an Arts & Business Award” Byrne adds.

It is a minimalist work of architecture, but the design is such that the stage has a flytower with height that allows almost any set – for the forthcoming Elevator an entire lift is being installed, and Byrne sees no reason why opera should not be produced here.
The dressing room is in the wings and doubles as a baby-changing room, the green room is full of spare seats and cardboard boxes, and the biggest space is probably the café/bar. A staff of six operates the theatre.

This summer is an “under construction” season of programming, and there will be a formal opening in September by which time, Byrne says, they will be much more sure about their direction. Meanwhile, he is scheduling in comedy and magic for Monday nights, and for Tuesdays to Saturdays bringing companies like Firehouse and Third Party with productions that will be seen in London for the first time.

And he is putting together a panel of residents and associates, small companies with two or three productions of proven quality under their belts that will become members of a family. “We want to be a bridge between small companies and places like the Hampstead Theatre, or the Royal Court, or touring, or whatever the next thing might be” Byrne says.

Many Fringe productions are now made for specifically for festivals like Edinburgh or Mayfest and as such they do not always transfer well: the New Diorama will offer the venue where they can develop their pieces. He hopes major companies, too, will see it as a discreet placed to try ideas out. The theatre has already had a sell out with a series in which sit-com writers try out their ideas on the audience, and his current quest is for a music theatre company.

Meanwhile, during the day the theatre is available for conferences, rehearsal, presentations and the schoolwork Quicksilver already has a reputation for and which the New Diorama is already embarked on. And the bar and café is open.

“Theatre needs small central London space that is not the West End or Dewynters, and we’re next to every London Underground line” Byrne says. “This feels right. It’s not a crumbling old Victorian place under a railway arch, and it doesn’t feel like it’s been built by Novotel. We can make it into a fantastic theatre.”

More of Simon Tait’s writing at www.staitarts.com

In her The Other Point of View column in AI 252 Dea Birkett questioned how much coaching there is for gallery assistants the National Gallery in exhibition subject matter. Here one of them, Simon Spier, responds.

Below, Dea Birkett adds her latest observations, followed by the National Gallery’s response to them…

Speaking as both a gallery assistant at the National Gallery and an undergraduate student of art history, I feel indebted to the gallery for the knowledge and inspiration I have gained. The passion I have for the subject is very much fed by my time here. Since receiving my weighty Companion Guide to the collection on my first day as a gift from the gallery, my understanding of Western European painting has never ceased to flourish.

I have worked full-time for one year within the visitor services and security department, and while the department also includes a specialised information team – here to answer any queries from visitors about the gallery and its collection – I have never been deprived of any activities or benefits which staff in academic positions have access to.

For each new exhibition hosted, including the recent Kobke show mentioned in your article, the curator always provides a fantastic “staff talk” outside of opening hours, and open to all staff. Gallery assistants who wish to attend are even paid an overtime rate for their time.

In addition to this, my colleagues and I are able to reserve free or discounted tickets to many of the lecture programmes and courses which the gallery’s education department organises.

Furthermore, the ID held by gallery staff gives us free access to most other museums and galleries in and around London, and a select few in different areas of the country, so the scope for learning is not limited to our own collection.

With all this in mind, one of the aspects of my job of which I remain most proud is to be responsible for the safety of the priceless works of art that hang on the walls, and during hours of duty this has to remain our top priority. At the same time, I am thrilled when visitors approach me to ask questions about the collection. It makes me value my front-of-house position in the gallery all the more to know I’ve given the information needed to help someone make the very most of their visit.

The pleasure of my job is being able to keep an eye on the security of the room as well as absorbing information from the paintings themselves and the many guided tours which pass through.

so Dea made a return visit…

I was cheered to hear back from the National Gallery that “All of our staff, including gallery assistants, are provided with special tours with curators for every exhibition held”’. This good news encouraged me to return and have another attempt at appreciating the Christen Kobke exhibition. I spotted two gallery assistants in the room.

I approached one. “Can you tell me about these paintings?” I asked.
“No - not really” he said.
“Do you know anything about them?”
“No.”
I waited. Then asked, “Have you had any training about the paintings?”
“No” he said. Then added, “Why don’t you go and look at the short film next door? That might help you”. He then suggested I went and bought the catalogue in the shop.

So I approached the second gallery assistant.
“Can you tell me why these paintings are important?”I asked, “I don’t know them at all”.
“Neither do I” he said. “I know nothing about them. You probably know more than I do!”
“Have you been told anything about them?” I asked.
“No” he said.
He then suggested I went to the shop and bought the catalogue.

Perhaps the National Gallery will argue that I went on the wrong afternoon, that I just happened to come across a couple of gallery assistants who hadn’t had any training. But that’s a defence that’s no defence. Either you have a training programme for your gallery assistants or you don’t. You don’t have a training programme for some of them, some of the time.

There’s just a few weeks left of the Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey exhibition. Perhaps I’ll try to go along to that, too. It’s just that I know nothing about Paul Delaroche either. And I might not be able to find a gallery assistant to help me.

…and from the National Gallery

The National Gallery was very interested to read about Dea’s return visit to the Købke exhibition in The Sunley Room.

For some “out of the ordinary” conversations or incidents that happen, our gallery assistants file written reports. We therefore read the report which had been written by one of the two gallery assistants who were approached by Dea at approx 5.00pm on Thursday 22 April. However, as her version of events seemed to be at odds to this report, we decided to watch the CCTV footage of this encounter to find out what actually happened.

CCTV shows Dea walking into the Sunley Room and, after a minute or two she approaches the seated gallery assistant. She has a brief conversation lasting perhaps 25 seconds with him and starts to leave. The gallery assistant follows her, speaks to her again and indicates the location of the cinema. On her way out she stops and speaks with another gallery assistant briefly. She then she leaves the exhibition suite without speaking to any other staff.

Dea’s story is that she spotted two gallery assistants in the exhibition room. “I approached one. ‘Can you tell me about the paintings?’ I asked. ‘No - not really’ he said. She says she asked ‘Do you know anything about them?’ to which he replied ‘No’”. She reports she waited and then asked “’Have you had any training about the paintings?’ ‘No’ he said. Then he added ‘Why don’t you go and look at the short film next door, that might help you’. He then suggested I went and bought the catalogue in the shop” she says.

However, the gallery assistant who she approached states of Dea’s article. “Earlier I had walked round the room looking at some of the paintings and thought if Kobke had lived longer how would his work have developed. When questioned by the visitor the first answer I gave was he had died quite young – before going on to suggest the short film in the cinema or the catalogue on the stand. She did not appear to be interested in spending time in looking, reading, discovering the information / answers she wanted for herself from what the gallery provides for its many visitors – I thought maybe she was someone who couldn’t read but the film would have been useful. I am interested in the paintings and I like to engage with the visitors.”

Not all of the gallery assistants attend the voluntary staff talks which are provided, but with what knowledge they have and without getting diverted from their security responsibilities they are encouraged to learn about the collection and temporary exhibitions in order to assist visitors.

We are very happy to make the CCTV footage available.

From Ms Esther Salamon

I wish to take issue on two points in the article written by Pauline Menard, “Where Waygood went wrong” (AI 252).

Firstly, although I resigned as chair of Waygood Gallery & Studios in late February 2010, I am still a non-executive director of the company.

Secondly, I have been involved with Waygood for eight years. During this period I have not been receiving £12,000 per year for my involvement with Waygood, as reported in Ms Menard¹s article. To clarify, all self-employed non-executive directors of the company are eligible to claim for the actual work they undertake on behalf of the company (non-executive directors
do not receive an annual wage, annual fee or retainers). Far from having earned £12,000 per year I have, in fact, earned an average of £2,229 per year, and no more than £3,500 in any one financial year.

Yours truly,
Esther Salamom.

Survey shows cultural sector braced for cuts

Workers in the cultural sector are bracing themselves for a Conservative win in the general election which they believe will mean a tougher time for the arts. They think funding for the creative industries should be ring-fenced.

They think David Cameron is most likely to be prime minister in May 7, but that Gordon Brown is by far the leader most sympathetic to the arts. But they also believe that the arts will experience significant cuts after the election.

The findings are the result of a survey by Arts Quarter, the independent survey consultancy that works with the arts and not-for-profit sector.

The survey was carried between April 6 and April 16 among 2,558 named contacts from whom there were 854 completed organisational responses and assessed before the first leaders’ TV debate. It found that 20.5% of those questioned thought Labour had been most explicit in its manifesto pledges for the arts sector, compared with 13% for the Conservatives and 8% for the Liberal Democrats.

It is clear that nobody expects the cultural sector to be free of cuts. “It would seem evident that arts professionals remain sceptical of support for the sector irrespective of outcome” says the AQ report, “but perhaps fear a Conservative win above victory by either of the other major parties in terms of empathy and clarity on policy”.

The most popular response to a question about the post-election impact on the arts was that efforts to generate money from private sources would have to be stepped up, and the next most popular that cuts may have to be made to public programme. Beyond the first year of the new government, preferences were reversed with more believing that cuts in public programmes could be necessary.

But in answer the question “Which of the leaders of the major political parties do you feel is most likely to empathise with the issues relating to your sector in the course of the election campaign”, 36 % said Gordon Brown, 11.6% Nick Clegg and only 3.8% David Cameron.

Opinions have been narrowing. AQ last carried out a survey in September when 81% of respondents predicted a clear Conservative win. Now just 45% do, and most of them expect the majority will be less than 25 seats.

More significantly, 31% of respondents now think a hung parliament is most likely, compared with 4% seven months ago. Now, 12% believe a small Labour majority might be the result, whereas in September none did.

In personal statements in the returns, a recurrent theme was that funding for creative industries should be protected. “Our key message as a sector should be to argue that, as per the Dutch model, funding for the arts should be ring-fenced. It is proportionately a tiny % of the budget” the report summarises. “This country enjoys a rich cultural life and a hugely successful creative economy. We punch well above our weight. But that economy is fragile and any hit to funding will jeopardise it”.

Respondents were powerfully in favour of maintaining the arm’s length principle with the Arts Council, and there is a call for a pledge to keep the Arts Council “as there are rumour of the Conservatives wanting to axe it”. The Conservatives have, in fact, said there are no plans to abolish ACE.

There was also overwhelming support for new tax arrangements to encourage individual philanthropic support for the arts.

UK General Election: The Cultural Sector’s Viewpoint is published by Arts Quarter LLP, www.artsquarter.co.uk

What the manifestos say

Labour is the only main party to include the arts in their election manifesto, and for the first time. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats published separate arts manifestos as long ago as February.

Accusations have flown between the arts spokesmen, with Labour’s Ben Bradshaw using an interview win The Stage to claim that the Tories will make “savage” cuts in government funding for the arts despite promises, and he Conservatives’ Ed Vaizey saying Labour “continue to lie about our policies, but it won’t work”.

Labour are promising to make nation al museums and galleries more independent; they will introduce a £10 theatre ticket scheme to encourage younger play-goers; there is to be a biennial Festival of Britain to celebrate Britain’s cultural achievements; and there will be more lottery money for the arts after the 2012 Olympics.

The Conservatives will seek to secure long term funding for the arts based on the mixed economy and the arm’s length principle, which ensures they have he resources to carry them through the good time and the bad; they will give more independence to subsidised arts organizations; they will encourage a more coherent approach to arts funding in schools to enable access performance; the National Lottery will be returned to supplying four good causes, increasing funding to the arts and heritage each by £50m a year; they will change the rules for acceptance-in-lieu procedures to allow living giving of works of art.

The Liberal Democrats will put more emphasis on recognising achievement in the arts; introduce a cabinet committee on creativity; review the via system so that it doesn’t militate against visiting artists; it will more to the arts economically and diplomatically; ensure the Arts Council finances risk and innovation, and distribute more subsidy to the regions; encourage local authorities to maintain their arts support; give more recognition to arts philanthropists; embed culture and creativity in the school curriculum.

AI Profile
Graham Sheffield, artistic director, Barbican Centre

Graham Sheffield has been credited with turning round the critical fortunes of the Barbican Centre, coming in as its first artistic director and developing its first proper programming.

He waved a petulant Royal Shakespeare Company off when they discarded their only London residency, and he introduced Bite, the theatre season which brings often avant garde drama from around the world, in its place.

He has also brought in associates like Cheek by Jowl, who have just opened a critically approved new production of Macbeth. He invited the BBC Symphony Orchestras to become an associate to work alongside the resident LSO, with Serious as associate music producers. Dance companies like the Michael Morris Company were brought in as favoured creatives, and he got a proper art gallery established. Each of the art forms was accorded its own director.

All this was in partnership with John Tusa, the managing director, who steered through a massive refurbishment programme built around better servicing the artistic offer of the place, and when Tusa retired in 2007 Sheffield was widely expected to get the job – in the gift of the City of London Corporation which owns and funds the centre. When, to his and Tusa’s dismay, he didn’t get it friends expected him to quit when the job went to Nicholas Kenyon, the former Proms director and Radio 3 CEO.

He didn’t, partly because Kenyon is an old friend from BBC days with whom he knew he could work, and a month ago they together launched an ambitious summer programme including jazz, open air concerts of east End music, an exhibition about architecture and surrealism, and a commission from the surreal multi-discipline artist John Bock.

It is a very primary colour schedule which has Sheffield’s signature on it, but he has also been leaving his fingerprints outside the Barbican’s precincts. Since 2006 he has been chairman of the venerable Royal Philharmonic Society, devoted to promoting musical composition and the word of younger artists, and last summer the British Council appointed him its first advisor for arts and a creative economy.

But, in a move that has surprised all but his closest confidants, he is leaving. After 15 year at the Barbican he is to go in August to become chief executive of the West Kowloon Cultural District.

It might seem a step down from programming the artistic life of an international multi-form venue to become what sounds like an old fashioned town clerk in a former Far Eastern colony. The truth is that there is no West Kowloon Cultural District yet, Sheffield has three years and £1.87 billion to make it.

It is, he says, the job of a lifetime. “In many ways the Barbican has been a dream job and there are not many I would consider giving it up for” he says, “but there are very few opportunities like West Kowloon and I couldn’t put it aside”.

His experiences running a multi-cultural arts centre might been a factor in his appointment, he thinks, “but this is creating something entirely new, in 16 buildings rather than one, and four times the size of the Barbican”.

His role at the British Council, taken up last year, will almost certainly have to be reassigned, but he won’t enlarge. “In six months we have had a measure of success with the arts and culture now at the centre of their thinking” is all he will say. “I’m sure I will be involved with the British Council, but in what capacity we have not yet discussed”. But the BC is very firmly entrenched in Hong Kong where it has a long history integrating education and the arts.

The West Kowloon Cultural District had been planned for a decade, since Hong Kong was handed back to Chinese control by Britain but with a large measure of autonomy, and was on the backburner when in 2006 the Hong Kong government’s consultative committee advised that the creation of the cultural quarter should go ahead immediately, with 15 performing arts venues and a museum/gallery/exhibitions centre. Legislation was put through two years ago.

Sheffield’s appointment will have a lot to do with how he set about creating an arts centre rather than what he is doing with it now. His success began with the RSC’s departure from the Barbican in 1997, early in his time there, and the end of outside control of one of his key venues, the Barbican Theatre. “We’re not going to sign another 17 volume residency agreement with someone like the RSC because we actually enjoy the freedom of being able to put on whatever we want” he told ai then.

When he arrived there was no artistic steerage at all, and the building was reviled and even hated, particularly by the resident RSC who had actually designed the theatre. He had begun with just the concert hall and cinema in his control: there was no education programme, the art gallery was run by a different department in the corporation, the RSC had the theatre, there was no sponsorship department at all, and marketing was run separately. He made a brand, created a team of artistic programmers, and consulted West End contacts like Thelma Holt about what to do with the theatre.

In 1998 he put on the huge Inventing America festival which put the Barbican on the map artistically. “Then we started the process of trying to build on events with a lot more thematic festivals, a bigger jazz programme, a bigger world music programme with festivals built around those”. Then they had to finish the improvements to the hall’s acoustic started by Larry Kirkegaard, so that now they can welcome orchestras like Berlin’s, Vienna’s and Amsterdam’s which had shunned the Barbican before. Resident “more as a lifelong friend than a lodger” is the LSO.

Sheffield’s first love is classical music. A product of Tonbridge School and Edinburgh University where he got a music degree, his ambition was to be an opera director. He became a stage manager but got “syphoned off” into the BBC where he was a Radio 3 producer, and then found himself head of music at the South Bank Centre. So his only opera production remains the one of Chabrier’s comic piece L’Etoile he did at university.

It was a big shift from music management to what was then called arts director of a place like the Barbican. “Each job I’ve done somebody has taken me on trust – before I went to the BBC I’d never been in studio before, I’d never worked in a concert hall until I went to the SBC, and here they took a risk on me and theatre” he said.

He changed his title from arts manager – “too bureaucratic sounding, I thought” – to artistic director, but the job has changed since then and he is no longer a programmer so much as a facilitator of programming, travelling widely to concerts, plays, exhibitions and performances.

A few mlonths after his arrival, John Tusa was installed as managing director and a double act was created. “We’ve done our damnedest to turn it into a silk purse” he says.

Now Sheffield has to repeat the process, to the power of four and a budget approximately three times everything he and Tusa spent on the Barbican transformation. He has to appoint executive directors for each of the disciplines, and the architectural leadership that will create the new buildings in what he intends will be the cultural crossroads between the Far East and the West. As he says, “Why wouldn’t I want to do that?”

A small patch by the Thames has royal connections going back centuries, which a new £6m centre reveals

This impressive building use to house Royal Navy marine architects’ workshops, but it’s on the site of something much grander. On this spot on a bend of the Thames was not just a royal residence, but for the Tudors the royal residence, their version of Buckingham Palace.

Henry VIII, Mary I and Elizabeth I were all borne in Greenwich Palace, Edward VI died here. The campaign against the Armada was planned here, and the death warrant of Mary Queen of Scots was signed here.

But after it ceased to be a royal a palace, the site went to have a quite different but just as colourful a history, a story told now in the £6m Discover Greenwich, created by the Greenwich Foundation which now has responsibility for it.

And the news that Greenwich, a World Heritage Site since 1997, is to become a Royal Borough as part of the Queen’s Jubilee in 2012 adds a sheen to the new centre.

Although it emphasises the architecture of Hawksmoor, Wren and Stuart, and life in the Greenwich Hospital for seamen, which it was for more than 150 years, its royal story is the one which fascinates the most – a story which can partly be told now through objects recovered in the series of archaeological excavations of the palace, including the chapel in which Henry VIII married Anne of Cleves.

Greenwich’s royal connections go back much further than the Tudors, however, at least to the 9th century AD. Sixth century Saxon remains have been found in Greenwich Park, and in 916 Alfred the Great’s daughter, Elstrudis, who was married to the Count of Flanders, gave the estate to the Abbey of St Peter’s in Ghent.

Discover Greenwich picks up the story in about 1450, but the small fishing settlement had reverted to royal ownership in 1414 and in 1427 was ceded to Henry V’s brother, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester. He built an impressive house, calling it Bellacourt, but when he fell out with the queen, Margaret of Anjou, she took it over, renaming it the Palace of Pleasaunce.

It was Henry VII who developed it into a full scale royal residence, calling it Placentia, “a pleasant place in which to live”. Henry VIII was born here while construction was going on, and by 1506 it was known as the Palace of Greenwich. His daughters Mary and Elizabeth were both born here too, and his son Edward died here.

As Discover Greenwich reveals, the palace was a bustling community throughout the 16th century, and objects found in a series of archaeological explorations help tell the story. Particularly significant was the 2005 dig on the site of a car park where the chapel royal, begun by Henry VII in about 1500, stood. This was the household chapel, and although Henry’s fourth marriage is thought to have happened in it, most royal solemnities took place in the nearby friary church.

The monarch’s apartments were linked to the chapel, however, and the royal family would have attended services on a partially secluded first floor space.

Enough detail was obtained in the dig for the chapel to be pictorially reconstructed, and – with incense wafting with the music of Thomas Tallis – this provides a first glimpse of the more humble worship of Tudor royal households.

Two of the more delightful objects are the large oak figures from the mid-16th century representing beer and gin drinking – though the latter’s title is an anachronism because gin wasn’t introduced to England until the late 17th century. They would have stood either end of the buttery screen at Greenwich Palace which shielded diners from the area where food was prepared, and they are a rare depiction of ordinary dress in Tudor times.

The foundation has been a le to reconstruct a Tudor window from the palace using original stonework, re-glazed using medieval techniques with the badges of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

And from the town are more humble finds, like the stoneware “witch’s bottle” containing human hair, fingernails and carpenter’s nails which would have stood at a house’s threshold to ward off evil spells.

“The World Heritage Site is still evolving to meet the expectations of several million people who visit the area each year” said Duncan Wilson, director of the Greenwich Foundation. “Discover Greenwich provides an indispensable starting point for understanding and appreciating this rich history – as well as becoming a contemporary destination in its own right.”



News focus
Arts manifesto sets out the importance of our cultural economy

Britain’s cultural capital could be the saving of the economy and lead the recovery, according to a new alliance of leading arts and heritage organisations who have jointly launched a manifesto to make their point.

We have the largest cultural economy in the world relative to GDP, according to the document, Cultural Capital: A Manifesto for the Future, and every £1 invested in culture produces £2. Two thirds of the adult population in the UK enjoy the arts, visit historic sites and go to museums and galleries, and of the top ten UK visitor attractions, eight are national museums.

At the British Museum launch, the museum’s director, Neil MacGregor, said: “We want to give politicians the confidence to put on their CVs not what football team they support, but why life without Schubert is impossible.
“Culture works. This is a bit of national life that is extraordinarily efficient and effective. It is a huge employer and the economic activity it generates is ever more important. Culture gives us our place in the world; it reminds us what we are and what we could be.”

The document sets out to demonstrate that a fifteen-year period of investment has created a public appetite for culture that continues to grow, and that the arts, heritage, museums, libraries and archives make a strong contribution to the economic and social well being of Britain.

It argues that a reduction of public investment would make poor economic sense. As the eyes of the world are on Britain for the Olympics in 2012, sustained funding is essential if our cultural institutions and attractions are to create a lasting legacy of more people taking part and an enhanced international profile. The cultural sector can also make a real contribution to social and economic recovery through offering work, learning, training and social engagement.

The arts and heritage agencies have already contributed £2.2 billion from their National Lottery income to the London 2012 Olympics (the Heritage Lottery Fund is losing £161.2 million; the four arts councils and two film councils are losing another £161.2 million). And this year alone the cultural sector has made extensive contributions to public sector savings through the £20m cut to the overall DCMS grant-in-aid allocation announced in the 2009 budget. Over the last twelve years, English Heritage has lost £130m in grant-in-aid.

“All the more important during an economic downturn, the arts and culture have a new role and sense of purpose in society” said Nicholas Kenyon, managing director of the Barbican. “Whether you’re looking for inspiration, education or entertainment in these challenging times, the arts provide it.”

And Britain’s lead in putting the arts at the head of economic recovery is acknowledged abroad. “We don’t know how long this crises is going to last” said Jean Figuel, the EU commissioner for culture last year. “When it is over, those who have invested in creativity and innovation will find themselves well ahead of the pack.”