A decade of achievement in the arts
Imagine a country with a fine history of artistic achievement but with an infrastructure of theatres, galleries and arts centres which had received little significant investment for many years.
In other words, imagine Britain in the mid-1990s.
Now suppose that a tap could be turned on which would bring a completely new stream of funding – far more money, initially, than anyone had dared predict – to bear on this infrastructure. What would be a sensible way to proceed? Perhaps to draw up a strategy with carefully thought-through priorities.
But what actually happened was something more akin to the California Gold Rush.
The coincidence of the lottery being introduced just as the millennium was looming further muddied the water, particularly with the advent of a new government swept into power on a landslide and keen to declare a new age of optimism.
The Blair government swiftly met its nemesis with its Millennium Festival, better remembered as The Dome.
This attempt to re-do the 1951 Festival of Britain foundered on a failure to define what it was and what it was for, and it staggered on embarrassingly for a year of well-below-target attendances, taking much of the gloss off New Labour even before its agenda was transformed by the planes hitting the twin towers.
Other “Millennium projects” across the country, including Birmingham’s under-whelming Millennium Point, also failed to distil the excitement of the moment for future generations, although there were successes as well, like Cornwall’s Eden Project.
In the case of the arts lottery, an early “loadsamoney” phase when applicants were sent away to make their schemes more ambitious was followed after what seemed about five minutes by the shutters being brought down with the announcement – more or less – that there would be no more money for arts buildings in the history of the world, ever.
No wonder the results were a bit hit-and-miss.
The much-publicised failure of arts and Millennium projects like Sheffield’s National Centre for Popular Music and the Earth Centre near Doncaster (humiliatingly Millennium Point, the most expensive such project outside London, was scarcely noticed at all, even as a flop) should not be allowed to obscure the many successes.
In Birmingham, the Ikon Gallery – a stylish conversion of an 1870s building by the city’s greatest Victorian architect, J H Chamberlain, which had come perilously close to demolition – the radically rebuilt and expanded Hippodrome Theatre, the Drum arts centre and the CBSO Centre were four outstanding developments.
Elsewhere in the West Midlands the New Art Gallery in Walsall, the Courtyard Arts Centre in Hereford, the much improved Belgrade Theatre in Coventry and Malvern Theatres were other examples of new lottery-funded facilities which have given outstanding public service over the last decade.
Plans for a lottery-funded renovation of the Town Hall were knocked back at the point when the Hippodrome plans were given the green light, and this historic building – one of the world’s oldest concert halls – languished for the first seven years of the new century before reopening, beautifully restored, in the autumn of 2007.
Two big West Midlands projects held over from the first round of the arts lottery were to have sharply contrasting fortunes.
The Public (formerly c/PLEX) was a well-intentioned scheme to raise the aspirations of West Bromwich with a state-of-the-art digital arts centre in a landmark building.
But the project, which ironically rallied initial political support as an example
of lottery proceeds being spent on poor people as opposed to the “toffs” for which the Royal Opera House was being rebuilt, drifted into insolvency. The interactive art displays which were meant to be its main attraction not only failed to work but by the end of the decade looked hopelessly dated, a much-delayed legacy of the Millennium moment which had already delivered a resounding flop at The Dome.
The other project – the rebuilding of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon – attracted little public attention as the decade neared its end, simply because it was continuing on time and budget.
Experience of the RSC’s temporary theatre, The Courtyard, suggests that it may well achieve its aim of making the remodelled theatre the finest space in the world for presenting Shakespeare.
It’s easy now to forget how much trouble the RSC was in at the beginning of the decade. Having alienated London critics by its disengagement from its base at the Barbican, by 2002 it was facing criticism of faltering standards and a backlash was building against plans to demolish the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
Under incoming artistic director Michael Boyd the development plans underwent a rethink, while Boyd’s focus on re-dedicating the company to an ensemble system began to win back critics and audiences alike.
