Arts so crucial to a modern city

Mar 12 2007 Perspective

Following Michael Parkinson's report on the future of Birmingham city centre, an arts audit should form part of any masterplan, argues Arts Editor Terry Grimley.

Does Birmingham's city centre need a new arts centre, a film theatre, and a regional outpost of. the Victoria & Albert Museum?

Professor Michael Parkinson thinks it does. All these specific facilities are suggested in his Visioning Study, the preliminary document towards the preparation of a proposed masterplan for the city centre.

However, why exactly it needs them, and what precise form they should take, is not explained. On the arts centre, for example, Prof Parkinson simply says the city centre lacks places to hang out on Sunday afternoons: "It needs a MAC Central – a central arts centre. The current MAC doesn't provide a regional facility because of its location," he says. Well, you might want to define any proposed new arts centre in a little more detail before you get round to commissioning architects.

Similarly, the proposal to approach the V&A about establishing a regional branch here – Birmingham being one of the few major cities which doesn't already have an outpost of a national museum – is essentially opportunistic. But what exactly is the opportunity?

The report makes no suggestion about what the theme of such a collaboration might be, but a number of ideas appropriate to Birmingham and its population could easily suggest themselves. A museum of Indian art, perhaps?

Prof Parkinson is probably unaware that when Colin Ford, the V&A's pioneering curator of photography, first conceived the idea of a National Museum of Photography, his preferred location was Birmingham. But the city council turned it down flat because it couldn't see any benefit in the idea.

Birmingham's shrug of indifference became Bradford's top tourist attraction. And when Birmingham put in a bid to rehouse the Royal Photographic Society's historic collection a few years ago, it lost out – naturally enough – to Bradford.

In recent years it seems a similar torpor has once again descended on the city as far as any kind of active strategy for cultural development is concerned. You can only look back now with astonishment at a remarkable period of energy, enterprise and imagination which kicked-in in the mid-to-late 1980s.

Within a period of a few short years it delivered – among other things – one of the world's finest concert halls, the relocation of Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet and the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company (OK, that one didn't work out), and the creation of a public art strategy integrated with pedestrianisation and the creation of new city centre squares.

Not all the public art of that period was successful – Raymond Mason's little-lamented Forward sculpture springs to mind – but there were more successes than failures. The innovative nature of some projects, such as employing an artist, Tess Jaray, to design Centenary Square, has never really had the recognition it deserves, and if miscalculations were made at least they were in the context of a thought-through approach.

Nowadays, by contrast, if public art turns up on our streets at all it seems to be because one of the city's commercial galleries has chosen to dump it there – as for example, with the woeful monument to victims of Second World War bombing, awkwardly located just outside the Bull Ring. Those people (who, by the way, include my grandparents and two of my aunts) deserved better. This is an extreme illustration of the laissez-faire attitude which seems typical of the present administration. Its lack of vision for, or even interest in, the city's museums is also significant.

Astonishingly, the chairman of the very nice and normally placid Friends of Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery was moved last year to accuse the council of "discourteous negligence" over the lackadaisical attitude which allowed the post of head of museums to remain unfilled for more than two years.

But now, thanks to Prof Parkinson's report, perhaps we at last have an opportunity to move on. For although it appears to toss a few arts balls into the air with what seems suspiciously like carelessness, it has grabbed the attention of the politicians. Or at least they say it has. This is the time for them to start taking a serious, pro-active interest in the arts. And the issue is not just what they can do for the arts, but what the arts can do for all of us in helping to build a more successful, interesting and competitive city.

It's an ideal time to take stock with a city-centre arts audit. It should ask in what ways the city performs well, and what facilities are lacking which you might expect to find in a city of its size. Like Prof Parkinson's study, such an audit will produce a mixed picture. Birmingham city centre is fantastic for classical music but its visual arts offer (to use the jargon) is mediocre. It's very good for some kinds of theatre and very poor for others.

For example, why do I have to get in my car and drive to Malvern or Coventry to see high-quality touring drama? In recent weeks I've seen five-star productions like English Touring Theatre's French Without Tears and the National Theatre's The Seafarer in those places. Since the Alex dropped out of the drama touring circuit productions like these, or Treats with Billie Piper (also seen at Malvern) never come into Birmingham. Yet I can't believe there wouldn't be an audience for them here.

But here's the rub. MAC hopes to reinstate plans for a new 400-seat theatre in a later phase of its redevelopment. In the light of Parkinson, will the city back this as the only offer in town, or might there now be a view that such a venue should be in the centre? Or is there an opportunity for Barry Jackson's Old Rep to find a new lease of life? This could be a relatively low-cost quick win, bringing a new vibrant role to a historic, listed building which ought to be the focus of civic pride but which the council seems to regard merely as a nuisance.

Venues for various kinds of popular music are always an issue, whether it's about hosting national tours or nurturing local talent. Later this year the Town Hall will reopen with the capacity to host a wide range of events, but the Academy will be lost to the redevelopment of Martineau Galleries in the next few years.

Prof Parkinson endorses the proposal from Ikon Gallery to establish a new museum of contemporary art. Ikon is already talking to museums in Britain and abroad about long-term loans to create an initial collection for Birmingham.

But the existing museums also need to be looked at with more ambition. With the right investment they could contribute far more to driving the city's tourist economy.

In the late 1980s a heritage audit was drawn up with a number of proposals for future developments. Some, like the Soho House museum, have been realised while others, like the Digbeth open-air heritage park, have not. It's time the exercise was revisited.

The Parkinson report provides a basic framework for such detailed work on arts and heritage development.

What's its big picture? The centre is too bland and lacking in distinctiveness. Our population is under-educated and we are not retaining enough graduates. Young people and ethnic minorities are relatively poorly catered for. We need a livelier, more exciting cultural environment to nurture the young, educated and enterprising people who can bring our achievements in innovation and creative industries up to par.

These are the issues which need to be stirred into the debate. But there is no doubt that a more pro-active approach to arts development can help make the city centre a livelier, more attractive and competitive place.