Future of The Public arts centre hangs in the balance
A meeting of Arts Council England’s national council in London on Tuesday will decide the future of West Bromwich’s troubled £60 million arts centre, The Public.
It will consider whether to continue its existing £500,000 annual support for the interactive Public Gallery, the main attraction within the building, even though it has never opened due to prolonged technical difficulties. The ground floor of the building, which includes a theatre and cafe, opened to the public in June.
An Arts Council spokeswoman said: “This is a scheduled meeting of the council at which a number of matters will be discussed, but a decision will also be taken about The Public.
“A few of the council members have visited The Public recently. We have asked The Public to provide a new business plan for the project showing how it will provide a long-term sustainable future, and we have commissioned an independent assessment of the art in the gallery.”
Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, the other main funder of the project, agreed just before Christmas to double its £500,000 annual funding for the next two years.
Sandwell and the Arts Council agreed a joint rescue package for the project when it went into administration, following cost overruns during construction, in March 2006. After a recovery plan was drawn up the building was completed and Sandwell took it over, with the Arts Council funding the gallery.
David Clarke, project director, said: “I was asked by Sandwell and the Arts Council to do a new plan because I was involved in the recovery planning. That plan has been approved by Sandwell, and the council has committed the resources necessary from them.”
Mr Clarke said a higher level of subsidy would be needed over the next two years, partly because of the loss of income arising from the delay to opening the gallery.
But he added that that in time it was hoped the level of subsidy would be reduced as The Public was able to earn more of its income. Over the next few weeks it hopes to announce success in letting some of its space to businesses.
He blamed the delay in opening the gallery on the complexity of wiring in the innovative interactive art works and problems with cabling at the time the building was handed over.
“It isn’t as though there has been one big failure, but it has been a slow and linear process, and I think we all underestimated how long it would take. We are now at the last phase of integrating the system.”
He added that The Public had staged 150 events, many of them free, and welcomed 47,000 people since it opened in June
The Public, formerly known as c/PLEX, developed out of the long-established Jubilee Arts community arts organisation and initially received widespread support as an imaginative cultural project which would raise local aspirations and drive the regeneration of West Bromwich.
But it later became bogged down in the complexities of delivering the large Will Alsop-designed building and, after it went into administration, its former chief executive and chief advocate, Sylvia King, resigned.
It has since been widely pilloried as one of the most notorious white elephants to be funded by the arts lottery, particularly after it was revealed that admission to the gallery would cost nearly £7 in one of the poorest urban areas in Britain.
