Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320-337)
BIRMINGHAM REP
THEATRE, BIRMINGHAM
CITY COUNCIL,
MANCHESTER ROYAL
EXCHANGE THEATRE
22 FEBRUARY 2005
Q320 Chairman: You have made a point,
Mr Ormston, which demonstrates the kind of inevitably messy jumble
of distribution of finance for the arts. On the one hand there
is the ACE, which will have a policy—which is more than
it used to have. Then there are local authorities, and the local
authorities will be looking not so much at a policy overall for
the arts as to competing demands from other local authority services
as well. Then, you have the Lottery, and the ACE of course is
a Lottery distributor; but, as Mr Ormston has pointed out, because
you have listed buildings and historical buildings, the Heritage
Lottery Fund may have a different kind of policy as indeed the
London theatres are very much hoping they will have with their
new project. Because there is such a profusion of funding bodies,
and all of those bodies have different policies, logical perhaps
within their own parameters, does that create difficulties for
you?
Ms Weller: It is a little easier
for us because we are not funded in any significant way by our
local authority—it is a historical situation. Almost all
of our funding comes from the Arts Council. A very small amount
comes from the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities.
It is not very small, but by comparison to what the Arts Council
gives us. So it is less of a problem for us, although I have to
say that over the last 10-15 years, up until quite recently, until
the new Arts Council policy for theatre, it was quite difficult
because quite often the Arts Council itself would have varying
policies. You would have one from head office in London and one
from the Regional Arts Office, and quite often they did not always
see eye to eye, so we were juggling which priority we were going
to deliver. In terms of the buildings themselves, we are a listed
building, but when we applied for Lottery funding we went directly
to the Lottery, not to the Heritage, and that is where our funding
came from.
Mr Ormston: In Birmingham, the
nature of the partnership between the Arts Council and the local
authority at its best has been very, very productive. Whether
that needs to be a more formal partnership is an interesting question,
but certainly when we do work effectively in partnership it does
work to the benefit of all the client organisations that we share.
Stuart will have his own views on that.
Mr Rogers: I very much support
that. In Birmingham the partnership seems to work remarkably well.
I would also go along with what Pat said; that the reforms that
the Arts Council has put in place over the last two or three years
have radically improved the system, certainly for revenue funding.
It is now a much clearer and much more transparent process. There
are not a myriad of different schemes; there is one very simple
central funding source. That seems to me a huge improvement. The
links between the regional offices and the national offices are
much better now; you get a much clearer sense that you are talking
to one organisation than you ever did in the past. Where some
of the issues arise is exactly where you mention, on the capital
issue. Capital funding in this country for theatre or for the
arts is in a perilous state because of the decline in lottery
funding that is now coming through the system. I think it is not
just about building brand new theatres either; it is about maintenance
and upkeep of buildings like that. We are struggling to keep up
with the basic maintenance. We live in fear of something major
happening because we know we do not have the resources to be able
to put aside every year so much money so that when the heating
plant breaks down we can just go out and buy a new one. We do
not have those resources, so although we can keep patching things
up, our real fear is that when something major happens like that,
where do we turn to? A national policy for a capital repairs and
renewals for arts organisations would be hugely beneficial.
Mr Ormston: You mentioned competing
resources in local authorities, which is absolutely right. One
of the things that is urgently needed is the justification for
the local authority expenditure in the arts and related activity
in education. Many areas of local authority service now have formal
targets or are recognised in the comprehensive performance assessment,
whereas the arts still remains marginal to that. We do need to
do some work fairly urgently that shows what impact investment
in the arts has, in the way local authorities can use to justify
their expenditure and investment.
Q321 Mr Doran: I want to follow about
how you deal with the fabric of the building. Mr Rogers has probably
answered my question. At the centre of our discussions in London
has been the commercial theatre, which is quite unusual. They
have put forward a proposal that £125 million should come
out of the government or the public pot, and therefore they will
put in another £125 million, and that would help to repair
the fabric over 15 years of commercial theatres in London. Can
you say more about how you deal with major capital projects? Is
there any certainty at all when you are faced with these sorts
of problems?
Ms Weller: It is robbing Peter
to pay Paul. We have a relatively recently refurbished building—we
were blown up by the bomb, and a great deal of Lottery money was
spent on the building. That is six years down the line, and of
course things are beginning to wear out and need replacing. We
recently carried out a capital replacement plan, and came up with
the appalling figure of 1.2 or 1.5—I cannot remember which,
but it is in the submission—over the next ten years, on
worst-case scenario. It is true that just doing proper, sensible
maintenance, year on year, is difficult enough. Like Stuart, I
just hold my breath. Literally, when something goes wrong like
the central-heating or air-conditioning, I rob Peter to pay Paul.
If my exercise is coming in at 1.2 million, I suspect it will
be pretty much the same for all the theatres across the country.
Personally, really speaking personally, I would love to see the
West End theatres refurbished and made more comfortable, but I
worry about the needs of the subsidised theatre in the next ten
years, for its building. One would hope that it would not be a
robbing Peter to pay Paul situation.
Q322 Mr Doran: You are both in a different
position, are you not? Birmingham Rep has very substantial support
from the local authority, and the local authority has a fund—for
which I congratulate it. You rely on the Arts Council.
Ms Weller: Which has no fund.
Q323 Mr Doran: Does that create a difference
in your situation? Mr Ormston, would the City Council feel it
had to put its hand in its pocket if it had major problems?
Mr Ormston: Certainly the Rep
would feel that the City Council should put its hands in its pocket!
We have tended towards being involved in any capital development
in the arts portfolio in the city, and there is usually an element
of equal leverage between the Lottery, the Arts Council and ourselves,
which we try and respond to as positively as we can. That can
take a variety of guises. It can be direct capital investment;
it can be some arrangements around loans or loan write-offs. There
is a variety of ways in which we can assist, depending on our
own circumstances. We have quite severe competing needs for capital
ourselves right now. I think one of the things that really needs
to be tackled is the view of the regional development agencies
and their investment in culture and cultural infrastructure. It
seems to me that this infrastructure is an important part of the
visitor economy and the economy of the city, and across the country
there are varying degrees of success in introducing the RDAs as
partners for capital investment or any other kind of investment,
and that is something that should be looked at. If these theatre
buildings, venues and concert halls did not exist, then the RDA
agenda of flourishing cities and economies would not exist either.
I would like to see that tackled.
Q324 Mr Doran: When I was looking at
your submission from the City Council, you have obviously done
some economic analysis. We have seen the national one, and you
have talked about the actual expenditure and the actual jobs created,
but you do not extrapolate and give us an economic impact.
Mr Ormston: That is the next step
really. These impact assessments are quite hard. It has taken
us four years really to come up with a consistency and sizeable
enough portfolio to start drawing any conclusions at all, so we
did not want to create a false picture; we wanted to be able to
evidence and prove whatever we had done in this survey. So the
next step is to start to apply the various impact models to it,
and also we are this year extending the reach of that survey again.
We are also looking firstly at the DCMS guidelines on evaluation
and impact to see if we could incorporate the national guidelines
as well, so we can see the model applied elsewhere. I would like
to see this model applied across the region actually.
Q325 Mr Doran: Picking up another point
from your submission and following Mr Rogers's point, which was
a very good one on market co-ordination and funding for the arts
generally, the Chairman has already pointed out the different
funds. I do not think he induced RDAs and there are probably one
or two others as well. You mention in your own report that you
feel the local authority contribution is not properly recognised
by government and is not taken into account. Do you have a strategy
for arguing for more parliamentary policy and full recognition
for local authorities?
Mr Ormston: Yes, there is work
going on. Interestingly, Manchester and Birmingham are the only
two cities currently trying to come up with an LPSA, a local public
service agreement, phase 2 target for the arts. It has proven
to be a hard and rocky road. I have been comparing notes with
Manchester and what has happened is that our justification for
spending on the arts has always been seen as a negative thing,
that it is stopping children truanting or stopping bad behaviour
or whatever. We are looking to see if we can have a positive recognised
outcome for the arts so that we can hand-on-heart state the real
value of the arts to our own councillors, as well as DCMS and
ODPM. We feel that it is not correctly expressed by these rather
more negative takes on the outcomes. In Manchester's case, they
have been focusing on community cohesion as their justification
of like-for-like investment, and here we have been focusing more
on young people and the aspirations of young people. We have three
weeks left to satisfy DCMS and ODPM that we have done this work
satisfactorily for them to accept it. But it has been a year's
work, and it has been difficult. We need to see that achieved
across the piece.
Q326 Mr Flook: Can we look further at
the balance between Arts Council funding and local government
funding. It is historical, is it not, as to why Birmingham funds
here a lot and Manchester does not fund you very much?
Ms Weller: It is a very specific
historical thing in Manchester.
Q327 Mr Flook: I am trying to get it
from a national perspective. That is true in lots and lots of
different places, is it not? Is it a chicken-and-egg situation?
Mr Rogers: I think Manchester
is probably the exception amongst regional theatres, in terms
of the balance between local authority and the Arts Council?
Q328 Mr Flook: If I can touch on my constituency,
the local authority spends a lot of money on our little theatre,
the Brewhouse. The Arts Council funding from the south-west funds
Yeovil, which is not my constituency, but it gives a huge amount
of money, and there is a huge disparity there. The Arts Council
funds for what you give to the artistic world nationally and in
your own region, and it funds you to a greater extent: is that
really fair? You get a lot of money from the council-tax payer
and you do not; but you are both doing the same sort of job for
your local environment.
Ms Weller: I am going to have
to explain the historical situation—sorry! Although we do
not, the library theatre in Manchester does; and it is just a
question of a deal that was done 20 years ago. The Arts Council
do the Royal Exchange, and the City Council will do the library.
You could put all the money together and split it, and it would
work the same—it just falls in that way. We really are exceptional,
and I do not think there is any other—
Mr Rogers: No, I think in most
other regional theatres there is the partnership between the Arts
Council and the local authority, in roughly the proportions that
you see in Birmingham actually, give or take.
Mr Ormston: I have been in Birmingham
for three years, and there has clearly been a long tradition of
civic investment in the cultural sector. I was talking to the
orchestra last night, and they told me that in 1921 they received
a grant of £1,250 from the City Council, so there is clearly
a long track record of investment and seeing the value of that,
and the pay-off in Birmingham has been the clear understanding
of the regenerative benefit of that cultural investment.
Q329 Mr Flook: Mr Ormston, you make quite
an elegant case for the way in which the Birmingham City Council
taxpayer, through the City Council, helps the arts and therefore
again the people who live in the city, but is there a case for
the money that the City Council or Greater Manchester gets from
central government through the ODPM to be taken away and just
given to the Arts Council directly—i.e., a bigger grant
so that you can concentrate and allow artistic freedom to flourish
without a local councillor telling you what to do?
Mr Rogers: I do not think there
is a case because as organisations based in particular cities
or regions, we have a responsibility to the artist generally,
but we also have a responsibility to the communities whom we serve.
Those communities are best represented through the local authorities,
and the knowledge of those communities and the access to those
communities is done through the local authorities. That, to me,
is an essential partnership; that we work as much with our local
authorities as we do with the Arts Council—and the two complement
each other, in my view. I am not saying that the local authorities
do not have any interest in the arts—they do, clearly—but
they have a greater interest perhaps than the Arts Council in
the way we relate to schools and the LEAs, to the work that we
do in the communities, to the fact that we are the arts champions
for Longbridge and Northfield Ward. Those sorts of issues are
important for the life of this organisation or any organisation
in a large city, and it is important that that formal relationship
with the City Council is there. We also have to remember that
the City Council own most of these buildings—this is owned
by the City Council.
Mr Ormston: I agree that it is
an essential partnership. It works best when it is seen as an
essential partnership by both sides. Our prime responsibility
is to the people of Birmingham and the Arts Council's prime responsibility
is to the artists of Birmingham; and that combines very well indeed.
There would be winners and losers across the country in that situation,
which would be difficult to unpick. In addition, the kind of civic
pride element to investment in culture and the arts in cities
like Manchester and Birmingham are very important. It is all part
of the whole; people being prepared to support the culture of
their cities is part of the investment as it comes through a local
authority angle to the cultural sector; so I think it would probably
end up being a problem in all sorts of ways—hearts and minds
and all sorts of issues.
Q330 Chris Bryant: You drew a distinction
earlier between receiving houses and theatres that produce their
own content, as it were; and I suppose that you could draw that
distinction in the commercial West End; that every single one
of those theatres is a receiving house. You can also argue, as
they have argued very forcibly to us—and you say in your
submission quite clearly, "it is important that public monies
are not siphoned off to the commercial sector's undoubtedly important
needs, for example capital refurbishment. The theatre owners are
in the commercial world and should take responsibility for the
required investment." That seems to be a pretty determined
"no" to £125 million to West End theatres. Would
you like to say a little more about that?
Mr Greg Hersov: You have said
that quite strongly. We said it in the context of—what we
are talking about is that the owners of the theatres are in a
commercial world and they are commercial landlords with their
premises in that kind of way, and we feel that that should be
borne in mind quite strongly in relation to our needs and then
subsidising—
Q331 Chris Bryant: They will not make
any financial gain out of any changes to the seating. I went to
see Don Carlos last week, a production that started from
the subsidised theatre. I am glad I am not a woman because I would
have had to queue for ages for the toilet. The rake in the auditorium
is so far that large numbers of even expensive seats are almost
impossible to see the stage from, and I am sure there are many
worse seats in the house. In terms of tourism and the number of
people coming to Britain—and admittedly much of that then
benefits London rather than the rest of the country—
Ms Weller: I would not argue with
any of that. As I said at the beginning, I would love, for women,
for West End theatres to be refurbished. However, they are commercial
landlords. They do take on knowingly the building that needs refurbishing
and updating, and if there were lots of money I would say, "yes,
yes, please go and do it"; but because I look at my own situation
and I multiply that across the country, I am concerned that that
money will then not be available to the subsidised sector that
you are already supporting and investing in. It is the robbing
Peter to pay Paul, which worries me.
Mr Ormston: I mentioned Heritage
before. I think that with commercial theatres in Heritage buildings,
there is a potential conflict between the commercial commonsense
of the operators who might want to expand the stage-side, the
seating capacity, create enough loos front of house or whatever,
to increase their commerciality.
Q332 Chris Bryant: They will not, will
they? They will—
Ms Weller: When they sell on.
Q333 Chris Bryant: Even when they sell
on, they will not increase the value of the property.
Mr Ormston: But they increase
their take through the box office.
Chris Bryant: No, they will not. They
cannot; they will actually lose.
Q334 Ms Shipley: I have been sitting
here, in the Rep, thinking, "goodness, it is actually 30
years since I first came to Birmingham Rep. I remember very clearly
my drama teacher at Kidderminster College falling over in shock
when she realised she was teaching somebody who had never been
to the theatre. Because of my background I had never been to the
theatre. She immediately dragged me out that day and brought me
here to see Waiting for Godot. I survived! Birmingham Rep,
for me, has been very interesting. I like the way it has now integrated
into what I call the cultural pedestrianised area of Birmingham,
linking Brindley Place and the canals, and the industrial facilities
available there, all the way through to—well, I stop at
the Birmingham City Art Gallery, because I am biased basically.
There is a nasty little blip of horrible food places you have
to walk through, which is all pedestrianised; but apart from that
little blip that you have to get rid of—fantastic! It is
really showing up Birmingham to its best. Visitors love it, and
everything about it is excellent. However, my constituency Stourbridge
stretches up to Quarry Bank, and Quarry Bank cannot be more than
ten miles from here. I would place a bet on virtually nobody coming
here from Quarry Bank—the established town centre, yes,
possibly, and my constituency, which is mainly located in the
Stourbridge area, has the highest level of artists and artistic
sort of people in the whole of the West Midlands, I am told, and
it is really thriving. However, how do you reach out? I am thinking
of my constituency specifically because it is near enough to expect
a relationship with you. I liked very much reading about "stay
and play" and your innovative idea with Sandwell and Birmingham.
How could you develop that with Dudley, which would be mine—okay,
it is the next one because you have done Birmingham and Sandwell—and
what would be the input from Dudley to make that happen? To me,
it looks like a fantastically innovative way of doing it.
Mr Ormston: The blip is under
discussion, but only under discussion. I am sure the coming years
will see the blip change, and possibly quite rapidly. There are
some minor improvements happening because it has a new owner,
Argent, which has invested in the blips that exist. It is not
quite as bad as it used to be. The outer ring is roughly the same
challenge that you are talking about: how do we connect the city
centre and this concentration of cultural resources at the city
centre to outer Birmingham and the surrounding city region? It
occupies us in all sorts of ways. The City Council—the devolution
into the districts has been accompanied by a policy concentration—I
think they call it now a city of flourishing villages—is
trying to focus on what is out in the outer parts of the city.
We have developed a number of schemes, some through the organisations
themselves but others through programmes called animates or art
sites where we are creating surrogate art centres and arts development
professionals in the outer city, to actively connect with local
communities.
Q335 Ms Shipley: What can I expect? Quarry
Bank is 10 miles down the road and must be within your target
catchment—is it not—please? It would be the sort of
place that you are looking for, but it would not be naturally
easy; there is no centre, so how would you reach them? How are
you going to reach my town centre? I can see that is dead easy,
but how would you reach—
Mr Ormston: Let me give you an
example. Following this meeting I go up to Shard End in the city,
which again is not known for its connection to the cultural centre
of the city. I am going there because we have secured a funding
package to turn a community centre into a music centre, recording
studio and arts centre, and we actually have a local arts professional
working there with the youth service, with community groups, and
a whole range of groups. Through the activity there they make
connections to some of the city centre's best organisations.
Q336 Ms Shipley: As theatre, how can
you reach them?
Mr Rogers: You are certainly right.
Something like 82-83% of our audience is coming from within Birmingham.
That is undoubtedly true. We do have a responsibility to the city
by virtue of the £1 million subsidy which we get from the
city, which clearly is important.
Q337 Ms Shipley: You have a million plus
from somewhere else.
Mr Rogers: Yes, from the Arts
Council. What we try to do wherever possible is work in partnership
with surrounding local authorities to develop things like those
you have seen in our brochure, in terms of the writers' workshops
we are doing in Sandwell. We have an annual community tour, which
is in rehearsal at the moment, where we commission a play that
goes on tour to outside areas of Birmingham. I do not know whether
it is going to Quarry Bank or not.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
As you can see from Debra and others, we could have gone on a
long time more, but we operate within a reasonably strict timetable.
Once again, thank you very much, and Mr Rogers I thank you again
for your hospitality.
|
