Examination of Witnesses (Questions 10660
- 10679)
10660. Mr Elvin: Is this for the festival,
Sir?
10661. Chairman: Yes.
10662. Mr Elvin: The concern of the Spitalfields
Festival, perhaps I can have ES, volume 4(a), Plan C8(i), if you
could take the bottom left corner please.[1]
The concern of the Spitalfields festival, and they were kind enough
to let us have a note of what they were going to say last night,
is concern about the festival and any impact in terms of noise
and vibration on the use of Christ Church, Spitalfields which
is one of the best known churches in the capital and is a grade
one listed building. You will see it on the plan, it is in dark
purple which indicates it is a grade one listed building and the
Committee will recall Mr Berryman's evidence two days ago on day
39 that one of the reasons that care was needed with the alignment
of the tunnels was to avoid Christ Church, Spitalfields. The position
on the church and the concern about noise and vibration is easily
dealt with. It was in fact mentioned in the course of discussion
of the issues on day 39.
10663. Mr Thornley-Taylor and the team have
looked at Christ Church, Spitalfields and the noise predictions
based on the tunnel alignment as it currently means the church
will not be affected. If the Committee remembers, there is a general
standard and there is a more exacting, we call it a concert hall
standard, of below 25db(a), the church will be below the 25db(a)
standard and therefore we consider there to be no cause for concern.
Thank you very much.
The Petition of The Spitalfields Festival Ltd
Ms Judith Serota appeared as Agent.
10664. Ms Serota: Thank you, I am very
pleased to be here as I said in the notes that some of you might
have seen and I do have copies of them here. I very much welcome
Crossrail as essential to the continuing growth and vitality of
London as a place of culture, life and regeneration. The festival
was founded 30 years ago—we are not a new organisation—to
bring attention to Christ Church, Spitalfields. If any of you
have not seen it, this is roughly what it looks like.[2]
It includes here, which you probably will not see, which was removed
as part of an almost £6 million restoration programme almost
entirely from public funding. If the festival had not taken place
and kept going in Christ Church, there is a lot of reason to believe,
but I cannot prove it, that Christ Church would have become completely
derelict and closed and not been saved by the nation. As you said
it is one of the great jewels in the crown of the UK. The acoustic
is very unusual in Christ Church, there are a number of churches
used as concert halls in London that have been converted to be
more like concert halls than churches. They are deconsecrated
like St. Johns, Smith Square, around the corner, St. Lukes, Shoreditch,
but they do not sound like churches inside and this is where Christ
Church is so special. Derek Sugden who co-founded and who is now
consultant for acoustics for Crossrail says it is the best church
in the world in which to hear music. When someone like Derek Sugden
says that I think everyone has to take note, he said that on BBC
Radio 3. I have a pile of press cuttings we have regularly been
getting four star reviews in the national press, we have got one
three star but all the rest are four stars. We have a further
festival in December and we have an education programme which
works throughout the year in Tower Hamlets. I say that we are
good but I can prove it. In the last spending round, the Arts
Council put us in the top 20 per cent of organisations to receive
an above inflation increase. Last month we were awarded the Royal
Philharmonic Society prize for education for Jonathan Dove, our
artistic director, for his piece on Spitalfields and their programme
book is there. We are investor and people accredited which is
quite unusual for an arts organisation, not so unusual for the
rest of the voluntary sector. We got two mentions in the House
of Lords on the debate of the arts on 11 May from Lord Howarth.
Tomorrow night, if you finish listening to people, you can hear
two of our concerts on Radio 3 from 7.30 onwards. If you are not
working on Saturday night, you can see some of our work on BBC2's
culture show. We have had lots of lovely mentions and features
on Radio 3 and Radio 4, so our work is widely recognised. One
of the keys to the success of our work is using Christ Church
and integrating it into the community. It is quite hard when you
are working with a schools community which is predominately Bengali,
65 per cent of school children in Tower Hamlets are Bengali but
the majority of them will come into Christ Church as Muslims and
perform and they said on Radio 3, when we had won the Royal Philharmonic
Society award, that was a real turning point for them to come
into a church and be allowed to perform. I see it as part of integrating
the very mixed society in Tower Hamlets.
10665. Christ Church is quite a noisy venue
at the moment, but I will talk about that in a little bit more
detail later. It is the second largest permanent building in Tower
Hamlets so it is an ideal space for bringing communities together,
bringing people together to share their work. The only larger
hall is York Hall in Bethnal Green which is used for boxing and
weddings. I think you all agree that Christ Church is rather more
stunning. It attracts musicians from all over the world of all
different standards, from school children to Sir Peter Maxwell-Davis,
who we have got tonight. Later in the festival we have got Sir
William Christy, we have Sir Andrew Davis coming in December.
That is not because of our budget, it is because they want to
perform in such a beautiful building. David Lammy, Minister of
State for Culture is coming next week to a concert that is sponsored
by Bircham Dyson Bell.
10666. Mr Elvin: That is marketing.
10667. Ms Serota: Our audience is very
diverse as well as all the participants in our education programme.
We do not just do music, we do education and we have a strong
social conscious. Arts Council England has recently produced their
strategy for Every Child Matters. Arts Council London did
a document on their response to Every Child Matters and
we are working closely with Tower Hamlets on Every Child Matters.
There are only four photographs in this publication but the front
cover is one of ours and the front piece, Sue Hullock's introduction,
is also one of ours. It is not just music for people who can pay,
there is much more to us than that.
10668. Just to clarify the position we pay Christ
Church, an organisation they set up called Christ Church community.
The rent goes towards the annual maintenance of Christ Church
which I am told is approximately £200,000 a year because
when they have their public funding, it was not built into the
funding agreement how they would generate their income, it was
built in that they had to generate their income, so it is quite
a hard building to generate an income because every time you put
in a concert in order to meet health and safety requirements,
you have to make sure the seats are joined together, you have
to make sure there is adequate lighting and adequate emergency
lightening, that all fire exits are clear, that a stage is taken
in and is built. It is a shell that Christ Church Community Vision
rent out and then organisations like ours can rent it and take
everything in to make it acceptable to Tower Hamlets and indeed
parliamentary standards.
10669. The festival has reflected the different
communities of Spitalfields over the past five years when Jonathan
Dove become artistic director so we have had a Jewish strand,
a Bengali strand, an Irish strand and this is year a Somali strand
and this is reflected in our print as well. On Saturday night
we had an incredible concert at Wilton's Music Hall where the
Jewish strand met the Bengali strand, met the Somalian strand
and it was quite an event.
10670. We are also working towards the Olympics
in 2012. I have already had a meeting with the London Organising
Committee to talk about our role because we are known to deliver
quality projects. I have a meeting as soon as our festival has
finished. I am also working with East London Business Alliance
who are working closely on a range of activities for 2012 leading
up and in fact they have called it 2020 because they are very
keen on the outcome and the legacy of the Olympics and that is
what they are working towards.
10671. I would briefly like to mention on a
personal note, my family were all Jewish immigrants, my great
aunt and uncle used to work in Spitalfields in Fournier Street
and if the house had not been sold two or three years ago, Bircham
Dyson Bell would probably be using it next week. I am really concerned
about Christ Church and the 25 decibels. When I got home last
night I made a very, very basic Blue Peter style model which I
hope you can all see. Just pretend there is a church on top. In
an ideal world Christ Church would be acoustically sealed as Arup
Acoustic did for the Sage Gateshead and many other international
award winning concert halls. In an ideal world that lovely bubble
wrapped cone could go on top of Christ Church but because Christ
Church is so special and grade one listed it cannot, you cannot
do anything to the exterior at all, even if you change the lightening
conductor you have to get permission. Christ Church also has a
crypt which is under my little box and ideally you could put insulation
under there to help prevent the noise and vibration. Because Christ
Church is as big as it is, because it is so fragile and I am not
a civil engineer, I do not believe physically you could put anything
right underneath Christ Church.
10672. If we talk about Crossrail and its two
tunnels, insulation is being provided up to 25 decibels which
is concert hall standard. Christ Church is a church, it is not
a concert hall. If Christ Church were a concert hall 25 decibels
would be fine because all my bubble wrap and more wrapped right
around the building could come into use easily and be integrated
into the design and this is what they have done at St Lukes, Old
Street and what they did in Manchester when the IRA bomb went
off in the Bridgwater Hall ten years ago, no one heard the bomb
go off, Manchester was flattened but the Bridgwater Hall was intact
and they did not even hear a vibration and that was the quality
of the work that Arup Acoustic can deliver.
10673. What I hope can happen is that you all
understand that 25 decibels is completely insufficient for Christ
Church and that by using more and more bubble wrap or the equivalent
you can pad it out completely with as much as needed to do and
I can go on and on but I will not waste your time.
10674. Given the fact that Crossrail has not
been built, there must be an opportunity on the right length of
rail to increase the sound insulation because I have it on lots
of different authority and we have not been able to afford to
pay for any professional advice that if trains are running through
at the rate I have been told they will and there is construction
work, the festival will no longer be able to take place in Christ
Church because we will not get that magic silence that we do sometimes
get and this is in bearing in mind that when the ring went around
the City, more traffic came into Commercial Street and Bishops
Gate. Then with the congestion charge even more traffic came onto
Commercial Street but we can cope with that, we can cope with
the odd ambulance but above 25 decibels would be the straw that
breaks the camel's back and Radio 3 would laugh at me and say
"forget it".
10675. My second question is how we know how
to work during the construction period because when they were
builders working out on Commercial Street as they were when they
were testing the soil around Christ Church we could go and say,
"do you mind not doing this for the next half hour or 40
minutes because we have got a concert or a very subtle bit of
tuning". If these people are working under ground, if we
do not have that wonderful insulation I hope we will have, it
is going to make a lot of noise.
10676. Two years ago we booked the Royal Academy
of Music with Trevor Pinnock to come and perform Bach B minor
mass in the festival next year, a three year lead time, it is
quite unusual for it to be three years but it does happen. So,
how do we work once Crossrail has the green light in planning
our programme so that we are not interrupted by underground noise.
10677. My final question is one that you might
feel it is not relevant to answer, but having been involved in
so many public funding projects in Tower Hamlets and Spitalfields
that have really, really helped the area come to where it is now
not without some problems but Spitalfields would not be where
it is without regeneration funding, without the English Heritage
funding. I am wondering how far this Committee relates to all
the funding that has gone into Spitalfields. Thank you.
10678. Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. Can I first of all on behalf of the Committee congratulate
the work that people who work with you do for the community there.
10679. Mr Elvin: Can I clarify two things,
firstly, it is not proposed that there be any works of insulation,
it is not possible to insulate the church as the petitioner has
said. It is simply that the operation noise from the running of
the trains will not breech the 25 decibel limit. The only issue
when noise is likely to arise is when the tunnel boring machine
is going through in the closest proximity to the church which
will be a period of the order of a week or so, maybe two weeks.
What we can say is that we can notify the church and the festival
of that short period at the time the project starts. You can understand
the difficulty of predicting the precise day on which a tunnel
boring machine is going to arrive, when it has to drill through
a considerable length and it will be launched from a particular
point some miles away. What we can do I am told is that we will
be able to give an approximate estimate as to quarter at which
the tunnel boring machine will arrive at least two years in advance.
We will be able to refine that and at least a number of months
in advance we will be able to say which week it is likely to arrive.
Logistics simply do not allow for greater precision. We are well
aware of the difficulties and the need to organise the festival.
We will do what we can to make sure that there are progressive
updates to ensure that the festival has a progressive idea as
to when the tunnel boring machine will arrive. As I say, it is
only likely to be audible in a period of about a week, perhaps
two weeks. Other than that there is no need for insulation because
the noise levels of 25 decibels are not going to arise from the
operation of the trains.
1 Crossrail Environmental Statement, Volume 4a, Whitechapel
Station, Key Environmental Features-Map C8(i) http://billdocuments.crossrail.co.uk
(LINEWD-ES16-034). Back
2
The witness referred to an image of Christ Church, Spitalfields
(for example www.christchurchspitalfields.org). Back
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