Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
140-143)
SIR ROBIN
WALES, MR
JULES PIPE
CBE AND MR
ROGER TAYLOR
17 MARCH 2010
Q140 Mr Ainsworth: Revenue funding;
so there is rather a large gap between the cost and the—
Mr Pipe: Sorry, the £15 million
was what we believe the festival brought into the boroughs over
and above what it would otherwise have done if they were small,
disparate festivals.
Mr Taylor: If I can help a bit
more. If we think about CREATE 2010, which is the festival which
we shall be running this summer, at the moment if my memory is
right—and I will let you have the figures—I think
our levels of sponsorship for 2010 are around about £2 million
worth of positive sponsorship. That is not Olympic sponsorship.
We have had to steer a very clear line between branded Olympic
stuff and what we want to attract from other sponsors, like the
Bank of America last year which did the [Project] Dominoes thing,
which we need to hold on to. So we are very confident about the
rising levels of participation which are generated by the festival
as it becomes more exciting; but we are also very acutely conscious
of the fact that we have some of the lowest participation rates
in arts and culture in the country. Newham—and it is not
something of which Robin is proud—probably has the lowest
participation rate according to the Government's measures on this.
We have a long way to go and we are only successful in the CREATE
Festivals because we are able to appeal very directly to mass
participation by very large numbers of people. The programme which
is going on from that with the support of Tony Hall, who is Chairman
of the Cultural Olympiad, and Ruth Mackenzie who is the Chief
Executive, is to try and think about the way in which an East
End Festival develops, as Jules has said, into a major festival
which celebrates the largest set of cultural industries in western
Europe; some of the most powerful creative houses, like the Barbican,
who are prepared to invest very, very heavily now in seeing things
happening in East London. That is the basis upon which we make
not a vainglorious but a very realistic claim that we can steadily
attract move and more sponsorship to a very high quality festival
which, nevertheless, strikes an intelligent balance between cultural
quality in, forgive me, a relatively middle class way, and serious
participation by a very large community who are interested in
it. That is where we are going to and that is ambitious, but,
on the basis of the sponsorship we have attracted over the last
two years and what we see coming up now, we think it is realistic.
Q141 Mr Ainsworth: Well, it is certainly
a very excellent aspiration. Just to be quite clear though, the
whole CREATE operation is independent of the Cultural Olympiad
stuff and not being funded by it? It is in parallel?
Mr Taylor: It is in parallel,
yes.
Q142 Mr Ainsworth: It is separately
funded and self-funded?
Mr Taylor: There are some interesting
questions though about when they merge around 2012 and how they
interplay with each other in the big Cultural Olympiad of 2012.
Mr Pipe: There is a possibility
of delegating a small proportion of the money to effectively run
the festival strand of the National Cultural Olympiad, so they
perhaps would be expecting the local five boroughs to take more
ownership of that, but broadly they are separate, yes.
Mr Ainsworth: Some interesting questions
which we have not got time for, I think.
Q143 Chair: Sadly, I am afraid we
have run out of time, but can I thank you very much.
Mr Pipe: Could I just finish,
Chair, by saying that I could not leave without endorsing Baroness
Ford's comments about going forward, that there probably is a
funding gap of about £450 million in transformation and that
the £350 million, which is often called the "legacy
budget", is not the legacy budget, but it is really a tidying-up
exercise so that they do not leave wires hanging out of walls
and debris and builders' rubble everywhere after the Games and
have taken things out, so that is the tidying-up exercise. For
the actual transformation and kick-starting that transformation
which we have been talking about this morning, there is probably
a £450 million bill. That is not necessarily a pitch here
to say, "Oh, we're expecting the Government to come forward
with that money", although obviously that would be nice,
but I think it probably has to be factored into the economics
of the OPLC going forward in future years and its ability particularly
to pay back the Lottery money, where Baroness Ford has absolutely
given an assurance and commitment that that is absolutely doable
and will be done, but it is just about the timing and the prioritisation
of what is paid back when.
Sir Robin Wales: Can I just add
that, actually having spent £9 billion, not to then spend
the extra to transform the area, and it is about public policy
and about the resources, as we said earlier, if we need to change
it, we must not walk away from the implications of that and the
implications are, as Jules has said, we need to have that bit
of extra money to make it different. If we push everything without
that, we will end up with something which does not work.
Mr Pipe: The perfect example is
the Broadcast Centre where there is no money to transform that
and to divide that up. If we have lots of users come forward,
but it needs dividing up, if we say that the money of dividing
it up is going to fall on to what is paid per square foot, it
will make the per-square foot price so expensive they then will
not move in, so it really needs to be factored in.
Chair: It is a matter we will pursue
with our next witnesses.
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