Posts Tagged Arts policy
Alan Haydon obituary
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on November 2, 2011
Arts administrator who transformed and reopened the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, as a centre for contemporary work
Alan Haydon, who has died aged 61 from cancer, was the director of the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, East Sussex, which he transformed into a major centre for contemporary arts. He had a vision for this modernist architectural gem to be a place where the strands of contemporary culture come together, exploring the spaces where art, film, sound and music converge. As he said: "Our task is to allow artists to work within those spaces and to build bridges for audiences to cross." The De La Warr Pavilion is now renowned for an innovative programme and as a special destination for artists, where one-off performances and collaborations crystallise.
Alan arrived at Bexhill in 1999, just as a lottery bid to support the much-needed refurbishment of the Grade I-listed building had been declined and the likes of the Wetherspoon pub chain were expressing interest in the building. At this time I was a freelancer for the De La Warr, co-ordinating a modest and underfunded visual art and education programme. Alan's single-mindedness, staying power and ability to influence secured not only the building itself, but also set the tenor of the future artistic programme. An Arts Council England award of £4.1m was gained, as well as £1.9m towards restoration and repair from the Heritage Lottery Fund and a further £2m raised from private and public sources. He safeguarded the pavilion's future prospects by overseeing the negotiations for matching revenue funding of more than £1m annually from Rother district council and Arts Council England – a previously unprecedented arrangement at this high level of funding.
The building reopened on 15 October 2005 and attracted more than 500,000 visitors in its first year. Alan orchestrated a bold and distinctive programme including Ian Breakwell, Bill Furlong, Jeremy Deller, Andy Warhol, Nathan Coley, Grayson Perry, Joseph Beuys, Michael Nyman, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson and the Fall.
Alan was born in Lewisham, south-east London. He attended Eltham Green school and studied at Camberwell School of Art (1972-75), under the tutorage of David Troostwyk, a staunch conceptualist. A flirtation with the commercial art market followed, and Alan did a short stint at Sotheby's, but his motivation was more rooted in the democratic potential of art. He moved into the public arts sector, where he remained for the rest of his career, bringing his entrepreneurial spirit to the role of arts centre manager in the London borough of Hammersmith (1977-80), where he kick-started a new arts community space in Shepherd's Bush that included a ceramics studio, recording studio, cinema and theatre.
This led to roles as visual arts officer first in Hammersmith and then for Greater London Arts, where Alan drew up new policies for gallery development, public art and support for artists. He became strategy and regional development officer there between 1989 and 1991, and concentrated on the role of the arts in urban regeneration. Between 1991 and 1993 he was senior visual arts officer at Arts Council England, charged with promoting new policies to support the professional and economic status of the artist.
In 1993 he took up the post of head of visual arts at Northern Arts. Described by a former colleague as a "master facilitator", Alan carefully empowered colleagues without being overly directive – a very delicate balancing act. Lottery funds were becoming available for the first time with Arts Council England as a distributor, and he helped develop lottery-related projects in the north-east.
Alan set the new policy framework for the visual arts and crafts in preparation for the UK Year of the Artist in 1996. This was a sort of mini Cultural Olympiad, with cities and regions able to bid to celebrate the visual arts. The north-east of England became the host for this national celebration and the resulting programme was inspiring: the region now benefits from Baltic and the Sage in Gateshead and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. Audacious large-scale commissions were supported by Alan and his team at the Arts Council; these included the Angel of the North by Antony Gormley and Bill Viola's The Messenger, a potent work made in response to the powerful spiritual context of Durham Cathedral.
Alan was an early supporter and board member of Matt's Gallery, in east London, and Locus+, the Newcastle-based artists' commissioning agency. In 1997 he moved south again, to become director of craft development at the Crafts Council, establishing innovative relationships with the Department of Trade and Industry, and the Creative Industries Task Force. Within two years, he had arrived at De La Warr Pavilion.
More a maverick and less a bureaucrat, his success lay as much in his character as his skill and knowledge. He had great presence, was the very best of company, with a wonderful appreciation of food, wine and lively debate, and had a penchant for beautifully tailored and brilliantly coloured corduroy suits.
Alan is survived by his wife Cat and their son Harvey; and by his son Simon, by his first wife, Eliane.
• Alan George Haydon, arts administrator, born 31 October 1949; died 9 October 2011
• This article was amended on 2 November. The caption to the first picture referred to the De La Warr Pavilion as being in the art-deco style. This has been corrected.
This week’s arts diary
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on January 12, 2011
From silent protests in Barnet to entrances and exits in Hong Kong, here are this week's top arts stories
Around 50 protestors braved the freezing cold to flashmob Barnet council's main offices on Monday afternoon to protest at the proposal to cut the £194,000 it gives to artsdepot, the north London borough's only professional arts venue. Well, they almost reached the offices. The council, having got wind of the silent protest, overreacted hilariously by closing the main gates to the North London Business Park, mounting extra security and alerting police; two police vans hovered nearby as the cheerful protestors silently waved their banners.
The proposed cut amounts to 11% of artsdepot's income, and seems particularly brutal given that the North Finchley venue has been such a success since it was created (ironically, by the council) six years ago. As its director, Nigel Cutting, said: "If it goes through, Barnet will be one of the largest councils in the country to spend nothing on the arts. A local authority area with twice the population of Oxford at least deserves a degree of arts provision." There is still time to stop the cut – the consultation finishes next Monday.
The planned Barnet cut comes on top of the decision by London Councils (the umbrella body for local authorities in the capital) to axe the £3m it spends on arts provision. The idea is that these spending decisions are being devolved back to the boroughs but, frankly, what are the chances of the boroughs spending an equivalent amount of money? Zero? The decision, made before Christmas by council leaders, means that theatres and organisations across London will all lose money. Theatre Royal Stratford East, for example, is losing £80,000. Artsdepot, meanwhile, is again in the firing line, losing two grants that amount to £130,000.
The eye-spinning plans to create the world's biggest arts complex in Hong Kong have suffered a major blow with the departure, after just five months, of its British chief executive, Graham Sheffield. It was announced on Friday that Sheffield, the much-respected former artistic director of the Barbican, had been advised by his doctor to resign immediately.
The West Kowloon plans are certainly ambitious. Covering nearly 100 acres and with an initial cost of about £1.8bn, the aim is to create a vast cultural theme park encompassing theatre, dance, music, film and visual arts. But will it happen? The project has been dogged by numerous problems and delays, and Sheffield is not the first to go – former executive director Angus Cheng resigned for "personal reasons" in June 2009. A global search for Sheffield's successor has now begun, and a decision is also imminent on which overall building design will be chosen from a shortlist that includes Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas and local architect Rocco Yim.
Definitely Hong Kong-bound is Damien Hirst, who is exhibiting new paintings and sculptures at a show that opens at the region's new Gagosian gallery next Tuesday. The most eye-catching piece will be a variation on his £50m diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God. Those at the frontline of arts cuts may be particularly keen to know that it will, this time, consist of a human baby skull cast in platinum and encrusted with 8,128 pavé-set perfect diamonds, 7,105 natural fancy pink diamonds and 1,023 white diamonds.
Tate debate: open your mind to public spaces
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on June 21, 2010
Our parks are in peril but it's not enough just to save them from funding cuts – great public spaces need events that engage everyone
It is in the best of times that we expect to have great public spaces, but it is in the worst of economic times that we really need them to be great. It is only here that we can escape the stress and strains, take time out from the doom and gloom to play, meet friends, lie (hopefully) in the sunshine or enjoy a staycation. They aren't a luxury but an essential natural health service, the ultimate drop-in centre – preventative healthcare that is far cheaper than the NHS, and without a waiting list.
Shame then that not only will our vital public spaces be among the first to bear the brunt of the cuts – no nice parkies, no more events, planting of flowers, clean toilets, open cafes, grass cutting, litter collection or working fountains – but that those civic squares, now run privately, seem increasingly restrictive of what you can do in a so-called public space.
Try this simple test: lie on one of those ubiquitous monolithic granite benches and see how long it is before you are asked to move (carrying a bottle of beer speeds this up considerably) or sit on a patch of grass. My record for the latter is one minute and 45 seconds before removal – and this was when I was actually judging the space for a competition! And no it didn't win. Now try wearing overalls in one such square – I watched as two gents, who were eating their sandwiches on their break from a nearby construction site, were moved on by the security guard. The management were worried that dust from their overalls might be transferred on to the Hugo Boss suits of office workers when they used the benches. So now we have white-collar spaces, it seems. Shame because if the owners were a bit more community-spirited these spaces could make a really great contribution to our urban street life.
Why the rant? Good spaces are nutrients of urban life. They help keep our heart happy and are a vital ingredient in creating a community where there is tolerance and respect for each other, where the so-called "big society" happens naturally. Yes they may contain nuts, but that's the point – they are for everyone. Our parks and squares and streets are our truly democratic spaces, where all can gather equally and freely to hang out, protest, celebrate and commiserate.
Now I have reservations about John Ruskin (appalling snob, hated contemporary fiction in the greatest age of the novel, weird crushes on nine-year-olds) but he was right when he said that "the measure of a city's greatness is to be found in the quality of its public spaces, its parks and its squares". He could have added the measure of our towns, too. By quality, it is the quality of ideas not just materials that counts. The public want variety, too, and the possibility of exciting and interesting things happening.
Right now that might mean temporary screens showing World Cup matches, but it doesn't mean permanent mega TVs dominating squares, sound turned off like in some open-air branch of Currys. Or naff bits of public art (why are they nearly always red?) to brighten up dull grey piazzas. Or as I saw recently, a bronze of children playing leapfrog – where real kids would probably be stopped from doing so for health and safety reasons (keep the real ones in springy, chicken-filled rubber playgrounds, I hear the child-free cry). People want events and art that engage everyone, that don't exclude, that excite and thrill us especially at a time when we all need a bit of cheering up. Like Artichoke's wonderful Sultan's Elephant – magical, awe-inspiring and almost impossible to pull off, given the restrictions imposed.
We need our spaces to be like ourselves: different, distinctive, displaying a range of moods from subdued to very loud. Great open spaces require open minds to design and look after them, to allow culture to flourish, and to support creativity and fun. Dear old Ruskin would approve of that. Pity he can't join our debate at the Tate Modern tonight with Janet Street-Porter, Sir Ian Blair and others.
Norman Foster in the Lords: what might have been | Jonathan Glancey
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on July 12, 2010
Foster could have used a role in politics to campaign for a more intelligently designed country. Instead he let the opportunity go to waste
Norman Foster resigned from the House of Lords last week. A life peer since 1999, he will retain his title, Lord Foster, but will no longer be able to attend the House of Lords, nor vote there.
Foster's resignation was prompted by a new law banning peers and MPs who are non-resident in the UK, and who decline to pay British tax on incomes earned outside the UK. A spokeswoman for Foster and Partners said: "Lord Foster left the UK several years ago to live with his family in Switzerland. This is common knowledge and he has accordingly declared the fact."
While it's true that Foster has spent precious little time in Barry and Pugin's fairytale Palace of Westminster, it is sad that the House of Lords should lose such an influential figure in the world of architecture. Foster was created a peer for his contribution to British architecture at home and around the globe. It was always unlikely he would have taken time out of his day job to participate actively in the Lords (according to news reports, he last made a speech there seven years ago. The only architect to have done so in recent years, and to some effect, has been Richard Rogers who, as Baron Rogers of Riverside, has sat as a Labour peer in the House of Lords since 1996.
Even so, it is hard not to think "what if?". What if Foster had spent time campaigning as an advocate of the very highest standards of architecture, design and planning? What if he had affected legislation to ensure such standards were set out and followed?
Architects sometimes accept such titles saying they do so for (a) their practice and (b) for architecture itself. Of course they enjoy the prestige, too. And, yet, if they wish to wrap themselves in ermine, and to enjoy the British honours system, then it does seem only right that they should play the game. Architecture has few advocates at a large format political level in Britain, and virtually no one willing and able to cut through party lines to raise the banner for a more intelligently and beautifully planned and designed country. If only Foster had been one.
Architecture, Art and design, Arts policy, Comment, guardian.co.uk, House of Lords, Norman Foster
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