News

A £2.5million creative arts hub in Coventry will provide “a space for future generations of artists and creative engineers”. As well as being home to five of the city’s arts organisations  – Imagineer, Highly Sprung, Media Mania, Open Theatre and Talking Birds - The Daimler Powerhouse will focus primarily on outdoor arts and will deliver training programmes aimed at young people and people with disabilities.  

An arts Lottery grant of £150,000 will enable a Vertical Dance Wall, music and sound facilities, plus essential IT and construction equipment to be embedded in the building, which was the first car factory built in Britain.

Plans are taking shape for a three-storey, 7000 sq ft building to become a hub for nurturing fresh talent, offering skills support and collaborative opportunities to artists in Nottingham.

Five entrepreneurs – a venue and club operator, a community project producer, two events promoters and a digital marketeer – have taken on the lease of Fisher Gate Point, which was originally used as a factory for Nottingham’s Green Line buses. “Driven by a shared passion to nurture the creative arts” in the city, they are developing it to become “a place for creatives to test ideas, a seeding environment where they can access skills, knowledge and equipment.”

The building will include two recording studios, workshop rooms, an events space with high-spec sound and light system, a co-working space and a garden meeting space.

A new community arts centre in the Craigmillar area of Edinburgh will be based in a 19th century Gothic church.
A partnership with the diocese of Edinburgh will mean the new Centre, known as Craigmillar Now, will be able to support contemporary local artists and their work, and present a programme of residencies, workshops, exhibitions and events. Residents in the area are helping to develop a local archive and the venue will also provide a home for this.

Urgent interventions made by Camelot to minimise the effects of Covid-19 on National Lottery sales succeeded in reversing an initial 18% hit to income at the start of the pandemic. By the end of September, sales for the first six months of the financial year 2020/21 were down by just 1.7% – a decrease of £67m. Online activity accounted for over 42% of all sales, growing by £455m to reach £1,619m.

The knock-on effect on National Lottery Good Causes was also minimised. £863.7m was raised during this period – £13.1m (1.5%) less than the same period last year. 20% of Good Causes money goes to arts and cultural activity, meaning a loss of just £2.6m to the sector so far this year, compared with last.

Announcing the results, Camelot CEO Nigel Railton declared the company was “enormously proud of this set of results” in light of “an unprecedented situation – with a sharp decline in sales, retail uncertainty and our EuroMillions game in jeopardy, as some of our partner countries were under strict lockdowns.”

BHLive, operator of council-owned Fairfield Halls in the London borough of Croydon, made the last of their staff at the venue redundant at the end of October, just days after it was awarded a £2.5m Culture Recovery grant.

30 senior, full-time jobs there have been made redundant by BHLive since August, in addition to the 80 part-time and casual roles that were terminated in June.

Fairfield Halls reopened in September 2019 following a £43m refurbishment, which opened 6 months late and significantly over its £30m budget.

BHLive was awarded the contract to run the venue in 2017, but questions remain as to whether it has actually signed the operating lease for the building, which includes a 1,801-seat concert hall, the 755-seat Ashcroft Theatre and the Arnhem Gallery which is also used for standing concerts of up to 400.

A council scrutiny report reveals visitor numbers between opening and the end of December last year were 88,000 ticket sales - 26% occupancy against a business plan target of 45%.

The Musicians' Union is calling on Ministers to issue “more pragmatic and clearer guidance” on out-of-school music learning under the new tiered restrictions that will apply after 2nd December at the end of England’s current lockdown. The Union is contesting the government’s current classification of music classes or drama tuition as “extracurricular and therefore inessential”.

It highlights inconsistencies between Cabinet Office guidance, which bars pupils from leaving their homes for music tuition, and the Department for Education’s guidance, which states that music lessons in private homes can resume if there is no viable alternative. The Union’s letter to Ministers says: “Taken together, these two documents suggest that lessons are permitted only in pupils’ own homes, since pupils are not allowed to leave their homes to attend lessons elsewhere (limited exemptions aside). This position does not support the Government’s desire to reduce Covid-19 transmission, because teachers’ homes/studios and private music schools – where Covid-secure measures have been in place for months – are likely to be just as safe if not safer than pupils’ own homes.”

Its recommendations include “reasonable exemptions to online teaching” where exams or university/college entrance is being prepared for; when a high level of musical learning is being undertaken; if there is a risk of exclusion because of digital poverty; where there is an adverse mental health risk to learners; and if learners have additional needs that cannot be met online.

Oglesby Charitable Trust will invest £150,000 over five years to help develop creative projects in Manchester.

SICK! Productions will use the funding on a 10-year programme addressing mental health, social inequities, end of life care, disability and gender - topics it says have become ever more relevant amid the impact of coronavirus on communities.

Projects will be co-developed with locals and a programme of international commissions will bring artists into Manchester to work with communities in Moston and Harpurhey.

SICK! Productions Creative Producer Steve Vickers said he wanted to shine a light on the areas, which are not normally considered hubs of artistry.

"There’s a pool of talent here that can be drawn on to become a part of Manchester’s cultural offer... Our job is to highlight this with a genuine long-term commitment.”

The trust's commitment is expected to leverage another £700,000 over the project's lifetime.