Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) has received a £500,000 Community Assets grant, funded by the Office of the Third Sector in the Cabinet Office. The money will be used to modernise and expand BAC’s creative offerings to the community, by restoring its old council office building to create a bigger venue.
w: http://www.bac.org.uk
Building work has begun (pictured) on the new headquarters for Northern Ballet Theatre and Phoenix Dance Theatre in Leeds. Neither company currently has a dedicated building of its own, but progress is being made as the ‘momentum’ campaign towards the costs of the project reaches £1m. The building is scheduled to open in summer 2010.
w: http://www.building-momentum.co.uk
A new guide, ‘Access Scottish Theatre’ offers information about accessible performances and access. It covers 88 captioned, British Sign Language-interpreted and audio-described performances across 14 venues. Based on feedback from disabled audiences, it also provides information on getting to, booking tickets and access at individual venues. The guide is free and is also available in audio format.
w: http://www.scottishtheatres.com/accessguide.php
The Local Government Association (LGA) has extended the deadline for filling in its questionnaire on local authority arts budgets to 8 May. The survey will help the LGA to assess the effects of the credit crunch and to provide reliable and independent data to support the discussion of arts support partnerships with Arts Council England.
w: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ve2gs8wf_2bfpvdubmp4dada_3d_3d
The Young Vic theatre, Graeae theatre Company, East Potential and Cockpit Arts have each been awarded almost £50,000 from the London Development Agency’s 2012 Cultural Fund, for training in theatre, media and design for young or disabled Londoners. The fund, managed by Arts Council England, aims to support community-based skills, training and employment-support projects so that more Londoners can participate in the Cultural Olympiad and other arts related activities in the run up to 2012. A further £1m will be awarded later this year.
w: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/lcsf
Ten arts education partnership organisations, working to support children and young people’s cultural opportunities in the South West, have launched a new website to share the impact of their work and promote it across the region. The South West Arts Education Partnership supports local, sustainable partnerships between the arts and education sectors, to inspire creative, artistic and cultural experiences.
w: http://www.artseducationsw.org.uk
Local authorities, sporting organisations and venues across the UK connected with arts, culture and other major themes of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are being invited to propose events for the London 2012 Open Weekend in July. The weekend aims to enable access to excellence in the arts and offer cultural events to people across the UK.
w: {www.london2012.com/openweekend}
Major arts management consultancy firm ABL Consulting is in serious financial difficulty. After 21 years trading, the company, which entered a Company Voluntary Agreement (CVA) in February 2008, has County Court Judgments outstanding against it. ABL also has an operation trading in Dubai and the Gulf, which Director Richard Crossland says is “perfectly solvent, but is not in a position to bail out the UK company”. The UK company is currently completing a number of projects but not taking on any new work.
A symposium on Leadership and Governance of Artistic Festivals, organised by the European Festival Research Project in association with the UK Centre for Events Management and the Cultural Policy and Planning Unit at Leeds Metropolitan University, is calling for proposals. Presentations that consider leadership theory, case study approaches to a specific festival or a comparative perspective through stages of transformation, growth and/or crisis management are sought, by 25 May.
w: http://www.efa-aef.org