Making the case for culture

JUST like the sharpness of the Northern light, there is something special about the spirit of the North East and its great villages, towns and cities. They have a remarkable capacity for invention and deep springs of talent.

This was underlined very clearly to me when I took part in the launch of the Case for Culture at Durham Castle last week. It’s an ambitious plan underlining the importance of investment in arts and culture in the North East over the next fifteen years.

It’s something that we’ve been involved in developing at Arts Council England since its inception, investing in the North East Culture Partnership, set up by the Association of North East Councils and co-chaired by Middlesbrough’s elected mayor David Budd and leading cultural entrepreneur John Mowbray.

Since I became chief executive of Arts Council England in April, I’ve spent a lot of time criss-crossing the country, meeting artists and performers, and the people who run our arts organisations, museums and libraries.

I have spent a good deal of my time here in the North East with the team at our Newcastle office, which oversees the investment we make in the region. Over the past three years, the Arts Council has invested £106 million in the North East and last year alone, our funding topped £32.7 million.

As I stood on the banks of the River Tees in Stockton last Thursday night for the opening of the Arts Council supported Stockton International Riverside Festival, I reflected on how this is money well spent. Who could have failed to be impressed by the sense of foresight and ambition that Stockton Council had in creating and building the festival over the past three decades.

And that reminded me of how we’d worked alongside Durham County Council in support of Lumiere – and how through that support Lumiere has grown into the UK’s largest light festival and will return to Durham for the third time in November.

Earlier last Thursday, I had met Ada Burns, chief executive of Darlington Borough Council. With infectious pride and enthusiasm, she showed me the plans for redeveloping the Civic Theatre into the 21st Century venue that the town surely deserves.

At the Arts Council, we’re very excited to be investing £1.5 million into the former fire station next door to the Civic, which will become home to Hullaballoo, the nationally important children’s theatre company based in Darlington. That’s when we’re at our best at the Arts Council, working as a national arts development agency with local expertise, alongside local partners.

It’s not just local authorities we work closely with here. All five of the universities in the region are playing their part in ensuring the North East remains famous for its arts and culture. The University of Teesside has taken over the running of MIMA – the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. Under its new director Alistair Hudson, MIMA is going from strength to strength and I was really excited to hear the plans for building ever more creative links between the university and the gallery.

Meanwhile, the University of Sunderland runs the National Glass Centre. This is an arts institution that isn’t just at the heart of Sunderland’s cultural life, it is of national and international significance.

The University of Sunderland is also one of the leading players in the Cultural Spring, one of the Arts Council’s three Creative People and Places programmes in the North East. We’re investing £5.9 million in these initiatives in South East Northumberland, Sunderland and South Tyneside and East Durham to help empower communities to take the lead in shaping their own local arts experiences.

And the good things in the North East’s arts and cultural life don’t stop there. For instance, at the Bowes Museum at the moment you can catch Yves Saint Laurent: Style is Eternal, the first exhibition in the UK to present a comprehensive display of the French fashion designer’s work and life.

Creativity flows everywhere you look across the region, whether it’s Live Theatre in Newcastle; the Arts Centre Washington; The Customs House in South Shields; the Festival of Thrift in Darlington; the internationally respected Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art; or the Sage Gateshead, home of the Royal Northern Sinfonia.

A sense of ambition is at the heart of what’s great here. This is central to the North East Case for Culture and it chimes with the Arts Council’s mission and goals for the whole nation.

We’re committed to investing in great arts and culture across the country and we’re promising that by 2018, at least 75% of our National Lottery money will be invested outside London.

This is a big acceleration in our investment outside the capital. It comes as the Chancellor balances the books ahead of the government’s spending review in the autumn.

Money remains tight at both a national and local level, so in the Arts Council’s Newcastle office, we’re working hard with political leaders here to ensure that together we build the best possible case for investment in arts and culture in every part of the North East.

We know just how much of a positive impact arts and culture has on everyone’s life. And there’s no better reason for working together than that.