‘Arts are not an optional extra’

I BELIEVE that the arts are not an optional extra. For me, the arts are an essential ingredient to what it means to be human, like eating and breathing, like loving our children and playing games.

It is through our music and drama, literature and painting, sculpture and dance that we tell the story of our past and express our hopes about the future.

Art challenges our assumptions about the world, makes us think about ourselves in unexpected ways, presents us with opportunities to explore our creativity and talents.

Art is a constant exchange, a process of giving and taking, borrowing and creating, through which we learn from each other, inspire others, create beauty and joy, celebrate and sometimes weep.

Darlington Arts Centre enables all these things to happen.

It is a wonderful, exciting building, where a whole host of the most unexpected activities and events take place such as creative writing, comedy, visual arts, multi-media events, folk music and jazz, film, stained-glass making, painting classes, and many more.

The range of activities that are enjoyed is truly amazing, attracting young and old, and a few middle-aged, from across the town and beyond.

It is this ability of the arts centre to offer a home to so many different arts “genres” that is its real strength, and for this reason, many clubs and societies have made it their base, from the Rhythm and Blues Club to Darlington Media Group, from Vane Women to Open Arts.

For this reason, it is the community arts hub for the town, a treasured resource and muchloved.

It gives expression to why the arts are so important, enabling that exchange of ideas, that rubbing of shoulders with others, providing the environment where creativity can flourish – in short, it helps us be ourselves.

Darlington for Culture has fought hard for more than a year to ensure the continuance of arts and culture in the town in the face of swingeing Government cuts that have left the borough council with extremely difficult financial decisions.

We are pleased that our civic theatre will continue, but bitterly disappointed that the arts centre is recommended for closure.

We know that the borough council has made a bid to the Arts Council for capital funding to build a new “arts hub” and that this bid is dependent on raising money from the sale of the Arts Centre, but we are dismayed that the decision to close the Arts Centre will be made before it is known whether the funding bid to the Arts Council has been successful.

There is a distinct possibility that the council will close the Arts Centre and have no Plan B if the funding bid fails – we will have lost our Arts Centre, but have nothing with which to replace it.

EVEN if the Arts Council bid is successful, it will be at least three years before a new “arts hub” is built, during which time many of the activities which we currently can enjoy in the arts centre will have gone.

Many of the clubs and societies will have found new homes or disbanded, the excitement and energy generated by the work of so many different cultural and artistic groups will have been lost.

The Inquiry Group that investigated the cultural life of the town last year unanimously agreed that the worst scenario for the future artistic life of the town was to disperse activity, so losing that essential synergy gained from arts working together.

The council’s proposal to close the arts centre and to have nothing with which to replace it means precisely that this worst-case scenario will be realised.

Darlington for Culture is also concerned about what the new “arts hub” will offer, if it is ever built. It is admitted by the council that it will not provide the range of activities which we can find at our arts centre because the new building will be smaller and have to provide a home for Theatre Hullabaloo, a nationally recognised children’s theatre company that we are lucky to have in Darlington.

We are pleased that such excellence resides in our town, but we worry that this excellence could be at the expense of community arts.

There must be room for both excellence and art which involves us all, which is participative and enjoyed by the whole community. Darlington for Culture will continue to fight to save the arts centre for the people of Darlington as it is the “only show in town”.

At the very least, we urge the council to delay a decision to sell the arts centre until the outcome of the funding bid to the Arts Council is known.

We believe that the arts centre can have a vibrant future and it will not take a lot of money to achieve a sustainable community hub that can be enjoyed by future generations.

The power of art is to remind us of what we are to each other, of what we have to offer and what we hold in common. Art helps us to understand our past and imagine our futures. Art gives us hope and brings us together when nothing else will. Let us not throw that away.

􀁧 Darlington for Culture is a community benefit society, a type of co-operative, set up to campaign to save Darlington Arts Centre from closure. Go to darlingtonforculture.org