Editorial and comment about the arts and entertainment in Leicester and Leicestershire in 2010

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1st November 2010

Privatise Leicester's Arts venue

Artsin calls on the City Council to disengage their Arts venues and put them into the hans of the private sector.

Financial difficulties have confronted nearly all of the Leicester City Council run venues: Phoenix Square, Curve, De Montfort Hall and The Peepul Centre. The public are being asked to bail out these loss making venues.

We say it is time to call a halt to this and the only long term solution is to place these venues under private sector management.

Social Ownership solution

We think that the best solution is to place these venues in the social sector and turn them into financially independent social enterprises.

Arts and music producers will have to manage with less public funding. They will not be able to go cap in hand to the Council for solutions to their need for funds. There are some segments of the local economy that are doing well. Businesses and companies could well do more to sponsor the arts.

Many of our local arts venues have been rocked by financial problems. Things might get better for the De Montfort Hall, Curve, The Peepul Centre and so on but the press has been full of copy about the financial difficulties they have faced in 2009. The small music venues could also be in for a rough ride as Councils try to charge their way out of money problems by increasing business rates and licensing fees.

Over-taxing struggling arts and music venues is not going to be the right way of serving the interests of local people.

With elections imminent, the arts community and the voting public should be asking questions at the hustings. Will candidates support the arts? Do they recognise the value of arts and entertainment to well being and social cohesion? Where will they place the arts in their hierarchy of priorities? Do they really know what is happening on the local arts scene and recognise how valuable it is to the economy of Leicester/shire? Do they see art and entertainment as being one of the drivers of economic growth? Will they promote Leicester/shire's arts and music as being one of Leicester's greatest assets?

We should be asking candidates to make clear where they stand with regard to the arts and entertainment and, if they cannot open the public purse too widely, can they at least allow people who do have the talent and experience to manage the arts successfully, to take over the reigns of our key venues.

Given the pressures on the Council's budgets, is there any reason why the key arts venues should continue to be a drain on the public purse? We would like to see these venues being privatised. Many private sector music and entertainment companies have performed better throughout 2009 than most.

We would like to see these key arts venues being transformed into social enterprise companies, with their profits being ploughed back to community benefit.

The Minister of State for the East Midlands, Phil Hope MP, is a known champion of social enterprise companies, where profits are fed back into the business rather than into dividends for private investors.

What ever strings are left, that moor the big arts venues to the dock of local government, should be cut and their management should be placed in the hands of experts who know what they are doing. A well run arts venue that is fulfilling a public need/demand, can flourish if properly run by people who have experience in arts management.

The Charlotte is a social enterprise and so is Soft-Touch Arts. We would argue that De Montfort Hall, Curve, The Peeple Centre, the LCB Depot and Phoenix Square should follow this example and be allowed to carry on their work as community businesses, transformed into independent, social enterprise companies. There are some notable examples outside of the arts, such as Stride and The Trees Group.

The East Midlands and Leicester in particular is home to some of the most successful social enterprise companies in the UK, involving their stakeholders and service users in what they do.

The artists and musicians of Leicester/shire have achieved a great deal over 2009 and will continue to provide the public with achievements of high standards and quality over the year ahead. Ours is an area that is rich in creative talent and we deserve national recognition for this.

Leicester stands out as a powerhouse for new music and is one of the UK's most prolific cities for the creation of top class bands and singers.

Actors, dancers, painters, writers and poets have all contributed to making Leicester a cultural success story. We need our politicians to recognise this in the year ahead and to play their role is taking this message out to the rest of the world.

Art and entertainment is part of the life blood of our community and plays a part in building and sustaining solid communities and economic growth. We just want to see politicians of all flavours doing more and doing better to realise the importance of this.

Our artists are putting Leicester on the map. We would like to see companies acknowledging this by sponsoring artists, musicians and bands. Sponsorship makes good business sense. There is a lot to be gained from private sector support for artists and music. Blackberry, Orange and Talk Talk are well known examples at national level but local businesses could well replicate this success.

Big challenges face live music producers over the year ahead. They need to get the bigger picture and work together in the interests of the music community. Self interest will sink the boat.

If 2010 is to be an improvement on the successes of the previous year, a lot must change in the production of live music. The local economy will not be able to sustain the level of live music events we have seen in 2009. In our view, the venues will have to throttle back on the number of gigs they put on. Some hard decisions will need to be made, both for the venue managers and the bands they hire, about what is feasible.

There should be collaboration amongst the venues rather than the present picture of competition and fragmentation. Venue managers and promoters have organised shows in isolation from each other, doing their own thing as it suits them, rather than working in the interests of the whole music community.

Unless the providers bury their hatchets and start working together, everyone will loose out. There have been far too many dud gigs this year, with minimal attendances and losses being made. That needs to stop.

If live music is to be sustained, there will have to be fewer gigs and much more planning and co-ordination of gig dates. Bands will need to fall in behind this regime by only committing to playing shows that they can genuinely support with realistic ticket sales.

It is unlikely that there will be any sizeable increases in the gig-going population. The opening of the Leicester University venue for the big bands end of the market and the emergence of new venues for the smaller end will place even more stress on the wallets and purses of the fans.

Leicester still has to compete with the attractions offered by Birmingham and Nottingham. What we are competing for is a slice of the ticket buying public's budgets for the year. It will be up to the only big enough venue in town, to see if it can win that slice of the market.

Our local festivals - Glastonbudget, Summer Sundae - compete with Download, Leeds and Reading for the commitment of fans. Let's hope the climate rewards them well this year as it did last year. Festival organisers need to play their part in putting on line-ups that will be seriously interesting to the fans.

It's the ticket-buying fans that keep live music alive. As long as there are enough fans with enough money, it will work. Both the bands and the music producers need to know what "enough" adds up to.

25th November 2010

Does the arts give value for money?

Do we get value for money from the Arts? When times are hard and people do not have much to spend, it is more important than ever that the arts are seen to be good value for money.

During the great depression of the 1920s, the one thing that bucked the trend was entertainment. People escaped from the harsh realities of every day life by going to clubs, pubs and music halls, where they could enjoy themselves and find some relief from the tribulations of worklessness, poverty and low incomes.

People haven't changed that much. They still have a need for entertainment. What has changed of course is how they get it. Even in the poorest homes in this city you will find television sets. If people want to get out of the house and do something a bit more social, there are numerous opportunities available to suit all tastes.

Is art just for posh people? Well fine art or classical art might be but here at Artsin we take a different approach. Our pages reflect an overlap between the arts and entertainment. We do cover fine art but we tend to cover art as entertainment.

We have pages on comedy, popular dance, community arts, music for the masses, festivals and our visual arts pages cover films, photography, video and digital. We might even cover magic, fashion, poetry and children's books. We take a wider view of the arts than most comparable magazines. We try to see the bigger picture.

If you had £20 to spend on a night out, what would you do? See a band? Go for a laugh at a comedy gig? See a show at Curve or De Montfort Hall? You could do any of these things on a budget of £20. If you're unemployed, over 60 or under 16, the chances are you will get a discount ticket. There are also quite a few free events, particularly if you are a fan of live music.

if you want posh art and you can afford it, you have plenty of choices. What's important here is that the arts, as we see them, are available to everyone. If you are from the Asian community, you have lots going on from Bangra to Bollywood. If you are from the African or Caribbean communities, you will not be short of things to do. If you are Polish or from one of the many European groups settled in Leicester, there will be events specific to your cultural interests.

This vibrant, multi-cultural city and county offers its peoples a huge variety of choice. Events of all kinds go on all year round, almost every day of the week, providing something for everyone, no matter what their age, ethnicity, orientation or health status. This is what makes Leicester a great place to live.

We get asked whether arts (broadly defined) should be subsidised from the public purse. We get asked specially whether the 'big' venues, like the De Montfort Hall, Curve or the Phoenix should be subsidised by rate payers.

We say no. There is no need for arts and entertainment venues to be subsidised by tax payers, especially in these financially stringent times. Generally speaking the arts and entertainment should be self-financing.

There is a case for investing in new artists, minority arts, the leading edge of creativity, improvements to access for people with disabilities, projects reaching out to people with mental or physical health issues, the very old, the very poor, the young ... certain specific arts activities should qualify for financial support, where it is difficult or impossible to expect them to be self-financing.

A lot of work is going on to use the arts as a medium for reaching out to disadvantaged or excluded groups. That support should come primarily from charities but there is some case for justifying support from local authorities or the NHS were there are proven benefits both to the target groups (old, young, ill, excluded, at risk) and the public. The well being of individuals, groups and communities can be enhanced by the arts and there is a strong case for supporting these projects with money and other resources.

We do not see a case for justifying public expenditure on 'big' venues. Multi-million pound venues should be self-financing and not underwritten by the tax payer. That is not say that the buildings concerned should be in the private sector. We have already argued the case, in a previous editorial, for social enterprise approaches to running arts venues.

There is probably a stronger case for supporting the smaller venues that are vital to the life of a local community, where building and operating costs are difficult to sustain. Where the benefit to a community is worth every penny of the relatively small budgets they work to.

Big venues should be able pay for themselves. If they can't then they are doing some wrong.

Art and entertainment bring millions of pounds into the local economy. More and more people are coming to Leicester and the county to enjoy the many festivals, events, shows and occasions that are on offer here. Those people contribute to local businesses, hotels, restaurants, bars, taxis ... leisure is a vital part of the local economy.

Should local politicians meddle in the arts? asks Robert Mandell in a recent article in This is Leicestershire. In an outspoken and forthright piece, the one-time music Director of the Haymarket Theatre, argues that Leicester City Council should stop meddling in the arts. The debate continues as to how to find a sustainable future for the Hall that does not involve public subsidy. Politicians are divided on the issue of whether privatisation is the answer.

The City Council's cabinet is to consider a "draft De Montfort Hall business plan", according to The Leicester Mercury. Why? Do politicians think they can run an arts venue? Apparently they do and this lies at the root of the problems facing the DMH, and Curve. If the Council has any control over the future of these venues, there is only thing it should be doing: making sure that properly qualified and experienced managers are running them and then leaving them to get on with their jobs.

All these 'big' venues play a vital role in our local arts scene but none of them if big enough to compete with the high capacity theatres in Birmingham and Nottingham. Leicester politicians have only so far succeeded in putting relatively small capacity venues into the city. In consequence, Leicester fans have to travel outside of the city to get spend their ticket pounds elsewhere.

What Leicester needs is an arena level venue that can offer local people a local choice for big name acts and which could bring much needed revenue into the local economy. Not much chance of getting that in the present climate but as a long term goal, that is, in our view, a serious project.

7th April 2010.

The General Election 2010

There has never been a better time to ask questions about the arts of our political leaders. Between now and 6th May, we have a great opportunity to fly the flag for the arts, both nationally and in Leicester/shire.

The politicians want our votes. As fans, followers and consumers of the arts and as artists, we want their support. So, let's ask them 'what are they going to do for us'? Us, the people who produce arts and entertainment and the people who benefit from the what artists give to our society and our community.

Arts in Leicestershire intends to ask questions at the hustings. We want to know, from the main political parties, how they see the arts, what policies they would implement, what support they would give and what commitments they would see their party entering into, where the arts is concerned.

Why is the arts important? In our view the arts is more than just the icing on the cake; it is much more than a luxury. Arts and entertainments of all kinds benefit the economy, the community and society. Art is not a sideline or a marginal add-on: art is something much closer to the well-being and soul of society and to the life blood of our local community

We urge both artists and the public who benefit from the arts, to ask questions of the candidates. Ask them to think about the arts. Ask them to say what their policies are for the arts.

The Artsin blog is where we will post the answers that we get from the hustings. We hope that readers will ask questions of the candidates and post their findings through the comments to the blog postings.

Other pages you might like:

The Editor's column on live music in Leicester, 2011