PART I: ARTS AND REGENERATION IN BRIGHTON
OXFORD-OITA RESEARCH STUDY 2011-2012 FINAL REPORT OCTOBER 2011
Teresa Smith Oxford Social Research Ltd. October 2011 1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful, first, to Rebecca Ball, Clore Cultural Fellow and former Director of Arts with the Arts Council England/ South East, for arranging our programme of visits and interviews in Brighton in May 2011; secondly, to all the people we interviewed for agreeing to see us during the very busy period at the end of the Brighton Festival, and for continuing to send documents and comments during the writing of this report; third, to Dr Kazue Aizawa once again for accompanying us on our visits and translating for us; fourth, to Professor Mukuno‟s colleagues Dr Yuka Himeno and Dr Yusuke Kataoka for their help with recordings and photographs; and finally to Professor Mukuno and Oita University for supporting the fieldwork and the writing of the report. Grateful acknowledgements to Dr Yuka Himeno for providing most of the photographs in this report.
Any mistakes remain my responsibility; and apologies in advance.
Teresa Smith Oxford Social Research Ltd October 2011
The Grand Hotel, Brighton: view from the top floor of the central atrium
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CONTENTS
Part I: Arts and Regeneration in Brighton Acknowledgements Contents 1. Introduction 2. Brighton – the changing city 3. Festivals: what does a festival add to a city? 4. Art for arts‟ sake, economic regeneration or community engagement? 5. How to „do a Brighton‟ – factors for successful regeneration Annexe 1: Programme of Brighton fieldwork tour May 25-30 2011 Part II: State of the City: Review of Brighton and Hove – a specially commissioned OCSI report
The Grand Hotel, Brighton: built 1864
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1. INTRODUCTION
This report on Brighton is the sequel to the previous enquiry into arts- and social-led regeneration conducted in the autumn of 2010. That enquiry1 focused on three coastal towns in the south-east of England, Margate, Folkestone and Chatham, as examples of different approaches to the regeneration of failing seaside resorts, with different combinations of high levels of unemployment and poor health, and low levels of skills, education and income, in the context of high levels of public sponsorship through UK government programmes and large-scale national and international funding. The report, and its discussion at the Oita Research Workshop in March 2011, against the terrible backdrop of the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan, showed clearly that regeneration is a long and difficult process. The three English towns still had a long way to go, despite evidence of considerable energy, funding and activity. This led inevitably to the next question: what are the factors we can highlight as associated with successful regeneration? This led us to the next round of enquiry, in Brighton, again on the south/ south-east of England, well known for its revival as a centre of the knowledge economy, arts and culture, experimentation, diversity and tolerance, with an annual arts festival second only to Edinburgh in international renown.
We visited Brighton in May 2011. We were fortunate in arriving while the Festival and the Artists‟ Open Houses festival was still running, so we were able to see shows, street theatre, art installations – and walk the streets of Brighton and Hove and Ditchling and Kemp Town to visit local art in situ. This was stimulating. At the same time, we met people responsible for organising the festival (past and present), for running debates and events and making links with local schools, as well as people working in the local authority, or running national-level civic society organisations or local or national enterprises. Debates ranged across the tensions between democratic and economic regeneration, art as artistic activity and art as a tool for community engagement. Many of these tensions were already explored in the earlier report. Here they have an added urgency as they are focused, chrystallised almost, in one city, with one of the highest levels of cultural participation in England, but also some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country, and also in the context of recession and cutbacks in public funding under the new (2010) Coalition government2. It is unlikely we can use Brighton as a „blueprint‟ for regeneration, to be replicated nationally or internationally. But we should be able to tease out some of the factors in the combination which has made Brighton successful.
This report sets the scene with Brighton as a changing city over the centuries, before analysing elements of the „arts economy‟, and the extent to which we can take Brighton as a successful model of arts-led regeneration.
1 Smith, T (2011) Arts and regeneration in England’s South-East coastal towns. Final report for the Oxford-Oita Research Study 2010-2011. 2 See, for example, the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee (2011) Funding of the arts and heritage: third report of session 2010-2011, Vol I Report together with formal minutes, Vol II Oral and written evidence. HC 464-1. London: TSO. www.parliament.uk/cmscom 4
2. BRIGHTON – THE CHANGING CITY
Brighton, like other towns on the south and south-east coasts of England, started life as a small fishing village, called Brighthelmston, according to Osbert Sitwell, in his elegant social history published in 19353. Backed by the Downs, „grey or golden... sweeping away in great curves‟, with mixed fortunes through the centuries – storms and floods, threats of invasion by the Spanish Armada and later the French, passages of arms in the Civil War – it was launched into notoriety in the 18th and 19th centuries as the centre of fashion outside London, with London society, wits and writers, lords and ladies of fashion, and their horses and carriages, taking rooms for the season, keen on the new „sea bathing‟ and „taking the waters‟ for their health, and later building elegant houses in the fashionable quarters. By the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries all this was centred on the Prince, later Prince Regent and George IV, who first went to Brighton to escape from the royal household in London and his increasingly ill father, George III. First renting in the 1780s „a respectable farmhouse‟ on The Steyn, remodelled along neoclassical lines by Henry Holland in 1786, by the early 1800s he had redeveloped this into the gorgeous oriental Brighton Pavilion, a unique one-off masterpiece of extravagant design and innovative technology and decorative techniques, a centre for his rakish lifestyle and lavish and luxurious entertainments to rival the best in Europe. At this date, „Brighton was, no doubt, not only the gayest, most fashionable place in England, but in all Europe,‟ wrote Sitwell. Here is Sitwell‟s opening description of so „astounding‟ a change to Brighton – changing its name „into a household word in every continent‟; turning „the outlying fields into squares of pillared houses and then pour[ing] into them nabobs and Indian rajahs, Polish princes in exile and Parsee merchants, French refugee aristocrats and curly-haired mulattos from the West Indies, bearing ancient names but indulging in the most pleasant, but unusual, extravagances of costume, Russian grand dukes, the stars of opera, plump but dignified, because so well aware of their genius, and the flaunting stars of musical comedy, famous actors no less than actresses, who had never stepped the boards, together with many florid and curious adventurers who thus mingled with the solid grandees‟; filling „the as yet unbuilt streets in the daytime with the most nobly prancing horses, and at night with music which flowed from wide, golden windows‟; establishing „here the likeness of an oriental palace, the beautiful, if improbable and expensive, realisation in plaster of a somewhat disordered dream, under the fantastic domes of which the finest jewels in the world were to be worn by the most celebrated beauties, and from the red-lacquered rooms of which, blazoned with golden dragons, rocky landscapes and pensive Tartar fishermen, and full of porcelain pagodas and lamps shaped like giant tulips, an eccentric but not untalented prince was to preside for two decades over the destines of the mightiest empire in the world....‟
Sitwell‟s torrent of prose matches the Pavilion‟s extravagance under the Prince Regent. Brighton in this period was „England‟s favourite watering-place‟4, and the Brighton Pavilion
3 Sitwell, O and Barton, M (1935) Brighton. London: Faber and Faber. Quotations in this chapter come from Sitwell and Barton unless otherwise stated. 4 Title of an aquatint by Sutherland, 1825, reproduced in Sitwell. 5
The Royal Pavilion, Brighton
6 and Riding Stables5 were examples of some of the most creative and innovative designs and techniques then available6. John Nash‟s designs for the Pavilion encased Holland‟s earlier wooden building with a cast iron framework, a technique then being developed for railway and bridge construction, and for industrial building in Liverpool. Wallpaper designs and colouring techniques were commissioned from some of the newest and most radical artists in the field. For example, the Yellow Bow Rooms, the bedrooms upstairs of the Regent‟s brothers the Duke of York and the Duke of Clarence, were designed by the young artist Robert Jones, using the colour Chrome Yellow, which became commercially available only in 18187. The Prince Regent was thus not only presiding over the most gorgeous and opulent occasions of the early 19th century, designed to rival and outdo Napoleon and take the lead politically and culturally in post-Napoleonic Europe, but also stimulating artistic innovation of the most radical kind.
But by 1837 both George IV and his brother William IV were dead; and so was Mrs Fitzherbert, George‟s „unofficial wife‟8 before his official marriage. The young Queen Victoria, having been decidedly cool about the Pavilion on her first visit there as a young princess, used it for a time with her young family, and the upstairs rooms of her „wicked uncles‟9 became the royal nurseries. But she soon decided that the place was too draughty and inconvenient, too open to public view, to o associated with royal disreputableness, and the town too noisy and intrusive. So she withdrew to her favourite country seat in the Isle of White, and the Pavilion was emptied of its glories to the London palaces, and sold to the municipality of Brighton in 1850. Brighton, no longer the gorgeous centre of fashionable attention, continued its Victorian expansion however, with the opening in May 1840 of the Shoreham Branch of the London and Brighton Railway, the piers, and enormous enlargement of the population, as in other coastal towns. It maintained its character as a popular seaside resort well into the 20th century, when it was a favourite destination for the charabanc10 day trippers from London, and weekly and fortnightly holidaymakers attracted by cheap lodgings, although never as „popular‟ as Margate and Southend, nor as „upmarket‟ as Bournemouth.
How has Brighton developed in the 20th century, and how is it perceived by its residents? Its increasing size and status in the south-east was formalised in 1997 by the creation of the unitary authority of Brighton and Hove, and recognised in the millennium celebrations of 2000 by the title of city. But it is interesting that people currently living in Brighton explicitly hark back to the rakish and unconventional nature of the late 18th/ early 19th century period. Terms used by our interviewees were „maverick‟, „on the edge‟, „always a bit marginal to the mainstream‟, emphasising the openness and diversity of the current city‟s social and cultural scene. „Risk-taking‟, „edgy‟ and „cutting edge‟ were terms used by Sassatelli‟s focus group
5 As portrayed in one of John Nash‟s designs; the Riding Stables are now the Dome‟s main theatre/ auditorium. 6 See Beevers, D (ed; nd) The Royal Pavilion, Brighton: the Palace of King George IV. Brighton: The Royal Palace 7 See Beevers, D op.cit. 8 His relationship with Mrs Fitzherbert was much publicised by the cartoonists Gillray and Cruikshank. 9 Fulford, R (1933) Royal dukes: Queen Victoria’s ‘wicked uncles’. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd. 10 That is, arriving in motor coaches. 7 participants11: „Brighton is an eccentric, cosmopolitan, risk-taking city‟. It was notorious for the May 1964 clashes between rival groups of young people, Mods and Rockers12, and one version of the founding of the festival in 1967, was that this was local councillors‟ deliberate response to change public perceptions and to bring high quality art to the town.
Under the arches, 2011
One set of initiatives concerns the seafront. By the 1970s and 1980s Brighton‟s seafront „under the arches‟ was seedy and rundown13, mainly empty sheds, still by the early 1990s „full of smack and dogs‟. The music and arts scene in the 1970s in Brighton Poly (now the University of Brighton) and the Brighton College of Education was „very radical‟, „crazy‟, „producing very radical work‟. Most notable was the Zap Club, which operated in various locations round the Kings Road, before moving to two converted Kings Road arches on the seafront, where it operated from 1984 to 199714. The shift to the seafront of the radical music and arts scene brought the seafront back into focus, and the council began to develop a strategy for the seafront in the 1990s, to open it up for everyone in the city, and „not just for night clubs‟. Some of the arches were refurbished (the Fishing Museum dates from this period) and leased cheaply for artists to use and sell their own work. Now the seafront and the arches have been redeveloped for children‟s playgrounds, water sports, clubs and a gym, artists‟ spaces, wet fish shops, fish and chips, food – for visitors and residents alike. New developments (now likely stalled because of the recession) include the 1360 Vertical Pier project at the now derelict West Pier.
11 Sassatelli, M (2010) „Brighton and Hove and its Festival‟, in „Part IV Urban Mixed-Arts Festivals‟, in Giorgi, L (ed) EURO-FESTIVAL PROJECT: Arts Festivals and European Public Culture. WP3 Main Report: European Arts Festivals: Cultural Pragmatics and Discursive Identity Frames. European Commission (2011) European Arts Festivals – strengthening cultural diversity. Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Socio- economic Sciences and Humanities. EUR 24749 EN. http://ec.europa.eu/research/social- sciences/projects/384_en.html p238/9 12 These would be termed urban riots today; they aroused the same sort of media panic and moral outrage in 1964. 13 Interview with Donna Close. Before working for the City Council, Donna lived and worked for some twenty years in Brighton, with organisations such as Zap Arts. 14 Crisfield, M (ed: 2007) ZAP: 25 years of innovation. Brighton: Zap Art/ Queen‟s Park Books. The Zap Club‟s space still exists as a club, and Zap Arts is well-known as a radical arts group. 8
The derelict West Pier, 2011 Another set of initiatives concerned the development of the festival, and the changing nature of Brighton as a seaside resort. The festival founded in 1967 was the brainchild of a „festival entrepreneur/ impressario‟, who set up a number of festivals across the country at the time15. In the 1960s Brighton was still a successful seaside resort, close to London, known for its „day trippers‟ and somewhat risqué „dirty weekends‟, as well as for the rather seedy small- town gangster ambience immortalised by Graham Greene‟s 1930 novel, Brighton Rock, made into a film in 194716. By the 1980s, Brighton as a seaside resort was going rapidly downhill as holiday patterns changed. By the 1990s, however, by a happy coincidence of strong civic leadership and a strong Festival director, Brighton began to „rebrand‟ itself as a cultural destination rather than a tourist destination. The long programme of investment in the city‟s cultural and arts infrastructure which followed is dealt with in the next chapter.
Crowds on the sea front, May 2011
15 Nick Dodds interview. 16 A new film of Brighton Rock was released in 2010. 9
The city was one of the first to register civil partnerships with the change in the law; and now the gay and lesbian community is one of the largest in the south-east, with widely-celebrated Gay Pride festivals. The Brighton Festival is the largest in the country, and the second largest in the UK after Edinburgh, bringing an estimated £20 million to the local economy in 200417. Yet levels of deprivation in parts of Brighton are amongst the highest in the country, and there is some suggestion that polarisation is increasing, with low-level jobs (such as restaurant work) increasingly filled by people with high-level skills (such as students), and little presence of traditional industries such as fishing18.
The growth of Brighton‟s „knowledge economy‟ and „creative industries‟ is critical to its current development and resilience in face of the recession (unemployment has increased less than elsewhere). One third of all jobs in Brighton are in the knowledge industries, a considerably higher proportion than in comparable cities and England as a whole19. A major new development in 2011 recognis es Brighton‟s pre-eminence in the creative, digital and IT sectors: this is Brighton Fuse20, funded with £1 million by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and involving the two universities of Sussex and Brighton, both located in and round the city, and Wired Sussex, an independent agency which works with over 2,000 digital, media and technology companies in the region21.
Brighton‟s showing in the cultural sector is spectacular. Roughly one in ten jobs in Brighton are in the creative sector, and in 2008 Brighton was listed fifth in the Sharpie Index of Creative Cities across the UK, based on measurements of the creativity of individuals and businesses; the four cities outranking Brighton were the major cities of London, Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool. National statistics on engagement with the arts rank Brighton as top in the country outside London in 2008: 60% of the city‟s residents reported going to the theatre or a concert within the last six months, almost double the average for England22. It has more than fifty festivals each year, more than fifty cultural venues including theatres, performance spaces, pubs and clubs, and more than an estimated 1,000 bands and club nights.
Brighton‟s tourism industry is also highly significant, and growing. VisitBrighton‟s figures show23 that 12% of Brighton‟s jobs are in the tourism-related sector, and that in 2009 tourism was worth £988.8 million, supporting more than 18,000 jobs (part-time and full-time). Most
17 British Arts Festival Association (2008) Festivals Mean Business 3: a survey of Arts Festivals in the UK. BAFA, sam, and the University of Brighton. 18 Unlike Brighton, other south-east coastal towns formerly had industries such as mining (Folkestone) or ship- building (Chatham) to depend on. Perhaps Brighton‟s traditional industry has been tourism. See Annexe 2 for a detailed statistical portrait of Brighton. 19 See Annexe 2. 20 www.ahrc.ac.uk/News/Pages/BrightonFuse. „The consortium will examine and build on the dynamics of the city‟s large cluster of small digital and creative businesses and develop new ways for them to connect with and benefit from the research base and graduate talent pool from both the University of Brighton and the University of Sussex. It will also help develop more entrepreneurial opportunities for new graduates outside of the normal graduate recruitment fairs.‟ 21 www.wiredsussex.com 22 Data from NI11, „Engagement in the Arts‟. www.audit- commission.gov.uk/localgov/audit/nis/Pages/NIO11engagementinthearts.aspx 23 www.visitbrighton.com See Economic Impact Survey 2009. 10 visitors were in the upper income brackets, and seemed well satisfied – plenty to see and do, of high quality, and good and affordable places to eat and drink. This sounds rather different from the charabanc trade of the mid 20th century. (It is worth noting that Brighton has more restaurants per head of population than any other local authority in the country.)
Brighton has been characterised by a forward-looking council ready to take up opportunities to develop its arts and cultural heritage24. In Nick Dodds‟ words, the city has benefitted from a combination of civic leadership and political support, artistic vision and civic culture: „they understand culture, and the attractiveness of visitors for the economy‟, and council leaders have been supportive.
In the 1990s, the era of large-scale national and international funding, the local authority applied for grants from Arts Council England and the European Union and elsewhere, to redevelop its cultural institutions25 – £22 million for the complex of buildings that made up the Dome and Pavilion, the Corn Exchange and library. Brighton benefitted because it had a strong social and cultural infrastructure positive about the arts already in place: a critical mass of artists and creative industries, top rated and highly regarded arts groups such as Blast Theory and Lighthouse, all highly attractive to top international artistic groups such as the Hofesh Schechter Dance Company, which took up residency in 2008.
Thus „critical mass‟ attracts more „critical mass‟. The creative industries are one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. Rebecca Ball referred to Charles Landry‟s notion of „the creative city‟26, and Richard Florida‟s US study of „the creative class‟27 in a number of cities characterised by high levels of artistic activity and creativity, tolerance, diversity, integration, high levels of technology, which were all doing well economically. Florida described this as the shift from industrialisation to a creative, innovative, knowledge economy. On the Florida model, Brighton is currently a good example – „defying the credit crunch?‟ When asked about the attraction of Brighton for (re)locating creative industries, Rebecca Ball noted the following: access to affordable space and workspace, and to human resources („you can do business here‟); geographical location with good transport links to London, Gatwick Airport, Europe; the image and profile of the city as an attractive place to live and work, reinforced as more people and companies migrate here, with its beautiful architecture and its reputation for tolerance, diversity, sexuality and alternative life styles.
What part is played by culture and the arts in this image and reality? Rebecca Ball reminded us the image is not created by culture and the arts, but it is one contributory element. There is
24 Interview with Nick Dodds. 25 Interview with Rebecca Ball. 26 Landry, C (2000) The creative city: a toolkit for urban innovators. Abingdon, Oxford: Earthscan. . His ideas were much taken up by sociologists and creative experts in Japan, as discussed in the March 2011 workshop in Oita. See the first report, Smith, T (2011) Arts and regeneration in England’s South-East coastal towns. Final report for the Oxford-Oita Research Study 2010-2011. 27 Florida, R. (2002) The rise of the creative class, and how it is transforming work, leisure and everyday life. Basic Books. 11
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Street scenes in Brighton, May 2011
14 a propensity in Brighton to attend, engage and take part in the arts, as well demonstrated by the national statistics. The line between working artists and people who „make art‟ in their time off may be blurred more in Brighton than elsewhere: Rebecca Ball quoted Charlie Leadbetter‟s comment about „the professional amateur‟ as key to Brighton (as, for example, in the Artists Open Houses described in the next chapter).
But Brighton is recognised as a city of contrasts, or, as vividly present on the ground and spelt out in the statistical portrait presented in Annexe 2, a city of inequalities and even polarisation. One of the key issues for arts policy and culture in Brighton is whether and how it can address these inequalities. As Rebecca Ball noted, this is a problem for all festivals; it is recognised by the Brighton Festival, but can „outreach work‟ be sustained and joined-up for a sufficient length of time to succeed? This is the issue of participation and engagement discussed in the Salon debate reported in the next chapter, and further discussed in Chapter 4.
The city‟s cultural strategy28 well encapsulates „the city today‟ – „cosmopolitan, socially, culturally and creatively diverse with a unique social history and a long artistic tradition‟, characterised by „creativity, open-mindedness and free spiritedness‟, and „captured in two unique wonders: the Royal Pavilion explodes with creative genius, energy and the excess of its colourful past and the Brighton Pier is loud and brash, pure fun, relaxation and pleasure by the sea‟.
But the Strategy recognises the evidence „of a growing gap between the wealthy and the poor‟, and the „danger of developing a dual economy‟. It reports some intriguing initiatives to tackle the lack of engagement29. Two „micro museums‟ were opened in 2008 in Sure Start Children‟s Centres in Whitehawk and Portslade, both highly disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and their displays were chosen by consultation with local people. Feedback from visitors to the display in Whitehawk Children‟s Centre showed a very positive response; 68% of under 16s and 54% of adults said they would visit a city museum as a result, although only 6% had done so previously, and only a quarter had visited the Royal Pavilion or the Brighton Museum before. There are also family learning workshops for children under five and their parents, run in the city‟s children‟s centres, libraries and nurseries by an Early Years museum specialist.
A second element in the city‟s cultural strategy has been the creation of an Arts Commission in 2005 as part of the Local Strategic Plan. This is an „arms-length body‟, with elected councillors and representatives from creative and cultural industries as members, and places for individual artists. It has a brief to link to the voluntary sector, advocate for the arts, provide training and support for the professional development of the arts sector, and act in partnership with the city council, for example in running the White Night festival, and the Children‟s Festival.
28 Brighton and Hove City Council (2009) A Cultural Strategy for Brighton and Hove. Draft. www.brighton- hove.gov.uk/downloads/bhcc/Draft_Cultural_Strategy.pdf. Interview with Donna Close. 29 See case studies 1 and 7 in the Strategy. 15
Brighton Pier
We opened this chapter with Osbert Sitwell‟s lavish description of the Prince Regent‟s Royal Pavilion and Brighton in the early 19th century. We may end it with another description of Brighton, in the early 21st century, by a journalist writing an article for The Guardian – „Is Brighton Britain‟s hippest city?‟30 – in which he notes „the city‟s famous air of slightly seedy licentiousness‟ and Keith Waterhouse‟s notorious remark that „Brighton looks as though it is a town helping the police with their enquiries‟31. A dodgy, quirky, interesting sort of place, lively, and full of energy. Brighton by night from the Pier
30 Alexis Petridis, The Guardian, Wednesday 10 May 2010. www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/19/ 31 „Helping the police with their enquiries‟ is a euphemism for „being arrested‟, that is, before being formally charged. 16
3. WHAT DOES A FESTIVAL ADD TO A CITY?
Brighton – city of many festivals
Brighton is seen as „the city of the Brighton Festival‟, the largest festival in England, second only to Edinburgh in the UK, with its „explosion of events across the city‟, as headlined in 2011. But as our interviewees were careful to point out, and any quick search of the web will show, Brighton in fact hosts many festivals – approximately fifty – some indeed alongside or „nested in‟ the Festival – a „festival season‟, „a cultural hot spot‟. In 201132 this included the Brighton Festival, attracting over 300,000 people every year and creating an extra £20 million annually for the local economy; the Brighton Festival Fringe, with events in over 200 venues across the city, attracting audiences totalling 180,000 in 2010 to over 3,000 performances in 180 venues; Up-Stream, presented by Dada-South, with deaf and disabled artists; the Charleston Festival, held in the home of the Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant; the Great Escape, Europe‟s leading event for new music; and Artists Open Houses and HOUSE 201133. Some of the most powerful events of the Festival which we saw were Kutlug Ataman‟s artworks and moving, shimmering photographs of water and sky; and Janet Cardiff‟s sound installation interpretation of Thomas Tallis‟s 1573 forty part motet Spem in Alium, in which forty separately recorded voices are played back through forty separate speakers placed round an empty church hall34.
In this chapter we present the Festival Debate organised as part of the University of Sussex‟s Salon Debates, some examples of Brighton‟s festivals, and discuss issues and tensions, aims and impacts.
The Festival Debate
What does a festival add to a city? was the title of the debate organised by the University of Sussex Salon series35 on the penultimate Sunday of the 2011 Festival, to discuss the value of festivals to cities such as Brighton. Panelists36 and audience were invited to discuss questions such as
32 See Brighton Festival 2011. www.brightonfestival.org 33 „Brighton‟s festival season launches with Brighton Festival and Fringe, Great Escape, and Artists Open Houses.‟ www.artscouncil.org.uk/news/brightons-festival-season-launches 34 www.cardiffmiller.com. Janet Cardiff is fascinated by sound as a spatial form. „I placed the speakers around the room in an oval so that the listener would be able to really feel the sculptural construction of the piece by Tallis.‟ The church is the space used by Fabrica, an artists‟ organisation dedicated to contemporary art. Aldred, N (2007) Fabrica: the first ten years. Brighton. www.fabrica.or.uk. 35 www.sussex.ac.uk/lps/newsandevents 36 The four panellists were Andrew Comben, Director of the Brighton Dome and Festival; Professor Steve Miles from the University of Brighton, Director of Postgraduate Studies in the Faculty of Arts, known for his research into the social, cultural and economic impacts of Liverpool as European Capital of Culture, and cultural investment on Newcastle/ Gateshead Quayside; Dany Louise, a freelance strategic facilitator and arts writer, formerly Creative Industries Manager for Brighton and Hove City Council; and Dr Monica Sassatelli, Goldsmiths College, London, formerly Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, working on the project Art festivals and European public culture (www.euro-festival.org). 17
Street Theatre, New Road: Brighton Festival and the Fringe, 2011
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Street Theatre on the sea front: Brighton Festival 2011
Graeae: Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man on the sea front: Brighton Festival 2011
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‘Are arts festivals the preserve of the well-off and educated, or do they play an essential role in the life of a city and its residents?
Should festivals offer something for everyone, or should it be art for art‟s sake?
Is public spending on cultural events justified in times of economic hardship, or is it a valuable investment in the development of a city‟s identity?‟
The debate about festivals threw up the most hotly debated issues about festivals. The first major theme was „art for art’s sake’, or „art as economic development’. As argued by Andrew Comben, the Director of the Brighton Festival, the Festival had to stand alone – „to offer audiences an enormous cross-section of the artists‟ view of the world‟ – through the diversity of the events and the activities, as well as people‟s participation in them. But „presenting an exciting, critically engaged contemporary art programme is only one of the objectives that interests funders and other stakeholders. Festivals are now an intrinsic part of economic development strategies and what has become known as “culture-led regeneration”; that is, the use of cultural activity to kick-start physical and social renewal in some of Britain‟s most run-down and deprived areas‟37.
The second major theme was „image’ and „identity‟38. Has the idea of a festival lost all meaning – and become a fad, a fashion? Festivals have sprung up all over the country, and are associated with whatever you like: pub festivals, pop festivals, festivals of shopping – which might be thought to have little to do with the arts or creative industries. What sort of images does the idea of a festival conjure up? Festivals are part of how a city is perceived, its identity; a brand, a logo; about place and people. But is this identity single or diverse, accessible to all or only some, taken over by those with higher levels of cultural capital? Charles Landry‟s ideas about cultural form in The Creative City were picked over as part of the background to the debate about art and festivals,` the tension between elite and popular forms of entertainment and activity, and between „organised‟ or „commercial‟ and „spontaneous‟ events. (What would a „spontaneous outpouring of activity‟ mean, as one participant asked? „All art is hard work‟, and „art costs money to do, to organise‟, as others reminded us.) Is culture defined as „art‟ or as a „way of life‟? Does culture reflect society, or indeed should it?39
The third major theme was „engagement’. In the Salon debate, Andrew Comben‟s description of the Festival currently was „a constructed event‟, „a moment in time‟, „an opportunity to experience things we would not normally experience‟, „to attract as many people as possible‟. (For example, in 2009 festival events held in South Downs, an estate with the largest linguistic diversity in Brighton, had attracted huge numbers of people for whom this was a first experience of outdoor art.) His aim was „to create a space for everyone to enjoy‟ – a very
37 Dany Louise, personal communication 16 June 2011, piece written for The Stage. 38 Dr Monica Sassatelli, personal communication 16 June 2011, piece written for The Argus. 39 See the earlier report for discussion of the theoretical background to „elite‟ and „popular culture‟. 20 difficult thing to do – „to create different contexts to bring different people in‟; some offering a very specialised experience, others offering an experience for many people. This is essentially a vision based on exploration of diversity and plurality, dependent on community development: „there is as much work outside the Festival as in it‟. This combination of (and tension between) Festival activity and work done during the rest of the year is explored further in the following chapter.
A hint of „bread and circuses‟40 drew the comment that while the Festival can (should?) be seen as a public amenity, does this mean it ignores long term problems such as poor housing or education, unemployment, or long term sustainability? Are „needs‟ more important than „culture‟? Andrew Comben‟s view was that the Festival was intrinsically worthwhile for itself but should never be considered more worthwhile or important than public issues. But this should not be seen as a dichotomy: perhaps the festival and the arts work best when they engage with these issues, in creative ways.
Are festivals culturally inclusive? About two-thirds of the audience concluded that they should be, but weren‟t. A small majority thought that the Brighton Festival‟s programme was. But how should we define inclusive? The festival was showcasing some brilliant work by groups with disabilities41, but had major difficulties in engaging Brighton‟s white working class communities. One question was whether the Festival is perceived as for „residents‟ or for „outsiders‟: „local residents are spectators rather than actively engaged.‟
How can we measure the benefit of festivals? We cannot rely solely on the economic argument, any more than relying on participation and engagement as the prime aim of festivals. „Art is about doing and explaining something the rest of us can‟t do‟ – a vision. There are both economic and social benefits: the criteria for benefit must be flexible, including those who benefit but do not consume, those who consume, and those who participate. Again these issues are explored further in the next chapter.
Brighton Festival and Dome
The Brighton Festival was founded in 1967, on a basis of „civic will‟, partly as an antidote to negative perceptions of the town associated with the clashes between Mods and Rockers. It began as a classical music festival, deliberately international and avant garde, with world- known artists such as musician Yehudi Menuhin and composer Sir William Walton. Over the years this original conception changed. By the 1980s it had broadened into a theatre and dance festival. In the 1990s the City Council embarked on a building refurbishment programme for the Dome and the associated complex of buildings, and gave the Festival a 50 year lease. The background of the changing nature of Brighton as a traditional seaside resort has already been explored in the previous chapter.
40 This is a reference to the Roman emperors‟ techniques for pacifying the large urban population of Rome: ensuring a supply of cheap corn from the provinces, and organising regular festivals and gladiator shows. 41 www.up-stream.org.uk 21
(above) The Dome Café and Bar; (below) the entrance to the Dome and Corn Exchange T
22
One description of this development was that it was „very organic‟42, both very interdisciplinary and very practical, fostered partly by the interdisciplinary approach of the University of Sussex and its graduates who tended to stay local, and by Brighton University‟s practical approach to the arts, as well as the 1980s recession which meant that Brighton had „cheap living and working space‟. International artists were also attracted to Brighton, such as the Hofesh Schechter Company, which by 2008 was known as amongst the best in the world for new young radical dancers. And digital or „virtual‟ approaches to the arts were also taking off, such as Blast Theory, an artists‟ collective, which creates „theatre‟ by interactive technology via mobile phone texting, so „participants become creators‟43.
We interviewed the current Director of the Festival (2008 onwards), Andrew Comben, and the former Director (2000-2008), Nick Dodds. Andrew Comben44 was appointed Director of the Brighton Dome and Festival in 2008, in time to plan the 2009 Festival. His view of the Festival was that its breadth and diversity was part of its strength; so it was important to think both about residents and about visitors who could be attracted in, and also about Brighton‟s extremes of wealth and poverty and its geographically distinct areas. The funding and creative tensions were thus how to create artistic events at the top of the artistic spectrum, while also providing for the most deprived groups in the community. The Hofesh Schechter Company is one example which combined both aims. Now a „company in residence‟ in Brighton‟s Corn Exchange („the largest semi-sprung dance floor in Europe‟ – „the space excited them first‟), the company has been commissioned to go out and work with 14 to 16 year olds on the housing estates, creating and performing dances with them, Hofesh Schechter drawing on his own experience of growing up on estates in Jerusalem, first as a rock musician and then a choreographer – „very urban, very athletic‟.
Out of this tension sprang two ideas fo r Comben: first, the idea of a „guest director‟, who would each year provide a creative focus and tension for the Festival; and second, the emphasis on work all the year round, in order to reach the whole community. Comben described the genesis of the idea of a „guest director‟ thus. Before arriving in Brighton, he had thought about the „guest director‟ as representing artists in Brighton and at the Festival. But when he arrived, he had been struck by audiences in Brighton: „they were on their feet, asking questions; they like talking! Very culturally unusual in England.‟ So perhaps the Festival could be more than an artistic event, tapping into world events such as human rights, climate change, in a city already very engaged with such issues, the first constituency in the UK to have a Green MP, and historically known for a liberal, free-thinking, alternative life style, „like San Francisco‟. In Sassatelli‟s interviews45, Comben is quoted as saying that the Festival can stimulate discussions which „start to be between real people about real things
42 Interview with Rebecca Ball. 43 See Blast Theory‟s interactive event A Machine to See With, in Brighton‟s Digital Festival. www.lighthouse.org.uk/programme/blast-theory-a-machine-to-see-with 44 Interview with Andrew Comben. His previous experience was as Director of the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme at the Aldeburgh Festival, and Head of Artistic Planning at the Wigmore Hall in London. 45 Sassatelli (2010) op.cit, 241 23
The Corn Exchange, Brighton
24 about the way they feel and the arts, fundamentally, I believe, express it better than anything else, what it is to be human and how fallible and how changeable and how we can improve as a society‟.
The first Guest Director, in 2009, was Anish Kapoor, who created sculptures across the city, reminiscent of his major exhibition at the Royal Academy that year. The second was Brian Eno, in 2010, well known as a cultural thinker and for his electronic music. (Hofesh Schechter will be Guest Director in 2014, with an opportunity to look back over his seven years of being based in Brighton.)
Two events prompted Comben to think about the Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi as Guest Director for 2011. The first was a chance meeting with her son, Kim Aris, in Oxford, sending reggae tapes to his mother. The second was a photograph of the Elders, a group working for peace, including Mary Robinson and Kofi Annan as members, where Aung San Suu Kyi is represented by an empty chair. Comben began to work with the Burma Campaign, and went to Burma to discuss the final programme with her. He has clearly been moved by the public response to Aung San Suu Kyi‟s involvement in the 2011 Festival, and to her message46 – „the audience response is to take action, to do something, to be more connected with each other‟; the arts are a great motivator for people‟ – and he wants to think more about her legacy, and how this has touched people. Anniversary – an act of memory was planned for the final day of the Festival, when speakers at the Freedom Picnic 2011 would recite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 in as many different languages as time would allow47.
Comben was also clear about the importance of buildings – and the Dome building in particular, which includes a concert hall and theatre; the Corn Exchange; the Dome Cafe and Bar; meeting rooms; and open access through to the Museum and Art Gallery. He spoke of the importance of opening up the cafe and the bar, so it is now used as a drop-in place and informal meeting place, open all day long and heavily used48. The Dome is thus now not just a theatre or concert hall, but an arts centre used throughout the day and night.
The background and history of this development we learned from the previous Director of the Festival and Dome (2000-2008), Nick Dodds49. Talking about Brighton‟s position nationally and internationally, he pointed out that with the enormous growth in festivals, newer festivals had to think about serving a „niche market‟ (Manchester, for example, only shows new work). Brighton, by contrast, is a „mixed arts festival‟, with a long history. It had a long
46 See Aung San Suu Kyi‟s message for the 2011 Festival, recorded on 20 February 2011 www.brightonfestival.org/Aung-San-Suu-Kyi 47 www.actsofmemory.net 48 We observed groups of mothers drinking coffee and breast-feeding their babies; local people chatting; workers meeting, including the Director. 49 Interview with Nick Dodds. He came to the Brighton Festival with previous experience as Finance Director of the Edinburgh Fdestival, and with the Arts Festival Association (BAFA) and the International Festivals and Events Association (IFEA). Since 2008 he has been heading Festivals and Events International (FEI), a consultancy which focuses on culture-led regeneration of cities (www.feiuk.com) 25 history of investment in city infrastructure, and the decision to fund the massive renovation of the Brighton Dome in the 1990s through a separate trust, combining Festival and Dome together, but not under the City Council, was crucial50. The Dome was reopened and the Festival relaunched in 2002, with a new responsibility for developing the programme over the whole year, resulting in a critical shift from „a civic duty to present the programme‟ to „an artistic-led programme developed throughout the year‟.
This shift marked an important economic and social model. Investment is from the public purse (the City Council, national bodies such as the Arts Council), but financial returns go to a private company (the Trust). But clearly matters are more complex. An economic impact assessment conducted by the council in 2004 showed that public investment (approx. £1 million per year from the City Council) brought in £20 million per year to the local economy. The conclusion has to be that these initiatives require substantial subsidy and investment to run, but the economic impact is considerable. The social impacts on social cohesion and the quality of life are also crucial – a sense of place, civic pride? – but very difficult to measure. Possibly the UK has concentrated on economic outcomes because they are easier to measure. What are the consequences of having the same organisation running both the Festival and the wider programme of the Dome? Nick Dodds thought there were advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages include the maximisation of the effects of the Festival, which only runs for a short time; more efficient use of resources; the possibility of maintaining resources (for example, marketing, fund-raising, advertising departments) which could not be sustained if limited to the short time period of a festival. The main disadvantage is that running a festival for a month and running a building and a programme throughout the year need quite different skills. Running a festival requires „a specific skill in thinking about a programme and maintaining artistic skill‟; it has a cycle: „when it‟s finished, everyone relaxes, takes time off, rethinks‟. Running a building and a programme throughout the year requires different commercial and financial skills, high-level but „flat‟ skills, with no obvious cycle – keeping theatres and concert halls programmed and full. So this requires staff with different skills, and there may be tensions between the different levels and types of skills needed.
„The Brighton Festival had made a huge leap in stature‟ in 2002: „it would not be where it is now if it had not taken on the Dome‟. This was Nick Dodds‟ conclusion.
Other festivals, events, and arts groups
However dominant the Brighton Festival and the Dome‟s programme, Brighton is home to other festivals, and other events and arts groups. Here we show a snapshot.
50 The buildings are owned by the City Council and leased to the Festival Society (i.e. the Trust) for 50 years for a peppercorn rent – one white rose per year. Note that the Trust has to prove control of an asset for a substantial length of time in order to raise funds; so the 50 years period is important. 26
Artists Open Houses and the HOUSE Festival51
The best known and longest established is the Artists Open Houses. Thirty years ago painter Ned Hoskins, trained initially at Harrogate School of Art and then at the Royal College of Art where he was a contemporary of David Hockney, first had the idea of opening up his front room as a temporary „gallery‟ during the Brighton Festival. His aim was both to show his work to the public, and also to give an idea of what it might be to live as an artist. A few other local artists joined him. From this small beginning, Artists Open Houses has become a festival in its own right. In 2011 there were more than 1,000 artists showing their work in 250 locations, and nine different art „trails‟ in Brighton and Hove, and more in the surrounding area – including pottery, ceramic sculpture, ironwork and blacksmithing, photography, etching, textiles, jewellery – ranging from large public works (for example, The Ceramic House, Anvil Ironworks) to small intimate pieces (jewellery, toys)52.
Digital Festival
By contrast, the Brighton Digital Festival began in 2011, as a month of „digital culture, incorporating performances, exhibitions, conferences, workshops and meet-ups‟, with international artists and leaders53.
A major event in this festival has been Blast Theory‟s „heist movie‟ A Machine To See With, which happens in the streets of Brighton and is played (and created) through participants‟ mobile phones. Blast Theory is a Brighton-based collective of internationally renowned digital artists. Here they think about the city as a „cinematic space‟; the puzzle is how screens might be inserted into the streets or carried through them; the solution is to think of „our eyes as the screens themselves‟, and put the participant „at the centre of a unique unfolding drama across the city‟54. All participants have to do is to sign up with their mobile number; on the day, they receive a call, arrive at the allotted street corner and receive instructions. „Art is rarely this accessible, or fun‟55.
Another digital event „first‟ is The Brighton QR Treasure Hunt, organised by The Brighton Treasure Hunt Company and Sodaworks. Local business sponsors display QR codes created by local Brighton artists, hidden around the North Laines and South Lanes areas of Brighton. „Rise to the Digital Challenge and Crack the Clues in QR Code‟ is the headline56. All that participants need is a smartphone to download apps.
51 www.aoh.org.uk; www.housefestival.org 52 For our Japanese visitors, the artists‟ open houses were probably even more radical and captivating than the Festival, with their range of work and ideas and life styles. 53 http://brightondigitalfestival.co.uk/2011 54 www.lighthouse.org.uk/programme/blast-theory-a-machine-to-see-with 55 www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/24/what-you-like 56 www.wiredsussex.com/press/pressrelease; http://qrtreasurehunt.co.uk; 27
Artists Open Houses
28
Artists Open Houses; Anvil Ironworks
29
Both Blast Theory and The Brighton QR Treasure Hunt are examples of the media and digital technology development that are key to Brighton‟s expanding knowledge economy and the creative industries, as explored in Ch 2 and in Appendix 2.
White Night and Burning the Clocks
A different sort of festival is Brighton‟s White Night57 at the end of October, typically marking Hallowe‟en and the end of summer (and British Summer Time) and thus the onset of winter, and paralleling the French „nuit blanche‟ (that is, „sleepless night‟). This is a night- long free festival when all major locations throughout Brighton stay open, serve food and drink, and are filled with surging crowds of all age groups, in carnival mode. The „Burning the Clocks‟ festival, organised at the Winter Solstice, is also highly symbolic, one of the turning points of the old and the new year, when people make lanterns in the shape of clocks and cast them into the sea to throw the old year and its unhappinesses away58.
Conclusions
So, having sketched in the Brighton Dome and Festival, and some of Brighton‟s other festivals, as well as discussing some of the dilemmas raised by our interviews and observations, what can we conclude about the impact and value of Brighton‟s Festival and culture to the city?
In research on arts festivals in Europe59, Sassatelli and her colleagues ask: „What is the purpose of festivals? Branding, urban regeneration and democratisation, or rather transmitting the ideas of openness, dialogue, curiosity, cultural diversity, internationalism and critical inquiry?‟
Sassatelli‟s research explores the relationship between cities and urban mixed-arts festivals, taking Brighton as one example. In Brighton, „branding the city and branding the festival go hand in hand; the festival is seen as fundamental for the city profile, and vice versa, festivals and their cities are linked by a symbolic (rather than causal) relationship‟. Here we have a medium-sized city wanting to regenerate itself, an active city council, and a population socio- demographically varied enough to provide a responsive local audience and to stimulate a „fringe‟ mobilisation.
Our interviews and observations provided evidence on art as economic development, political engagement, community development, as well as art for art‟s sake and its role in identity-
57 www.whitenightnuitblanche.com 58 Pippa Smith interview. Burning the Clocks was first organised in 1993, by Same Sky. www.burningtheclocks.co.uk 59 Sassatelli, M (2010) „Brighton and Hove and its Festival‟, in „Part IV Urban Mixed-Arts Festivals‟, in Giorgi, L (ed; 2010) EURO-FESTIVAL PROJECT: Arts Festivals and European Public Culture. WP3 Main Report: European Arts Festivals: Cultural Pragmatics and Discursive Identity Frames. European Commission (2011) European Arts Festivals – strengthening cultural diversity. Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities. EUR 24749 EN. http://ec.europa.eu/research/social- sciences/projects/384_en.html 30 making. Charles Landry60, writing for the Council of Europe in 1999, set out a number of strategic dilemmas in cultural policy: culture as „the arts‟ or as a way of life; cultural democracy or the democratisation of culture – the dilemma between „high‟ and „low culture‟ discussed in the previous report; art for art‟s sake or as development; art as a public good, or conditional activity justified by its impacts; „spectacle‟ or participation; one blue-print or diversity; an audience of visitors or of residents. These dilemmas reflect the (unresolved) issues discussed in our interviews.
The economic impact of the Festival (as measured by financial input into the local economy) has already been discussed and will be further analysed in the next chapter. Social impacts are harder to measure. Brighton‟s ranking on engagement with the arts, as shown in national statistics, has been discussed already; we cannot conclude this is entirely due to the Festival, but more as a contextual fact. It is relevant if we consider issues of the Festival‟s local embeddedness, cultural policy and audience. Both the City Council and the Arts Council are interested in audience data as a measure of „audience reach‟ and of engagement or participation. Festival audiences are largely local – with 56% coming from Brighton and Hove, 38% from the South East and London, with only 6% from further afield or abroad61. Audience profiling suggests that 40% comes from the „urban intelligence‟ group62, which represents 7.2% of the national population, but 31% of the Brighton and Hove population, the biggest single group – typically young, well educated, open to new ideas and influences, cosmopolitan in their tastes and liberal in their social attitudes. This should be read as a success story; but it also raises issues about the participation and engagement of the groups that Brighton‟s arts and festival culture does not reach so well – for example, the Moulscoomb estate pictured below. This is explored further in the next chapter.
60 Matarasso, F and Landry, C (1999) Balancing act: twenty-one strategic dilemmas in cultural policy. Cultural Policies Research and Development Unit, Policy Note No.4. Strasbourg: Council of Europe 61 2007 Fast Forward Report; quoted in Sassatelli (2010). 62 Experian Mosaic cluster, now dropped in their 2009 classification; quoted in Sassatelli (2010). 31
4. ART FOR EXCELLENCE, ECONOMIC REGENERATION, OR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT?
This chapter focuses in more detail on some of the dilemmas posed by culture-led regeneration; and in particular the tensions between the aims and outcomes of artistic excellence as a goal in its own right, art as a means for economic benefit, and art as a tool for participation and democratic renewal.
The recent spate of reports on arts policy and development all stress the inevitable reduction in statutory funding63, which clearly will no longer be on the scale of the Labour government over the decade following 1997, with its massive support for huge prestigious projects in large, post-industrial cities, such as the Gateshead Baltic, the Liverpool Tate, the Margate Turner Contemporary. The emphasis in the second decade of the new century is more on smaller towns and cities, rethinking their priorities and refocusing their energies, cross- fertilising ideas about service delivery, artistic excellence, engagement and democratic revitalisation, and economic benefit, so that all are seen as a seamless whole. Here are some examples to show these developments elsewhere than Brighton, which all stress the seamless interweaving of excellence, economic benefits and participation.
Creative Collaborations64 has been a unique partnership between the East of England Development Agency (EEDA65) and the Arts Council England East – the only formal investment partnership in the country between a cultural and an economic development agency. It has produced eight arts centres of excellence, all of which have the potential to transform their communities. The aims are a combination of economic and social – to attract talented people and businesses; promote supportive environments in which creative talent can thrive; make the region more attractive for investment; and grow the regional economy for the benefit of all:
„The arts are what give our countries, cities and suburbs character. They give outward expression to national, local and individual personalities as well as capturing particular historic moments and moods. The arts also help individuals develop skills, and this in turn improves confidence and raises aspirations.‟
Regional Cities East, an alliance of six cities in the east of England – Peterborough, Luton, Ipswich, Norwich, Colchester and Southend-on-Sea – believe that by sharing best practice,
63 See, for example, the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee (2011) Funding of the arts and heritage: third report of session 2010-2011, Vol I Report together with formal minutes, Vol II Oral and written evidence. HC 464-1. London: TSO, published on 28 March 2011. www.parliament.uk/cmscom , and the Government‟s response, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2011) Government Response to the Select Committee on Funding of Arts and Heritage, Cm 8071, June 2011. 64 EEDA and Arts Council England: Creative collaborations 2009-2011: a shared prospectus for growth. www.eeda.org.uk; www.artscouncil.org.uk 65 As discussed in the first report, the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), of which EEDA is one, have been abolished by the new Coalition government. A crucial source of funding for the arts, and regional overview of priorities, has thus been taken out. 32 collaborating on joint ventures and setting clear priorities, they can create more jobs and affordable homes than they could by working alone. They share a common belief, that smaller cities can deliver economic growth in a sustainable way. And they face common challenges, to improve infrastructure and skill levels. Their paper66, Bigger thinking for smaller cities, proposes an approach in which „a network of arts and culture projects in smaller cities can be used to maximise economic, social and democratic returns‟. Projects include redevelopment of a run-down area of Colchester, St Botolph‟s, into a „cultural quarter‟; revitalising derelict buildings in Southend with the help of national arts organisation Metal; a new writers‟ centre in Norwich; the UK Centre for Carnival Arts in Luton; Citizen Power in Peterborough in collaboration with the RSA; DanceEast in Ipswich at the new Jerwood Dance House.
Citizen Power in Peterborough is part of the authority‟s Single Delivery Plan to transform public services – the „vehicle for delivering change with residents‟ – in partnership with the think tank RSA and Arts Council England67. Arts and social change projects include Creative Gatherings; experiments in „place making‟ with young women who have been banned from a local shopping centre; the creation of a new community interest company, Creative Peterborough, a network of local artists; artists‟ residencies hosted by local voluntary groups; experimental tours of the city by local people called Take Me To. Sustainable citizenship projects include developing a community garden attached to a children‟s centre; and identifying unused plots of land across the city that might be used more sustainably. Recovery projects work with people with experience of drug and alcohol problems. The Civic Commons project has begun to tackle antisocial behaviour by bringing together local people and setting up Community Guardians. ChangeMakers seeks to identify key individuals who can help address the challenges: service practitioners and elected officers working in the public sector, and informal gatekeepers and community activists well known in their areas.
Having demonstrated the „seamless‟ nature of current strategic development, let us now, for the sake of clarity, pick the different threads apart.
Artistic excellence: art for its own sake
Andrew Comben, speaking about the Brighton Festival, was totally clear that artistic excellence, top rated quality, was an essential and fundamental requirement68, and that a „critical mass‟ of excellence was important. The organisations involved were acknowledged to be top in their field, both nationally and internationally: the Hofesh Schechter Dance Company with its group of young international dancers; Blast Theory, the digital artists‟ collective; Dada/ Up-Stream, bringing together disabled arts groups; Fabrica, the arts group based in one of Brighton‟s most famous disused Regency churches, which commissions contemporary visual arts installations such as Janet Cardiff‟s Forty Part Motet; the list can go
66 Regional Cities East (2010) Bigger thinking for smaller cities: how arts and culture can tackle economic, social and democratic engagement challenges in smaller cities. www.rce.org.uk 67 O‟Brien, R (2011) Citizen Power in Peterborough: one year on. London: The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. 68 Andrew Comben, Director of the Brighton Festival and Dome,in interview and in the Salon Debate. 33 on and on. Festivals, and residencies, were an opportunity for artists both locally and from all over the world to meet and explore and share and develop their work and ideas.
Art as the driver of economic regeneration
Nick Dodd, former Director of the Brighton Festival, is a powerful proponent of the economic driver of the arts. Festivals are a good example: festivals are „sustainable businesses... generating revenue from a wide range of sources‟. BAFA‟s 2008 report69, Festivals Mean Business 3, concluded that festivals and the cultural scene in general were thriving. During 2006-07, an estimated £41.8 million was spent by festivals in the UK – mainly audience spend in very specific geographical locations. In Brighton, for example, in 2004 the Festival generated £22 within the city‟s economy for every £1 spent on tickets; this meant over £20 million within the local economy alone. The 2011 report on the Edinburgh Festivals70 showed a huge economic impact, huge tourism and promotional benefits, and significant contributions to local and national identity and pride, and social, cultural and civic life. Additional tourism revenue generated for Scotland in 2010 was worth £261 million; and for Edinburgh, £245 million.
There were social impacts as well. Nearly nine in ten Edinburgh respondents to the research survey said that the festivals increased their local sense of pride in their home city. Audiences were willing to experiment and take risks: nearly two-thirds said the festivals had encouraged them to see less well-known events. There were educational benefits as well: more than nine in ten parents said that attending festival events as a family increased their child‟s imagination71.
Art as political engagement
Andrew Comben was explicit about this element in his discussion of Aung San Suu Kyi‟s impact; but joining political campaigns was not necessarily the only outcome – simply being „more aware of one‟s common humanity‟. And there were many events and exhibitions in the Festival which invited one to do that: Lynette Wallworth‟s Evolution of Fearlessness was one example72.
69 British Arts Festival Association (2008) Festivals Mean Business 3: a survey of Arts Festivals in the UK. BAFA, sam, and the University of Brighton. 70 BOP Consulting (2011) Edinburgh Festivals Impact Study Final Report May 2011. www.bop.co.uk 71 See also the reports from the Culture and Sport Evidence (CASE) Programme for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), for example the 2010 report by the EPPI-Centre at the University of London‟s Institute of Education on Understanding the drivers, impact and value of engagement in culture and sport. Findings show that participation in structured arts activities improves secondary school students; academic attainment, preschoolers and primary schoolers early literacy skills, young people‟s cognitive abilities and transferable skills. 72 At the University of Brighton Gallery. 34
Art as community development: participation and engagement
One of the clearest tensions in cultural-led regeneration is that between the participating and the non-engaged – those who go to theatre, opera, art exhibitions, discussions, and those who say „It‟s not for the likes of us‟. This tension came out clearly in the Salon Debate on „what do festivals add to a city?‟ when the audience voted by more than two-thirds that festivals were in general not culturally inclusive but should be, although they voted more narrowly (55% to 45%) that the Brighton Festival programme was inclusive. The challenge in Brighton (as with all festivals, as we were reminded by Rebecca Ball) is how to engage the groups and neighbourhoods least involved. This is borne out by the audience figures quoted at the end of the last chapter – that the majority come from the educated middle class groups in the population, rather than the working class residents of the council/ social housing estates. Our observations during the Artists Open Houses weekend at the start of our research in Brighton gave a vivid illustration of this on the ground. Visiting artists‟ houses in the Hollingdean area just below Hollingbury Park, mainly semi-detached houses with gardens full of roses, we looked across the little valley to the bleak social housing terraces of Moulsecoomb73; but when we asked whether children and families came to visit from there, the answer was a rather curt „oh no‟.
Annexe 2 gives a clear picture of the disparities in skill, education and employment between Brighton‟s advantaged and disadvantaged neighbourhoods. How then to engage with neighbourhoods like Moulsecoomb? One answer comes from Pippa Smith74, Head of Learning, Access and Participation for the Brighton Dome and Festival, responsible during the Festival for work with children, but working throughout the year with local schools and youth groups – you start with the schools: children, parents and teachers.
She described the Children‟s Parade, started 25 years ago and still run by the arts group Same Sky (Pippa worked there for twelve years), which opens the Festival. This year it involved 6,000 children from one year group in schools across the city, with a procession that created „sixteen miles of traffic jams along the sea front; when the front was at the beach, the back was still at the railway station‟. The background organisation is highly structured. Pippa described how the planning started with a big meal („food and drink are very important for development‟) for teachers from 77 schools, brainstorming ideas in small groups, each with an artist (some from the Notting Hill Carnival). This year the theme was „the Rights of the Child‟. Schools divide up ideas.
Three key quotes from Pippa Smith:
„My job is to inspire the teachers – they are fantastic.’
73 See photograph on p32. 74 Interview with Pippa Smith. She started work in Brighton at the end of the 1980s, having worked in the 1970s in London for the Arts Council, for example with the Notting Hill Carnival. 35
„If you are a child in Brighton, you do the Parade; for many white working class children, the Parade is the Festival.‟
„Children are passionate – inspirational.’
The important thing is the follow-up development work. Two examples come from work with schools over the years. The first is Adopt the Author, a literacy project which had been running for eight years. Children „adopt an author‟ and critique the work. The aim is to link school classes with children‟s authors to promote literacy, encourage writing and make the most of ICT75; each project ends with a special event or party. This year, in one of the schools the teacher and the author secretly planned this party would be preceded by a treasure hunt that led through some of the main Festival locations (Fabrica with Janet Cardiff‟s Forty Part Motet playing was one). For children from schools in neighbourhoods like Moulscoomb and Whitehawk, this may have been the first time to visit an art gallery or Brighton‟s Festival, or meet a live author or artist. The second project was dance, of many varieties. For example, the Hofesh Schechter dance Company went out into schools and ran workshops and brought young people to give performances in the Dome. A lot of kids are engaged with street music, according to Andrew Comben. Another example was social dances, including the Chill-out Lounge for under eights („like French squares – grandfathers dancing with little children‟). Circus workshops, and a young offenders project were other initiatives; and she is keen to start a young mothers group. The key always was to start with the schools.
Pippa Smith sees herself as a „creative producer‟ (the French would call her „animateur‟). But it is hard to evaluate the success of her work, or this style. One thing that matters to her is the commitment and passion shown by young people. Another is the numbers involved – for example, the numbers of women committed to read the UN Declaration of Human Rights at the Freedom Picnic at the end of the Festival: „5,000 copies were printed free, but we found we needed 50,000!‟
Is participation working, is she reaching people? „Arts organisations, yes; social services, no.‟ She is trying to create partnerships; for example, for the young offenders project she is trying to make contact with the Alternative School, the Family Intervention Projects (PIPs) and the Youth Offending Teams (YOTs). But „we are spread too thinly, we have to jump around, now work with babies, now with old people...‟
What sort of impact would we expect „art as a tool for participation‟ to have? Participation or community development techniques clearly have potential for engaging people, bringing out the numbers for something like the Children‟s Parade, creating enjoyment, encouraging people to do things they might not have tried before (as in the Adopt an Author project, or respondents to the Whitehawk and Portslade „mini-museum‟ projects based in children‟s centres). In the longer term, we might expect impact on young people‟s education, both
75 See Brighton Festival 2011 handbook, p67, Adopt an Author. This year the schools were Moulscoomb Primary, Balfour Junior, Coldean Primary, and Cottesmore SDt Mary‟s RC Primary. 36 directly from the programme with the children and indirectly from their parents‟ encouragement. This is a model well known elsewhere and needs to be tested here.
The final comments on participation and models of engagement come from Anthony Zacharzewski76, director of the Democratic Society77, who has been running CityCamp Brighton78 as an experiment „to reimagine ways in which collaboration and web technologies will shape the future of our city‟. The core idea of CityCamps is to use technology to create ideas and social networks to create solutions for social problems. Originating in the US, it was first used in the UK in 2010; Zacharzewski launched it in Brighton in 2011, bringing together local people, representatives from the voluntary and community sectors, local government and other authorities (the police, health) and central government. The evaluation of the first event, published in May 201179, described it as „an intensive local innovation event‟ which „has created the beginnings of a social innovation network in the city‟. Brighton is characterised as „a vibrant and creative city with two universities and active digital and creative communities‟, „millions of visitors every year and a lively night time economy‟; but „it also has pockets of intense deprivation and services are not uniformly good across the area. The organisers wanted to use the event to re-energise the relationship between the City and its Citizens and to create a network of people from all parts of the city who would innovate and develop services and projects to make Brighton a better place to live and work.‟ Zacharzewski suggested that he has based this work in Brighton partly because national statistics on participation80 show that 25% of the population wanted to be more involved. In Brighton, this would mean about 75,000 people – compared with a usual public attendance at council meetings of perhaps four or five.
The event created „conversations‟, which to be successful have to be open, independent (not run or controlled by the „authorities‟), informed in ways that people can understand, enjoyable, and focused on topics that matter to ordinary people and can be „owned‟ by them at the end. Technology is useful in two ways; first because things like mobiles and smart phones and the web are widely available to most people; and second because it is possible with this technology to move very rapidly through the stages of creating an idea, researching it, finding information, testing out the idea and presenting it as a full-researched proposal – much more rapidly than the usual process of taking a proposal through the consultation and debating stages of local (or indeed national) government.
The weekend produced a range of proposals for projects. The winner was My Urban Angel, described as an app to be run on a smartphone by anyone going out at night and wanting to
76 Interview with Anthony Zacharzewski. Anthony worked formerly in Whitehall at the Treasury and the Cabinet Office, then was Head of Policy in the Brighton and Hove City Council in 2006. 77 www.demsoc.org 78 www.citycampbtn.org 79 Howe, C and Zacharzewski, A (2011) City Camp Brighton: report and lessons learned. LGID and Public-i. The Democratic Society and Public-i, May 2011. Democratic Society Research Paper 3.mso 80 National Indicators collected from 2008 in the Place Survey; see http://www.audit- commission.gov.uk/localgov/audit/nis/pages/place 37 keep in touch with friends and stay safe. The group who designed this are now setting up a social enterprise81. A second event, City Forum, was held in October 2011.
Zacharzewski‟s work is not about arts or culture-led engagement – although it is very close to the work of Brighton‟s Digital Festival, and Wired Sussex was involved in CityCamp. But the principles and issues with participation are common. The final conclusion in the May 2011 evaluation is strikingly similar to issues in arts-led participation: however stimulating the event for its participants, more work has to be done on representativeness before we can be sure that all areas of the city are represented.
Breakfast interview at The Grand: May 2011
81 http://myurbanangel.org/what-is-it 38
5. HOW TO ‘DO A BRIGHTON’ – FACTORS FOR SUCCESSFUL REGENERATION
We start this chapter with an illustration. An interesting example of Brighton‟s knowledge economy and creative industries is provided by Marie Murphy82, who runs the „one-man- band‟ Brighton Treasure Hunt Company83. This designs and organises individually-tailored treasure hunts throughout the city and is much in demand by „hen parties‟84 and birthday parties, partly local but mainly for visitors. Marie herself locates her company in the „small business‟ sector, and sees it as one of her aims to bring more business to local shops, where she places her treasure hunt „clues‟ and expects participants to make small purchases. She also discusses the problems of small businesses in Brighton – lack of space, high rents – and the importance of networks such as Wired Sussex where members meet regularly to share information, swap opportunities, develop new ideas, and keep up with information about policy. Marie has just completed the MA degree in Digital Media Arts run by the University of Brighton in collaboration with the Lighthouse Media Centre85, and has been asked by Brighton Fuse to talk to the project team about her trajectory from the masters degree towards an entrepreneurial path. Marie sums up, „I think that the connections between digital technology, art and industry are vital for the continued success and growth of Brighton.‟
What role do arts play in regeneration? Richard Russell, currently Director of Strategic Partnerships for Arts Council England86, asked why we should choose the arts as a vehicle for regeneration, rather than any other tool. It is still rather early to look for hard evidence of economic impact: all we have to go on is case studies. He suggested that what evidence there is argues for the importance of image, the uniqueness of place; inward investment, attractiveness to people with skills, retention of small businesses; spillover effects for the creative industries. Brighton has a long and distinctive history; and it is the particular distinctiveness and uniqueness of the „arts proposition‟ for each place that is important in explaining its regeneration; the motivation is not always present. In Brighton the crucial factor has been committed leadership determined to see something through.
What then can we conclude about the factors associated with Brighton‟s success story? „How to do a Brighton‟ has entered the language of arts-led regeneration, as Richard Russell reminded us. Our interviewees and the statistical portrait in Annexe 2 are in considerable agreement. The summary is as follows: Brighton‟s remarkable growth of the knowledge economy and the creative industries – a strong and rapidly growing sector
82 Marie Murphy interview, and personal communications 19 August and 20 September 2011. 83 www.thebrightontreasurehuntcompany.co.uk 84 Parties organised before a woman‟s wedding; the equivalent parties before a man‟s wedding are called „stag nights‟. 85 Lighthouse describes itself as a digital culture agency, which supports, commissions and exhibits work by artists and filmmakers. 86 Interview with Richard Russell. He was formerly Director of External Relations and Development at Arts Council England/ South East, in Brighton. 39
A „critical mass‟ of artists, arts groups and collectives, digital experimenters, with a long history of such activity Access to affordable space and workspace Support for small businesses and awareness of their needs The presence of two universities within the city, with strong links to the knowledge economy and creative industries (for example, Brighton Fuse); many graduates stay around for some period of time A highly-skilled population – not just in terms of educational achievement but in the softer skills of presentation increasingly required by employers Geographical location and transport communications: proximity to London, airports such as Gatwick, and links to Europe High levels of participation and engagement – note Andrew Comben‟s comment that people want to discuss; the national statistics on engagement with the arts; Anthony Zacharzewski‟s initiative City Forum The image and profile of the city as an attractive and creative place to live and work The combination of strong political will and strong artistic vision
And, it has been suggested – A history of social activism
How does this position Brighton in the colder and more austere climate of the Coalition government? Arts-led regeneration policy might look one way to the American model of individual philanthropy, or the other way to the European models of public tax-based support. An illuminating comment here came from Nick Dodds, that the biggest threat to arts-led regeneration arose from the Coalition government‟s decision to axe the Regional Development Agencies, which have provided a crucially important context of support for the social as well as the economic components of arts projects, and their replacement by Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and the Regional Growth Fund87. Culture and the arts are far down on their list of priorities, and it may take some time for them to move up the list.
But we should ask a rather more critical question: what exactly is the nature and extent of Brighton‟s success? This enquiry began with an assumption that Brighton‟s regeneration has succeeded, in contrast to other south-east coastal towns like Folkestone, Margate, Hastings or Chatham, where regeneration is still struggling. But the data here suggest a rather different story. While Brighton‟s knowledge economy and creative industries are booming, and their participants doing well, the non-participants and the non-engaged in the deprived neighbourhoods in Brighton are doing very badly indeed, and polarisation may be getting worse.
If this story is correct, then we have to conclude that arts-led regeneration is a trickier and more complex business than perhaps had been anticipated. The success story is clear. But it
87 The first LEPs were announced during our first arts-led fieldwork tour in October 2010. See the first report. 40 leaves a lot of people behind. And that, in a society increasingly anxious about social cohesion, is a challenge which must be tackled.
But we should end on a more upbeat note, as we walk round the lively, dodgy, interestingly quirky city that is Brighton. We should remember the quotation from Graham Green‟s novel, Brighton Rock, displayed on a poster for the film:
„Human nature doesn‟t change – like a stick of Brighton rock you bite all the way down and still read “Brighton”‟!
Brighton beach
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ANNEXE 1: PROGRAMME OITA-OXFORD BRIGHTON TOUR 20-25 MAY 2011
F 20/5 Arrive Heathrow, taxi to Brighton, stay at The Grand
S 21/5 & Visit Brighton Festival and Artists Open Houses Sun 22/5 1800 Brighton Festival Debate at The Dome: Sussex Salon Series: What does a festival add to a city? Andrew Comben (Chief Executive, Brighton Dome and Festival) Professor Steven Miles (Centre for Research and Development, University of Brighton) Dr Monica Sassatelli (Goldsmiths College, formerly Research Fellow in University of Sussex) Dany Louise (Arts Consultant, Trainer and Writer)
M 23/5 Meet Anthony Zacharzewski (The Democratic Society) 0800 1000 Meet Rebecca Ball (Clore Cultural Fellow, formerly Director of Arts, Arts Council England /South East)
1400 Meet Pippa Smith (Head of Learning, Access and Participation, Brighton Dome and Festival)
1600 Telephone conference with Richard Russell (Director of Strategic Partnerships, ACE, formerly Director of External Relations and Development, ACE/ SE)
T 24/5 Meet Andrew Comben (CEO Brighton Dome and Festival) 1030 1400 Meet Marie Murphy (Director, The Brighton Treasure Hunt Company)
1730 Meet Tom Smith (Director, Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion)
W 25/5 Meet Donna Close (Arts & Culture Manager, Brighton and Hove City 0900 Council)
1030 Meet Nick Dodds (Managing Director, Festivals and Events International (FEI), and former director of the Brighton Festival)
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