Takeover Chief Executive: No comment

We emailed the Chief Executive to find out information, as promised in the previous post.

“what this appointment means for the Fairfield is currently unclear. We will email the Chief Executive and ask him.”

We did, the emails are below.

However, although we did not get anywhere the Croydon Guardian did. A report by Mike Didymus, Senior Reporter sheds some light on the subject:

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Email to Mr Jon Rouse, Chief Executive, Croydon Council

Dear Mr Rouse,

I understand that you have been appointed a Director of the Fairfield Halls (Croydon) Ltd.

A blog post has been put up on this subject.

It is such an unusual move, I wonder if you would offer your reasoning and your intentions in taking up this post. Could you also clarify if it is remunerated.

Do you hold any other similar posts / directorships in Croydon or elsewhere? Does Croydon Council not have an Arts person who may be able to put more time into the role?

Yours sincerely,

The Croydon Arts team.

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Reply:

Sir/Madam

I am happy to reply to you if I know who I am replying to. I don’t respond to anonymous e-mails or letters.

However, I would make one factual correction which is that I have not formally been appointed by the Council to the Fairfield Board at this time. And if I am appointed there will certainly be no remuneration.

Jon Rouse

Chief Executive

Chief executive’s office

7th floor north east quadrant

Taberner House

Park Lane Croydon CR9 3JS

Tel: 0208 726 6000 ext: 65623

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Croydon Chief Takes Over at Fairfield

In an extraordinary move, John Rouse, the Chief Executive of Croydon Council (Croydon Council is the Landlord of the Fairfield) has taken a seat on the board of the Fairfield.

His intentions in so doing are unclear, but he joins fellow Council appointees Councillor Dudley Mead (Deputy Leader of Croydon Council and Chair of the Fairfield Board), Councillor Helen Pollard and Councillor George Ayres.

It is understood that this is the first time ever that a council officer has been a council nominee. Traditionally in Croydon, board members are Councillors sent to the Fairfield in rough proportion to their political grouping.

What this appointment means for the Fairfield is currently unclear. We will email the Chief Executive and ask him.

 

Culture and Sport Partnership Strategy 2009 – 2012

Is the puzzle is now coming together…

The ‘Culture and Sport Partnership Strategy 2009 – 2012′ is going to Croydon Council Cabinet this evening (12 October). This also brings into question how you can have a strategy for a year that is almost finished. It would have been better to call it a 2 year strategy?

You can read the cabinet papers here

New proposals include a ‘Theatres Consortium’ to replace the much hyped ‘Arts Trust’ only problem with this is that it only includes the Clocktower and Fairfield. So in other words it looks like the Council is trying to extend its reach to control the Fairfield. What other purpose would a Consortium be formed for containing only one independent Charity and the Council?

These papers also shed light on the £100,000 feasibility study that the Council is going to pay for on the Fairfield. Once again the council makes the mistake of putting money into external consultants without investing in the existing organisations. Will the council still stump up the £200,000 a year maintenance that the Fairfield desperately relies on if they are planning to spend £100,000 to see what an external consultant wants to do with the place? We will have to wait and see on this one.

Once again we see a paper written that is void of any solid commitments, but full of buzzwords and laudable aims.

Why can the council not articulate what it wants from the Arts in Croydon, or sit down in an old fashioned workshop with the Fairfield, Warehouse and London Mozart Players and work out ways of developing the Arts for the 360,000 residents that the Council is meant to serve.

£100,000 award for Fairfield Halls

According to committee papers issued by Croydon Council (Appendix 2, of Corporate Services committee on 16.09.09) Croydon Council is going to issue by 20 January 2010 a fresh contract worth £100,000 for the Fairfield Halls.

Good news? or just another consultants report?

IF all the money that has been spent on Consultants reports for the Fairfield Halls over the years had been gifted to the Fairfield, they would be very wealthy indeed!

The text of the spend says “Options Viability study – Fairfield Halls appointment of consultants”

This of course from a Council that had a detailed scheme worked on from 2004 – 2006. Ditched in 2006, and then silence. Is this £100,000 (a year off the local elections) an opportunity for the Council to claim it is actively doing a lot to revitalise the Fairfield Halls?

Of course, sense would say you need to sit down with the people who actually run the Fairfield to find out how they could improve the Fairfield Halls first. But we all know that the Council wants to set up an ‘Arts Trust’ that has very little to do with the existing arts provision in our Town.

Will employing more expensive consultants actually help?

Will employing more expensive consultants improve our Arts offering in Croydon?

Fairfield takes another step towards closure

The revelation in the Croydon Guardian that the Fairfield Halls has sacked 20 volunteers to save cash is a very sad day for this important cultural venue.

The board believe that by using existing staff to sell programmes they will up sales and save the £6,000 commission paid to the volunteers to cover their expenses.

The downside of this approach is that once again the Fairfield is cutting off its links to the community that it needs to survive.

Sure the Fairfield will be a bit better off in the short term, but the long term future?

On a busy night how many people actually run the Fairfield? 3 at the box office, a couple at the cloak room, a general manager and a couple of security guards?

Suddenly the Fairfield has a little less ‘life’ to it. When will the Core of Stewards be sacked? They already have security guards, at what point will we see students paid the minimum wage and wearing bright red T shirts emblazoned with Fairfield across their chests showing us to our seats?

The Fairfield is run on a show string (without revenue support from Croydon Council or the Arts Council). Finances must be getting tight to take this action. This might be the ‘right’ thing to do from an accountants point of view, but it is one more step towards closure.

Reviews

The Croydon Advertiser published a ‘review’ of the Sign Dance Collective production at the Warehouse Theatre that read as if it had been written by someone who had never written a review in their life. It failed to properly tell what the production was about or describe it in terms that could be understood. Instead it took aim and fired a broadside.

Strange then that on opening TimeOut I found a very favourable review from a few days later. This time the reviewer understood the task in hand and enabled the reader to decide if it was for them.

A local newspaper has to be very careful in choosing who to review local theatre. The reviewer needs the dual skill to understand what they are watching and what their readers will want to know. The Croydon Advertiser reviewer appeared to condemn Croydon to be happy with only middle of the road productions, without touching on the obvious question of theatre by people with differing abilities (or disabilities). Challenging theatre is not for everyone, but it is great to have such a diverse company presenting their work in Croydon.

Time Out Review

Sign & dance

A new production from the signdance collective showcasing at the Warehouse Theatre through to Sunday 12 July.

I will be off to see it soon, but it does promise to be one of the best offerings in Croydon this year.

A really fresh take on theatre that you just will not be able to find without picking up your passport to head ‘out of Croydon’..

Here is the full SP:

Dances For A Lost Traveler represents an intense departure for Signdance away from the biographical framework of recent work and into something personal and from the heart. Drawing on collaborations with Sardinian director Ornella Dagostino from Carovana SMI, Primoz Bayzak from Slovenia’s Batontac Dance plus a range of musicians, film and dance artists.

“Coup de Teatre” Bucks Preview

“Incredible” Sardinia Preview

“The four pieces – Listen, Here, The Words and Travelling are passionate expressions of the Signdance oeuvre, using diverse styles and techniques to give an insight into the approach the Collective take to making work. This is performance territory akin to other styles of dance-theatre firmly rooted in Europe, but with little precedent here in the UK. There were similarities to work by Alain Patel’s Les ballets C de la B and the Seven Fingers, in that elements of the performers’ lives and personalities become intimately and dynamically woven in layers, into the construction of the work. What makes Signdance so totally unique, is that their lives are informed by disability and deafness – and so their approach is based on a process of how to incorporate those aspects into their work.” Colin Hambrook Dao Editor

These pieces are available for booking from April 2009. We can perform in theatres, at outdoor festivals, in gallery spaces and showcases.

Landscape and language are the two main themes running through Dances For A Lost Traveler.

‘Listen’ (23 minutes)

Based on David Bower’s experience of Tinnitus, this piece uses disability as a creative tool to inform the performance work. It is the most hard-hitting of the four pieces – giving the audience an intense visual and auditory experience. The stage is cast with a backdrop of high-pitched tones, which are translated through sound software to create a landscape suggestive of high tower blocks and flowers. Doves fly through this setting, immersing the audience. Against this cloth of sound and image, David moves rapidly and intently. It is as if he is enclosed, trying desperately to escape. He runs, paces sings and dances through a box-like structure conveying ideas about the connection between language and the inner landscape of tinnitus.

choreography : Isolte Avila
direction and music : Luke Barlow
film : Sarana Mehra

‘Here’ (25 minutes)

is lyrical – the movement consisting of a carefully dramatised piece of dance made up of signed dialogue. The performance takes place on the floor, with a live projection of David Bower and Isolte Avila onto the wall, telling the story of a relationship in flux. The detail is in the signing, but beyond that Here describes an emotional landscape – one that is again contained within a box.

choreography : Primoz Bayzak
music : Mark Holub & Frognal
film : Caglar Kimyoncu

The Words (20 minutes),

locates the movement in written and spoken language. Using a series of responses to architecture.. A random bucket of sentences is played and spilled like rain on the performers heads. They are pulled arbitrarily in front of a live camera and are signed furtively. The energy builds to a crescendo, describing the confusion, frustration and ultimately the beauty of language in its relationship to disability and deafness.

direction : Carla Onni
music : Alex Ward

Travelling (35 minutes)

tells the story of how it is to live a life of constantly crossing boundaries – geographical and physical boundaries as well as existential boundaries relating to disability and deafness. Isolte offers the audience a chance to go to ‘the Happy Place’. She takes on the role of a travel agent offering holidays in the sun. But how does the movement of peoples’ around the world, as tourists, migrants, or as artists, affect indigenous communities? How does political conflict affect the traveller? What does it feel like to live the nomadic lifestyle of the artist? The piece unravels with a series of journeys through film, dance and song. David Bower takes on a comic role inspired by his experience of officials at customs. He acts out the often-bizarre demands made of the traveller, who is forced to dance through hoops on in order to get permission to cross a border. Isolte plays out the dichotomies she has faced, having lived with a dual identity of being Cuban and Puerto Rican American. ‘Ultimately the piece leaves its audience with a powerful image of travelling through the palm of the hand. At the core of Signdance’s work is the beauty of using sign language as a form of dance and of expression. I hope Dances For A Lost Traveler gets taken on by venues across the UK’ Colin Hambrook DAO

direction : Ornella Dagostino Carovana SMI
music : Liran Donin
film : David Bower

New opening at Warehouse Theatre on Friday 15th

It is easy to get depressed about the state of the Arts in Croydon.

However we do have some light from time to time.

Friday sees a new play by Imogen Brodie described by the Daily Telegraph as ‘a little marvel of a play… quite beautifully performed’

2009 is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This is the story of Pieter and Anna, a brother and sister
who are separated the night the wall goes up. Pieter is a drag artist who works in the West and he must make a choice: either return home and face
the restrictions of the East or find freedom in the West. Alone.

This powerful play sees past & present together on stage, as events either side of the wall conspire to dominate the rest of Pieter and Anna’s lives..

More details and to book online at www.warehousetheatre.co.uk

Croydon Council takes contract away from Fairfield

Fairfield has been the traditional venue for counting election results since it was opened.

But not any more.

Croydon Council has taken away this contract from the Fairfield and placed it with the super wealthy Whitgift Foundation. The count will take place at Trinity School.

I am reliably told that this is a ‘dry run’ for the local council elections in 2010.

Not only does Croydon Council not give the Fairfield a penny for day to day running costs, it is now refusing to use the centre for large scale high profile events that provide an important income stream to Fairfield.

What hope does for the Arts when the Council behaves in this negative way?

Another Cultural Strategy…

One day, Croydon Council may actually finish its Cultural Strategy…

I have had emails on this subject passed to me from council officers on the following dates:

February 2008

May 2008

June 2008

NOW – March 2009 (Yawn…)

The beloved Cultural Services Department at Croydon Council launched a fresh consultation on producing a Cultural Strategy for the borough.

How many times and how many years does it take to produce a roundly acceptable cultural strategy for Croydon?

The time, effort and financial resources that they have expended over the years on ’strategy’ results in the grotesque situation where the Council employs many policy officers and senior arts officers on higher salaries than that offered for the new CEO of Fairfield.

At the same time as the principle professional arts bodies in Croydon have crumbling programmes and even worse finances – The Fairfield is struggling on, but will run out of reserves within 18 months. The Warehouse is on its last legs. The Croydon Clocktower is only propped up by a ‘venue development’ grant, that clearly is not developing the venue, but is propping its programme up.

So, for the record, I include the latest set of questions that the Council are asking what is left of a once thriving Arts sector.

One can hope that this post will be followed up by a glowing post showering the borough with praise for the renaissance of the Arts and Culture. Alternatively the very purpose of the Blog will prove its worth.

Thank you

CroydonArts

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March 2009
Croydon’s Cultural Partnership

The aim of the Cultural Partnership, a theme partnership within the Local Strategic Partnership, is to bring together key partners from across the borough to deliver Croydon’s vision for culture and sport, through the Cultural Strategy and the delivery of government targets. Culture and sport includes arts, archives, local studies, tourism, creative industries, media and broadcasting, architecture and design heritage, libraries, parks, green spaces, leisure, and sport.

The Partnership’s vision for the whole borough is:

To create a Croydon

that is known for our excellent cultural offer,

that celebrates our richly diverse heritage, and our future possibilities,

that inspires creativity and learning in all our communities,

that develops talent and encourages people to get involved, and

improves health and wellbeing,

so that all in Croydon can live fulfilled lives

Developing the Strategy

To achieve this vision the Partnership is developing a new Cultural Strategy for Croydon. The Strategy will be based around six key priorities, which are inline with the priorities within Croydon’s Community Strategy.

In developing the strategy, the Partnership are widely consulting with other Partnerships, key stakeholders, Council departments and the community on the six priorities.

To ensure that the views of the cultural forum are incorporated into the strategy please complete the questionnaire below and return it to Deborah Wallace, Cultural Partnership Manager, by the 31^st of March 2009.

Developing Croydon’s Cultural Strategy

PRIORITY A: Creating safer, stronger and more sustainable communities through cultural participation

Q1 What key culture and sport activities do you think contribute to a safer and more cohesive community?

Q2 Please can you indentify potential barriers that may prevent us achieving this priority?

Q3 How do you think we should overcome these barriers?

PRIORITY B: Inspiring learning outcomes through culture for children and young people

Q4 How do children and young people currently access cultural and sporting activities?

Q5 Please can you indentify potential barriers that may prevent us achieving this priority?

Q6 How do you think we should overcome these barriers?

PRIORITY C: Promoting economic growth and prosperity, talent and creativity through culture

Q7 How can culture and sport activities promote economic growth and prosperity, talent and creativity?

Q8 Please can you indentify potential barriers that may prevent us achieving this priority?

Q9 How do you think we should overcome these barriers?

PRIORITY D: Improving health and well-being through culture

Q10 How can culture and sport activities help improve the health and well-being of Croydon?

Q11 Please can you indentify potential barriers that may prevent us achieving this priority?

Q12 How do you think we should overcome these barriers?
PRIORITY E: Transforming and improving the environment through culture

Q13 How can culture and sport activities transform and improve the environment?

Q14 Please can you indentify potential barriers that may prevent us achieving this priority?

Q15 How do you think we should overcome these barriers?

PRIORITY F: Providing and enabling a high quality cultural offer across the borough demonstrating value for money and excellence

Q16 How can culture and sport can demonstrate value for money and excellence?

Q17 Please can you indentify potential barriers that may prevent us achieving this priority?

Q18 How do you think we should overcome these barriers?