NorthWest Arts Closure

By Alan Thompson

"I think the problem is that they genuinely don’t understand the issues. Because they don’t have sheets of paper discussing things like delivery targets, they can’t comprehend that what goes on in the Graphic House branch actually works and works better than projects they’ve probably spent about ten times the amount on" Paul Tarpey: Liverpool Artist

On the former web-site of the NorthWest Arts board, under the link of 'development priorities', the reader was told that

"to develop opportunities for people from low income neighbourhoods to engage in the arts and for the arts to play a full role in the regeneration of such neighbourhoods”

was one of the key aims that the then NWAB existed to fulfil. As the NWAB/Arts Council are by far the regions largest arts funder, we may feel grateful for such an inclusive remit. But recent developments within Liverpool, surely a well known area of 'low income neighbourhoods' suggest that these well meaning statements may be revealed to be deceptive.

Graphic House is a nondescript Sixties office block on the intersection of Duke and Slater Street. For the past 11 years the ground floor has contained the Liverpool branch of the North West Arts Board/Arts Council. The North West Arts Board’s main offices are in Manchester with all main administration there. Graphic House acted as the Art’s Council’s point of contact in Liverpool and since its inception has been staffed by the solitary figure of Neil Morrin. The Liverpool office is used by staff from Manchester as a meeting and resource centre when they are visiting Liverpool but the office has had a far bigger, and some might say far more important role in the cultural life of the city.

The office’s primary role as far as the general public is concerned is to act as an information and resource centre for the whole of Merseyside. This description however, does not even begin to adequately describe the importance of its existence to the artistic communities of Liverpool and its key role in fulfilling the mission statement from the former NWAB website.

On Friday 24th january, a large and disgruntled audience of painters, musicians, writers, poets, community workers, arts institution employees and many others gathered in the Bluecoat Chambers. They came to a meeting hosted by the director of the North West Arts Board, Michael Eakin to discuss what had long been known by those who used the office in Graphic House, namely the closure of the Liverpool branch of the NWAB/Arts Council. Michael Eakin, a lugubrious, immaculately suited man, opened the meeting by announcing that the owners of Graphic House had served notice of eviction on NWAB and that it was likely that NWAB would have to move out by the end of May 2003. This, as indicated before was no surprise to those assembled, and neither was Eakin’s follow-up that there was no alternative building in Liverpool sourced as a replacement. He stated that instead of providing another office, NWAB would seek to concentrate on putting more funding into the Liverpool arts directly from the Manchester office by the Manchester staff making more field-trips to Liverpool. Eakin admitted that the actual plan to compensate for the closure was still in it’s embryonic stage, but the overall sentiments were clear. There was to be no attempt by Manchester to find another office where the Liverpool branch of the Arts Council could move to. So effectively, although Eakin claimed that he was open to all possibilities, the fact that they had not planned, nor had any specific plans for this scenario, indicated that they had no interest in keeping an office open in Liverpool.

Rumours of the building being sold for redevelopment had been circulating for years before, and in the summer of 2001, the Daily Post ran an article detailing the sale of Graphic House and the car park next door to a property developer to convert the properties into luxury flats. At least a year and half of common knowledge that the owners of the building would soon serve notice was apparently inadequate for the Manchester branch of the Arts Council, suggesting that there may be a deeper agenda at play concerning their acceptance of the closure. Mr Eakin thought that this closure would not adversity affect the artistic communities in Liverpool to any great extent and was keen to emphasise this at the meeting of the 24th. However, in order to understand why the audience he faced were unanimously against the closure, it is necessary to delve into the role played by the NWAB in Graphic House, and more pertinently the staff and the artists who work there. At the Bluecoat meeting, all who attended who were not part of the NWAB were unanimously against the closure. Amazingly, this announcement has been made in the face of Liverpool’s bid for European City of Culture in 2008.

The decision to regard Liverpool as insignificant enough to not require its own North West Arts Board branch is surely a breathtaking strategic blunder on behalf of the Manchester office and something that cannot help but be read as a calculated insult to Liverpool’s pride as a major player in the cultural hierarchy of the U.K and indeed, across Europe. Eakin talked regretfully in the meeting of the budget constraints and stretch of resources facing the NWAB and emphasised that Cumbria has recently fallen under their remit without a concurrent increase in their staffing levels, but this in itself seems to contradict his assertion that the monies saved by the closure of Graphic House will be pumped back into Liverpool by other means. For if the expansion into Cumbria will stretch the NWAB’s budget and personnel to such an extent that the closure of graphic House becomes necessary, where then, will the resources for extra involvement in Liverpool come from, if his staff are forced to make forays into Cumbria for a considerable part of their time?

In the meeting, Eakin costed the Graphic House branch as costing fifty thousand pounds a year to run. To those not familiar to arts funding, it sounds a lot but against an overall budget of twenty five million a year for the Arts Council and the incredibly wasteful activities of many large arts funders and projects, it is an mere pittance. This is a point echoed by the Bluecoat Display Centre’s director Maureen Banton who told The Nerve:

"Compared to the general budget of the NWAB, this is a very small percentage indeed. With the offer of extra funding in other areas in Liverpool, they were dangling the carrot, but what everyone wanted was a small office with someone accessible like Neil’.

Eakin rather lamely claimed that the fifty thousand could give ten arts groups five thousand pounds of funding each year. But herein lies the weakness of the NWAB’s rationale. What they fail to appreciate is that the North West Arts Board in Liverpool, by providing a resource and information centre, has spawned inumerable exhibitions, concerts, plays etc, by the simple expident of providing advice, web-facilities, a photo-copying machine, a printer and an incomparable place to network with people. Furthermore, once these basic requirements are met, no-one even needs to apply for an NWAB grant, with all the bureaucracy, wastage and consultancy fees that such funding often entails. Paul Tarpey argues that this exemplifies the attitude of the Arts Council and told us that:

"I think it shows he has a complete misunderstanding of what is actually required in the arts inner city areas. People are not knocking on their door in my experience, requesting large amounts of money. A lot of artists just want someone to talk to get advice and encouragement and facilities and space and the chance to meet like-minded people. The Graphic House branch already provides that. It does boil down to control. They (the Arts Council) may be wasting money, but they like to know how and where it was wasted. You could waste a hell of a lot of money on feasibility studies or consultancy fees, but it is frightening to them that people are organising themselves and developing contacts and many things have grown from that”.

As an adjunct to this point Maureen Banton stated that:

"A major part of the Arts Council was meant to provide opportunities for low income and minority group artists. Many of the people at the Bluecoat meeting fell into this category, and all were against the closure. But these are the sort of people that the NWAB is supposed to be supporting".

Furthermore, on a personal note, she pointed out that the NWAB branch at Graphic house had provided an excellent point of contact: 'Particularly with help fundraising'.

The NWAB in Liverpool has provided a drop in shop and resource centre for hordes of artists from around the world, including the independent section of the City’s recent Biennial, organisations such as Creative LETS to the Independent Eye Gallery, Writing On The Wall Festival and the Settee Council, and to sole traders such as the well established artist Padraig Timony to Joe Macloughlin from experimental Liverpool group Kling Klang, whom thanks in part to the support of the Graphic House office, are embarking on a nationwide tour in May of this Year, the Liverpool branch has for an absolutely tiny amount of money facilitated artistic excellence consistently and has proved itself a creative hotbed in a way no other organisation run on a similar or even larger budget could claim.
This incredibly cheap way of producing superb results should stand as a beacon for the entire country for good practice in the arts, encouraging and nurturing small scale activity and bringing artists together.

The Arts Council should be thoroughly proud of this and advertising the fact. Instead, unless there is a major change of policy, or the assorted artists protesting against this move find a way to start and fund a replacement, one of the few bright lights in the struggling grassroots cultural industry of Liverpool, carefully nurtured over the past ten years by Neil Morrin and the assorted artists there, is about to be switched off for good.