Martin Tod

Bad news on the Tower last Friday as you can see from the following news report:

Despite Ken Thornber being forced to wriggle on the issue of rapidly increasing head office costs in Recreation and Heritage (because the Tower is being cut to fund head office costs - not adult social care); despite his officers being forced to admit that the ‘evening programme fund’ proposal is completely half-baked; despite his refusal to even address Alex Hoare’s outstanding speech on how John Tellett and the Tower Arts Centre have nurtured arts in Winchester - and the critical role of artistic direction in a successful arts centre; and despite his failure to address almost any of the points raised by Jan Moring, Ken Thornber decided to go ahead with the paper proposed to him and transfer the Tower to Kings’ School, slash local arts funding, and set up a tiny ‘figleaf fund’ - supposedly to support the evening arts programme in Winchester.

It’s frustrating. It’s infuriating. And it’s tragic to know that so much of the work of John Tellett and his team will come to an end this April.

The ‘Save Tower Arts’ campaign tried everything. I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues tried everything. The Lib Dem controlled Town Forum signed up to put money into the project. We were regularly talking to our local Conservative opposite numbers, asking them to do whatever it took to save the Tower. And we were more than happy for them to take the credit for it, just as long as the Tower was saved as an arts centre.

But it was not to be.

The infuriating thing is that the failure to save the Tower is not due to financial crisis. It’s due to lack of political will and lack of political vision.

The last few months have been a farce. The Conservatives have organised a consultation – and then refused to listen to it. They’ve asked for a report into different options – and then ignored it. They’ve said that they need more details of their preferred option – and then decided to proceed anyway when they don’t got them.

This goes beyond party politics. Ultimately it’s a question of competence and commitment to the arts.

We’re not giving up just yet. There’s a very small chance that we can stop the current proposal. We certainly need to try and improve it. However we can’t deny that last Friday’s decision is a very heavy blow.

Here’s the speech I made at Ken Thornber’s decision day:
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Despite the torrential rain and engineering works on the trains and the relatively short notice, it was standing room only at the Tower on Sunday when Nick and Chris came to Hampshire to ask for local members’ support.

Nick and Chris were on top form – and everyone came out feeling really inspired. Whoever wins, it’s clear we will continue to lead the way on the environment, civil liberties and internationalism, but they also put forward thought-provoking and constructive views on issues like affordable housing and education. They were both so good that I’m not sure that they made it easier for people to choose between them!

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We have only a few days left to save the Tower Arts Centre as an arts centre with a full professional art programme. If Ken Thornber agrees the paper sent to him last week, that spells the end of the Tower as an arts centre.

The problem is straightforward. There just isn’t enough money in the plan to fund a functioning evening programme. A crucial part of the Tower’s identify as an integrated centre for the arts is being removed. The Council’s own consultant’s report made clear that the Tower is efficiently run and that staffing could not be reduced without effectively ending the Tower’s programme. And the staffing and budget for the evening programme are being slashed.

And it gets worse. The plan doesn’t just propose to dramatically reduce spending for an evening programme. It proposes to spread that money across the whole of Winchester.

At this point, we enter the realms of fantasy. The plan for an evening programme is both vague and underfunded. If, as the Consultant’s report made clear, the reduced budget isn’t going to be enough to staff and manage an evening programme at the Tower, it certainly won’t be enough for the whole of Winchester.

70% of local people in the Council’s own telephone poll want to keep the Tower as an Arts Centre - over 450 people attended a public meeting backing the Tower - but they are being ignored. Why did the Conservatives go ahead with the consultation if they won’t take any notice?

Despite what Ken Thornber says, the cuts they propose are not to pay for adult social care. They’re covering consultants and extra staffing hired at the County Council’s headquarters. In the last two years, two ‘head office’ budgets in the County Council’s Recreation and Heritage budget - covering the director’s office and policy development - have increased by nearly £250k. This is more than twice the amount by which the Conservatives propose to cut the Tower’s budget.

The decision to cut the Tower also pre-dates this year’s social care budget problems. At her decision day meeting in July, Conservative Councillor Margaret Snaith said that she had been working on plans to transfer the Tower to King’s School for about a year - before the latest round of cuts to cover the Conservative’s problems in managing the adult social care budget - but after the Conservatives recreation and leisure budget started to show dramatic increases on head office spending.

To put it another way, the Conservatives have been dramatically increasing the amount they pay people to sit in the Castle and write arts policy, while proposing to slash the Tower Arts budget and get rid of people who are actually on the front line delivering the arts to local people.

The last few months have been a farce. The Conservatives have organised a consultation – and then refused to listen to it. They’ve asked for a report into different options – and then ignored it. They’ve said that they need more details of the plan to transfer the Tower to the school – and then decided to proceed anyway when they didn’t get them.

This goes beyond party politics. It’s a question of competence and commitment to the arts.

One of the most staggering moments of last Thursday’s full meeting of the County Council was when Ken Thornber announced that he intended to go ahead with the transfer of the Tower Arts Centre to King School without a business plan.

He explained that he would not be looking for a ‘business plan’ from Kings School for the Tower Arts Centre – but rather a ‘business case’. And then, to the amazement of most of the Councillors who attended the Hampshire Action Team (HAT) meeting on November 8, 2007 to review the current proposed plan, he went on to say that the presentation made at that meeting counted, in his view, as a ‘business case’.

Except that there was no serious “business case” presented to the Hampshire Action Team committee for Winchester.

So either Ken has been misinformed. Or he intends to transfer the Tower to Kings School without any proper evaluation.

Given the way the original proposal was put together, I strongly suspect the latter.

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The County Council issued a press release about the future of the Tower Arts Centre - which is remarkable for what it doesn’t say - as well as what it does say.

The County Council says:

Leader of Hampshire County Council Ken Thornber said: ‘We have a very real demographic pressure in Adult Services. The number of vulnerable adults in Hampshire is continually growing year on year. We need to ensure we have the resources to be able to support them and provide for their care needs – this is a statutory responsibility that the County Council has, as well as the duties to look after children and young people and the environment.
‘This pressure has meant that I have had to ask all departments within the County Council to make budget reductions and savings in order for us to meet these responsibilities and indeed our duty of care. This includes the Recreation and Heritage Department which incorporates arts, and they too have to make their share of savings.

What they don’t say:

According to the latest figures, Hampshire County Council spends less on social services per head of population than any other county council in the country. They are in the bottom 20% of spending on adult social care.
The Tower represents less than 0.02% of total County Council funding and 0.3% of the culture budget. Despite receiving the lowest county council subsidy and the highest contribution from a district authority, the Tower is being cut harder than any other Hampshire County Council owned Arts Centre. All other arts centres are being given time to develop alternative funding.

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There have been a few attempts to use the analysis in Caroline Felton’s report on the Tower Arts Centre to argue that a small minority of users make up a disproportionately large proportion of visits to the tower - and that therefore it does not deserve public funding - most memorably by Conservative City Councillor Harry Verney at the public meeting in the Guildhall.

Unfortunately, these attempts are wrong - or, to put it more charitably, based on a superficial estimate of how the numbers are calculated.

The analysis was based on the statistics in the Tower’s database, but there are two groups of people who aren’t counted under this system:

• Guests of the person buying the ticket.
  When I buy tickets for Michaela and I to go to the Tower, that counts as two visits in my name. If I bought tickets for a group of six people (even if we all settled up later), that counts as six visits in my name.
• Some of the people who pay cash.
  Most people who pay cash get entered in the database. However, if someone arrives late, or if it’s one of the big youth rock events where people pay on the door, then their purchase may not get entered in the database.

Including both of these factors significantly increases the number of people using the Tower and dramatically reduces (by a factor or two or more) the proportion of visits made by the most active users of the Tower.

Another excellent evening at the Tower on Friday night listening to Angela Brown and the Mighty 45s. The Tower was completely packed. The band was on fire. Angela Brown was awesome! A brilliant end to the week and start to the weekend.

There was just as much energy in the room (although much less on stage) at the public meeting on Thursday night about the future of the Tower Arts Centre. Alistair Marsden has written at some length about the evening (the public meeting that is, not Angela Brown) on the Save Tower Arts blog.

The continued incompetence and - more worryingly - obstinacy shown by the County Council on this remains breathtaking. As time goes on and the County makes no attempt to budge, more and more people are getting more and more angry at the situation. The original decision was embarrassingly half-baked. The combination of Thursday evening and the consultant’s report has confirmed what we knew all along (and which the County denied):

• The Discovery Centre is not going to be any kind of replacement for the Tower
• The current proposal to transfer Tower Arts to Kings School will effectively end the evening programme
• There was a complete lack of consultation behind the original proposal
• The County has made no serious effort to find partners - or even work with the City Council - to keep Tower Arts open
• The County (or at least the Portfolio Holder on the County) has no apparent vision for arts provision in Winchester or in Hampshire - and no idea of the value it brings to the economy and quality of life to the city and the county

Ken Thornber was right to ask for a review - and the extra time should have been a chance to sit down round the table with possible partners and seriously try to find a way forward that preserves and builds on what’s so special about the Tower. But the clock is ticking and there is depressingly little sign that the County is going to move.

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Alistair Marsden of the Tower Arts Campaign and Bob Dylan have just produced the following awesome video about the Tower meeting at the Guildhall on November 1st:

As you may have read in the Chronicle, the decision to end the Tower Arts arts programme now looks likely to be delayed to December 7 with a full ‘options appraisal’ and an extension of programming for Spring Season

The original decision was amazingly bad - premature, half-baked and made without any consultation. There should have been a full options appraisal at the start of the project - it’s good that finally there is going to be one. We now need to ensure that it is genuine. It must rigorously explore all the possibilities to maintain or improve arts provision in Winchester and not just be a paper exercise or a fig leaf to justify continuing with their current plan.

It’s great that John Tellett will be able to continue programming in the short term, although it’s essential that the new plan ensures proper programming for the long-term.

The Tower Arts campaign group have done a brilliant job. Our county council team has also worked very hard to get this decision changed. At last there’s a chance that local people may be listened to and that the original, extremely poor decision will be reappraised.

Thank you to everyone who turned up today to the Save Tower Arts demonstration. Local pressure has meant that the decision has been deferred until September 13th to address some of the issues raised.

Not yet a victory - but a step in the right direction.

You can see some photos from today’s demonstration at http://www.flickr.com/photos/martin_tod/sets/72157600880068038/