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