THE FOUNDATION FOR ESSEX ARTS

A period of achievement

First annual report and accounts 2006/08

Chairman’s report by Vin Harrop

Looking back over the past two years, a time when the Commission for an Essex Gallery became the Foundation for Essex Arts (20 April 2006) my overriding impression is of the richness, diversity and vitality of the county’s artists and arts activities. There is some evidence, too, that the arts in Essex are reaching a steadily growing proportion of our people and that the politicians are beginning to realise the important role that the artist can play in the community. On the face of it the picture looks encouraging but below the surface there are some disturbing trends.  Urban South Essex and rural North Essex have always been something of an uneasy partnership at the Essex County Council.  Ever since the 1950s and 1960s, when suburbia spread out dramatically from London, the “them and us” attitude has existed and it still persists to this day.  North Essex has the picture postcard villages of Dedham, Finchingfield and Thaxted, Colchester, Great Dunmow and Maldon and is an uneasy bedfellow with the more “London extension” in the south. For example the arts in North Essex are heavily subsidised by the Arts Council with the Arts Centre at Wivenhoe, the Mercury Theatre and the Firstsite Gallery in Colchester receiving £1.5 m annually between them whereas no theatre in South Essex – and we have five (Thameside, Grays; Queens, Hornchurch; Towngate, Basildon; Cliffs and Palace, Southend), receive no national subsidy, relying solely on the local authority and the box office for funds. This is despite the Foundation receiving a letter from the chairman of Arts Council England stating that “the Mercury Theatre has successfully developed a significant regional role is areas where access to arts and cultural provision is less developed including south Essex”. We have news for Sir Christopher Frayling: theatres in the southern half of the county would be more developed if they got only half of the support that their counterparts in the north receive, and with many more visual artists residing in the south an Essex Gallery seems to us essential to give these artists a shop window for their art.  It is the Foundation’s view that to spend many millions of pounds on a new art gallery in Colchester with the intention of it being a regional, national and international gallery, is both geographically unsound and does not reflect  the balance of artists living in the south against those residing in the north of the county.  We have been campaigning since 1999 for an Essex Gallery for indigenous Essex art and we will go on campaigning until this injustice has been rectified.

The need to provide more arts facilities has particular relevance to buildings and in south Essex there are no buildings suitable for conversion to countywide arts use.  The Foundation was asked by Thurrock Council to take a look at the State Cinema in Grays and the Bata factory buildings in East Tilbury, neither of which appear suitable for conversion without vast sums of public money being spent, and such sums cannot be justified when it would be more economic to establish new builds for a specific or general arts use.  We support the listing of buildings to protect them as part of our urban heritage, but when no suitable or reasonable use can be found to bring them back into community use this calls into question whether they should have been saved in the first place.  We have prepared detailed reports for both Southend and Chelmsford Borough Councils for the provision of the arts in their respective towns. In Southend our proposals were for a Contemporary Art Gallery to be built into the cliffs.

From this new found architecture centre status has sprung the Basildon Heritage Project, a community based programme looking at the town’s buildings and open spaces and in particular involving our young people who are losing their ability to see for themselves the world around them. Everything today is in clichés and advertising slogans. From the outset we have established clear objectives, made them workable and saw that they commanded broad support. We wanted to help Basildonians in general to appreciate the cultural and the architectural aspects of their new town, now coming on 60 years of age.  We wanted to raise the perception of Basildon as a town that does have a heritage albeit a hidden one thanks to the Basildon Development Corporation, and so we devised the Basildon Heritage Trail to highlight its history, the magnificent 60s architecture and its sumptuous open spaces together with its quite unique collection of public art.

Our work over the past two years with 200 children from five of Basildon’s junior schools has shown that these young people are not only proud of where they live but are greatly interested in the past and how the new town came about. They are equally concerned about its future, too. While we have not sought to blow our own trumpet about this, it is gratifying to receive a letter from one headteacher who says:”The quality of the pupils’ work and their willingness to collaborate and learn was a defining feature of their time whilst on this project”.

Our Website has proved invaluable over the years and continues to expand thanks to the diligence of Peter Tucker. We are continuing to build on the number of artists/organisations wishing to be linked to the website, which indicates the value they now place on it as a communications tool offering access to the arts across Essex.  Through this and by our work with various communities throughout the county, we are gradually fulfilling the role that the Foundation was set up to achieve- “to develop and coordinate creative projects and to help artists and arts organisations to put their ideas into action”.

Vin Harrop