Monthly Archives: June 2022

Blackburn and Rotterdam: a new perspective

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Whether in Rotterdam or Blackburn, looking at the world from a different perspective is always good. I live in the Netherlands’ second city and the aspirational Lancashire town, and they have a surprising amount in common – not least, forward-looking architectural ambitions in the mid-20th century.

Rotterdam is a very different dutch city. It is nicknamed ‘Manhatten en the Mass’. A lot of the cute Dutch bridges and Gable-ended houses were destroyed by German bombers on 31st March 1943. Rotterdam was already a forward-looking city so decided to build back new rather than try and recreate what had been. If you want that, Delft is only a 45-minute cycle ride from the centre of Rotterdam. Since the bombardment, Rotterdam has been championing contemporary architecture and can now boast some of the world’s most renowned architectural practices such as MVRDV and OMA.

Contemporary Rotterdam has space built-in at ground level, room to breathe. In a very flat country, where the landscape is often dominated by a gazillion acres of sky, it is also a city where you never tire of looking up. This is where you’ll find the tallest buildings in the Netherlands. De Zalmhaven, just completed, tops the lot at 215m.

Looking up is great – what about looking down? This year Rotterdam has hosted a Rooftop walk experience in the heart of the city centre – admittedly this didn’t involve the highest buildings which are mostly built next to the river, but it was still a long way up. For €3.50 you got to ascend a flight of orange stairs onto the World Trade Centre Rotterdam, then cross a 60m long and 30m high scaffolding bridge over Coolsingel to the roof of De Bijenkorf department store. The city looked magnificent from up there with some surprises. I hadn’t realised how green Coolsingel was from ground level or how clearly it linked up to the Erasmus Bridge.

Blackburn wasn’t handed a complete rebuilding challenge by the Luftwaffe but its mid-twentieth-century leaders also had an architectural vision of a contemporary and forward-looking town. The shopping centre was one of the first of its kind in the UK. The 14-storey Town Hall Tower dominates the skyline. There was a plan in the late sixties to create a high-level walkway linking the King George’s concert hall, the relocated Library, a new building on Town Hall Street, opposite the library, the old town hall and the new Town Hall tower block. Much of it was realised. The bridge between the two Town Hall buildings still exists. The link was made between King Georges’ Hall and the Libray though this was removed a few years ago. In the Library, The Street, a wide thoroughfare at the first-floor level remains as an isolated remnant of a great vision. I think that there is still a model of the whole scheme in the museum store. Local Government reorganisation in 1974 put a stop to it all with the Library falling under the jurisdiction of the newly formed County Council. Although much was built, it was soon forgotten without the whole vision being realised.

Mayor’s Sunday Parade 1968 shows the old Town Hall and an early phase of the mid-century modern shopping centre. (Cottontown.org)
Blackburn’s visionary new 1960s shopping centre (Lancashire Telegraph)

I would love to see a Blackburn take on Rotterdam’s Rooftop walk, recognising the vision of those town leaders in the 1960s, perhaps as part of the National Festival of Making or independently, as a temporary attraction in its own right. It would keep the scaffolders busy for weeks and British Health and Safety officers would have kittens but it is certainly doable. 

Oerol Festival day three, Friday 17 June 2022

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I don’t think I have ever gotten up so early to see art. A ten-minute cycle to a dew-covered polder in the pre-dawn. We were handed a fleece blanket and some headphones and directed to some stools circling a triangular glass structure – a contrasting hard and urban intervention in the landscape. Inside the structure was Willen de Bruin a rapper and performer with a string of dutch hits under his belt. 

Spuug van God (Likeminds / Willem de Bruin)

Barely visible behind the glass in the half-light de Bruin, in a crisp pink suit and polo neck, stood on a slowly revolving turntable. His soft voice spoke to us through the headphones  – a very personal experience. The show was in Dutch – I pick up a few words but not enough to fully follow the story. It was an opportunity we don’t often get to hear the rhythm and sounds of another language over a sustained period. I can still hear him talking to me. Willem’s mother is Dutch and his father is from Surinam. The show is a solo performance about identity and about being a mixed-race boy and man from a remote Dutch village. De Bruin’s monologue is interspersed with his own music. As the sun rises, the three glass doors open in the box, as the show comes to a conclusion they close once more. There was something very special about this show even if I couldn’t understand all the nuances. It was an experience – a lovely experience. At 6 am, we returned to our hotel and went back to bed.  

By 10 am we had cycled away from the polder into the woods to see Human Time Tree Time by Klub Girko. We encountered two men balancing on a felled tree, itself balancing a tall stump. Essentially this was circus balancing but so much more than that. It involved intimacy, stillness, a bit of mischief, trust and a hell of a lot of skill. For me, this was the answer to the question asked yesterday: ‘When does a show about nature interfere too much with nature?’ This one didn’t – there was a discreet soundtrack from hidden speakers but otherwise, it was devoid of plastic, batteries or electricity – there was no set, other than the forest. They used found twigs and branches. Technologically it was timeless. The soundtrack was just about perfect, it supported the work. I can remember that it was there, but can’t remember what it was which I mean as a compliment. A fabulous experience – it was lovely. 

Human Time Tree Time (Klub Girko)

Back to base in West-Terschelling for discussions and lunch before we cycled to the centre of the island for drinks and some short performances from Station Noord, developing new talent and ideas. Dinner was at the festival’s backstage canteen which reveals just how big Oerol is. 

At 9 pm we cycled further east to another forest for our last show. Oroonoko by Orkater / De Nieuwkomers: UMA, an adaptation of one of the first novels written in English, by Aphra Behn published in 1688. The novel is an imagined back story of a man trapped in slavery in Surinam. Sung and spoken in English and Dutch (We were given an English script) this told the story and challenged us to reflect on the romanticised representation of an oppressed man as an African prince.

Oroonoko (Orkater / De Nieuwkomers: UMA)

This is a story from another age presented for the now by three female actors and a musician. The quality of the set did not live up to the performance – stark, white and flimsy. The costumes were an imaginative fusion between 1688 and 2022. The singing was great and the musician was incredible. The show opened and closed with a beautiful harmonised traditional version of The Magnificat for three female voices with a drum and bass soundtrack. The performers switched roles and broke the fourth wall to tell the tale as storytellers rather than characters. They were young, had swagger and really pulled it off. They are a young company and this is their first show having been nurtured by Oerol over the past three years. It was great. 

Yesterday, I was conflicted by issues around representation with Via Berlin’s portrait of ‘non-western looking Muslim refugees’ and the only black performer in a cast of 17 representing (bad) oil. Today I have seen two shows, Spruug van God and Oroonoko, with non-white performers presenting work that directly addressed how non-white people are and have been perceived and represented.

Finally, before the long cycle ride back to the hotel (about 20km into the wind!) a group of us headed even further east to see De Strecken by Mark van Vliet, a tidal installation on the mudflats. The installation is a tranquil place with long views during the low tide. During high tide, it is surrounded by water. It is described as a ‘sacred space’  and lives up to it. A beautiful place in the last of the mid-summer light to finish what was been a very special experience.

De Streken (Marc van Viliet)

Oerol Festival day two, Thursday 16 June, 2022

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A hectic day. As I sit down to write, I find it hard to believe what I did this morning was only this morning. We formally met the other symposium delegates and then went off to see Acts of Citizenship by Via Berlin.

Acts of Citizenship (Via Berlin / Berlage Saxophone Quartet / University of Amsterdam)

This was a very problematic piece of work. I’m a bit torn here – because of the nature of the work, I am not supposed to reveal certain things, but there are issues with this performance that need to be addressed. It is a partnership between Via Berlin and sociologists from the University of Amsterdam who are conducting research with audiences as part of the show. The setting, the production values and the live music from the Berlage Saxophone Quartet were second to none. It starts with a premise that Belgium splits along language lines and the far-right take over Flanders forcing non-western heritage Flemish people to flee to the Netherlands as refugees. The show, presented from the Dutch side of the border, was very white and demonstrated an, at best, naive understanding of the issues it was trying to cover. It was in Dutch, and we were given a booklet explaining what was going on in English, but I don’t think we missed anything that would justify the portrayal of the refugees in the narrative. Dagmar Slagmolen, Via Berlin’s artistic director, came to talk to us over lunch. Despite concerns being alluded to, she didn’t seem to grasp the anxiety of some in the group. I have some ethical concerns, especially as they plan to tour the work without the research element. 

This island is stunning, especially in the sunshine. We’ve been cycling as a group from venue to venue. We went to see a sound installation called Soundings by Theun Mosk, a work in progress that will eventually become an installation across 75 km of Gronegan. For me, the experience was summed up by a question that was asked by one of the group later, possibly not even directed at this piece: ‘When does a show about nature interfere too much with nature?’

There has been a lot of discussion today as a group and amongst delegates. I’m looking forward to following up on conversations about touring small-scale Dutch performing arts to the UK and attending a storytelling showcase in Amsterdam.

Kaapdiegoeiekoop (Silbersee / Gouden Has / S;agwerk Den Haag / Consensus Vacalis)


Our last show tonight was Kaapdiegoeiekoop, a seventeen-handed opera about the exploitation of oil performed on the beach. Again, the backdrop was jaw-dropping, and the production values were superb. The setting was reminiscent of a show I saw a few short km away on the mainland in 2016 by PeerGroup called Grutte Pier. I am still processing tonight’s show. I felt a little uncomfortable that the only black performer portrayed oil. He was fantastic, his voice incredible and his movements as fluid as the black gold he personified, but… I think the show was over long but accept that I was not listening in a language I could fully follow.

Oerol Festival day one, Wednesday 15 June, 2022

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Exit (Circumstances / Piet Van Dycke)

Taxi to the airport at four this morning. There was a one-and-a-half-hour queue for security followed by a dash to catch a flight to Schiphol. Manchester Airport is awful. There is something about the Netherlands that removes the stress as soon as you touch Dutch soil. It is clean, polite, organised and fair. The staff at Schiphol smile and don’t bark at you – everything seems to work as it should. The train station is underneath the airport – on hand where you need it to be. An app tells you everything you need to know about times and platforms. Today on a comfortable two-hour trip to Leeuwarden, I joined a Zoom meeting using the train wifi, which worked. A change of train to Harlingen Haven, then a leisurely lunch in the sun as we awaited a ferry to Terschelling island. On Terschelling, hire bikes were waiting for us along with a van to take our luggage to our hotel. We arrived about twelve and a half hours after leaving home. We’d managed planes, trains, automobiles, ferries and Fietsen (bikes).

I’m here with the artist, Parvez Qadir, for the Site-specific theatre now: UK / IE / NL symposium, which is part of the Oerol Festival ‘22. A fantastic annual island take-over of the best location theatre from across the Netherlands and Europe. Culturapedia was invited along with about ten other UK organisations to take part. 


A quick freshen up and a cycle dash for introductory drinks, then dinner at the impressive festival staff canteen before being taken to a remote farm under the thousands of acres of sky covering the beguiling islands of the Friesan coast of the northern Netherlands. Our bikes rested with hundreds of others as we were led into a modern open working barn. Sheep were penned at one end, straw bales and agricultural clutter at the other. In the middle was a set and scaffolding and planks assembled into raked seating for 200+ people. (UK Health and Safety officers would have had kittens.) The show was called Exit by Circumstances / Piet Van Dycke. Four male dancers and six doors. I sat on my bit of plank; I’m sure there were far more people there than they panned for, transfixed for over an hour. Four ordinary-looking blokes (no offence) and a mixture of confusion, frustration, slapstick, ingenuity and shared challenge. Superb. I can’t believe that the rest of this Symposium can live up to that – but I hope it does.

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Non-Profit or Non-Non-Profit

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A large proportion of the arts community in England is currently awaiting Arts Council England’s NPO decisions. In this round there has been an increased emphasis on governance alongside a very welcome understanding of different forms of organisation.  I thought it a good time to look back on  a short paper that I wrote in 2016 for my Master’s in Cultural Economics

 

Profit or non-profit is a more complex question than it first appears. Leadership and the way that leaders valorise their values is just as, if not more, important than an organisation’s profit-making status.

Organisations as individuals

Without private means, benefactors or benefits, an individual usually works to earn funds that allow them to cover their essential costs and, hopefully, provide enough surplus to fund additional activity. For some this surplus is a challenge to obtain and for others, it may be substantial. Most individuals are not non-profit, even those who work for non-profit organisations. They earn a wage and use a proportion to cover costs and any surplus to fund items or activities that they personally choose to fund, (holidays, luxury items, entertainment, alms to the poor…). This choice is a means of helping an individual valorise their personal values. This applies to people who work for for-profit and non-profit organisations. An organisation, be it profit or non-profit strives to do the same. Again, some organisations generate a substantial surplus whilst others struggle. Any surplus generated by the organisation will be used to valorise the values of the organisation. This may take the form of re-investment, shareholder dividends or staff bonuses. They are subject to ‘the invisible hand of market forces’ (Smith, 1776. p.256).

Most individuals do not codify their values. They may not be conscious of having values but will still invest resources in valorising them. The same is true of organisations, especially smaller ones. Even when an organisation publishes its values they may not represent the true values that the organisation represents but the values that they would like the outside world to believe that the organisation represents. An individual’s values can be selfish, altruistic, both and anything else in between. So can those of an organisation. These values are what is important rather than an organisation’s profit-making status. 

The non-profit organisation.

My first job, after graduating with a degree, in Textile Design in 1988, was in the shop at a large museum and art gallery. The museum had been running a loss-making retail operation for years. In 1987 they commissioned Dame Hilary Blume of the Charities Advisory Trust to review the retail operations. Blume had recently published a book, The Museum Trading Handbook (Blume, 1987). Her proposal to the museum, which was accepted, was that The Charities Advisory Trust would take over the shops, in the form of a new trading company, and distance-manage them from London with a share of the profits going back to the museum and art gallery. The Charities Advisory Trust, which still exists, was established in 1979 with the aid of Government Funding. It is a charity and currently states its aim as, ‘We are dedicated to finding practical methods of redressing inequalities and injustice’ (Charities Advisory Trust, 2016). I saw an advert and applied. I was interviewed and appointed. It was not well paid but I felt lucky to have a job in such a fascinating place. It was not until the first day that the five of us appointed realised that we were walking into a very awkward situation. All the previous retail staff had been made redundant and we were their cheaper replacements. Their security, reception and curatorial friends in the museum were not pleased to see us.

Blume’s book seems to have disappeared without trace which is not surprising. We were given a copy on our first day. Even then I winced at the values that it represented. Blume advised museum managers not to employ staff who would get on with each other as they may gang up against authority. She insisted that staff should be paid the minimum possible and that they should be asked to do voluntary overtime whenever possible (Blume 1987). The leadership was remote and unsupportive. In line with the advice in the book, every effort was made to divide and rule the staff. Our perception at the time, which holds true on reflection, was that, although Blume was the founder and CEO of a charity, one that was designed to support other charities, her values were about personal achievement rather than social. Interviewed in 2013 she said ‘I’ve devoted my life to making money, but I don’t want to keep it. It’s a slightly different thing. From quite young, probably age eight, I was thinking up schemes for raising money. But you can’t wear two coats, can you?’ (Tomkins, 2013). Throughout the interview, she talks about winning and personal achievement. She represented what Maccoby would call a ‘Narcissistic Leader’ who can ‘…harbour the illusion that only circumstances or enemies block their success’ (Maccoby, 2000, p.2) The manifest values of this non-profit organisation reflected the values of the leader in charge. The organisation also used the supposed social aims of the charity to justify, what I regard to be, poor practices towards the management of important economic stakeholders – the staff. 

The non-non-profit making organisation

 Culturapedia was established in 2004 as Robinson Howell Partnership. In 2011 we undertook a values exercise with a values coach and rebranded the company. We had expanded and employed staff, we had developed more project work and were doing less consultancy. Losing our names from the name and brand was a positive step.

Culturapedia remains a private business. We chose this model purposefully, not because we sought profit but because we needed to be unencumbered by the bureaucracy of board management. To retain ownership of our values and freedom to move. By adopting a lean governance structure with two directors, we can respond rapidly to opportunities and challenges. ‘Change in organizations is pervasive because of the degree and rapidity of change in the external environment. The conditions in which organizations operate demand a response without which organizational demise is a frequent result’ (Cameron & Quinn, 2011, p.9).  Culturapedia is a profit-making business but profit is no more a motivator than if we were a non-profit business. We need enough surplus from projects to cover costs as does any organisation. We are freer not to take director remuneration if it is not available than the CEO of a non-profit would be.

Simple mechanisms can be put into place that safeguards funders. For example, Mailout was a project of the Mailout Trust. The trust, employed Culturapedia to deliver its services. For this Culturapedia received a fee and reported to the Mailout Trust board in the same way that an individual employee works to earn a fee or cover their costs. Culturapedia is upfront about these costs. They are no different, in principle, to the Mailout Trust employing a member of staff.  Arts Council England is admittedly unusual in that it is willing to provide funding to organisations that do not have a non-profit making governance structure. ‘ …[A]rts and cultural organisations need fresh approaches which enthral audiences and attract new sources of Income’ (Arts Council England, 2013).   Funding that comes from Arts Council England comes with caveats to all organisations The percentage that can be taken as fees, and what the funding can and cannot be spent on are normal constraints. As a non-non-profit making business, (I use this complex construct instead of ‘profit making’ as this term is loaded with assumptions as to the motives and values of the organisation), Culturapedia is bound to the rules in the same way as a non-profit making organisation.

Discussion and Conclusion

Why then do organisations choose the governance structures that they choose and why do they choose a non-profit model over others? There are three main reasons. The first is practical, it is perceived that it is easier to access funds if you are a non-profit. Culturapedia has proved that this is not the case. The second is about appearances and perceptions – in micro arts organisations with an unpaid board, the CEO usually manages the board and sets the real values of the organisation through practice. Thirdly, most organisations get established as non-profits because that is what everyone does. Alternatives do not get considered.

As to what next? Profit or non-profit is of less interest to me than the values and culture of the organisation we run, work with or work for. Culturapedia is free to adapt and change and is not bound by onerous governance structures, we can take it in whatever legal direction we choose. Our values are very important and are used to test ideas. They work because they reflect the personal values of the two directors or leaders of the organisation. The distinction between a non-profit organisation and a profit-making small arts organisation is academic. The most important thing is the organisational culture and the values of the leaders.

 

 

References

 

Arts Council England. (2013). Great Art and Culture For Everyone: 10-Year Strategic Framework 2010-2020. Second Edition. Manchester: Arts Council England.  

Blume, H. (1987). The Museum Trading Handbook. London: The Charities Advisory Trust

Maccoby, M. (2000, January-February). Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons. Harvard Business Review.

Smith, A. (1776). An Enquiry Into The Nature and Cases of the Wealth of Nations. Retrieved from http://www.ifaarchive.com/pdf/smith_-_an_inquiry_into_the_nature_and_causes_of_the_wealth_of_nations%5B1%5D.pdf

Tomkins, S. (2013, April). Dame Hilary Blume Interview: It’s a Gift. Reform Magazine. Retrieved form http://www.reform-magazine.co.uk/2013/03/its-a-gift