International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts

Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle

THE LABAN CENTRE LOTTERY EXPERIENCE

Peter Bassett (Great Britain)

Winds of Change - New Technology

21st International Congress

Helsinki, 31 August - 6 September 1996

Although the British National lottery has lost its initial impact it has not lost its grip on the public who are still avidly queuing for lottery tickets each week, and still watch the highly popular show business, over-hyped draw on BBC1 every Saturday evening. The national and local press loudly challenge every aspect of the lottery: the allocation of funding to specific projects by the five boards, the amounts taken in profit by the private company organising the lottery, the amount the government takes out of the lottery. Each announcement of allocation of funding brings another torrent of comment, opinion and implied scandal from the media who, in doing so, intensify the hype of the whole thing. Despite all this the total sum "invested" each week is increasing rather than falling. The prospect, however remote, of winning millions of pounds fuelling the whole process and bringing in ever increasing volumes of cash to the boards.

Equally, on the receiving end, nearly every institution and organisation is preparing its applications for lottery grants, which are seen as a chance, at last, to catch up with years of serious under funding. The underfunding has been most serious in the areas of capital funding at which the grants are aimed.

The funding body for the arts is the Lottery Unit Of The British Arts Council, one of five set up to distribute the proceeds of the lottery - the other four being devoted to sport, the national heritage, charities and a special fund for projects designed to celebrate the millennium. The reality of forming an application for a lottery grant is very different from all the publicity hype aimed at the punters, and is especially rigorous when making application for the large sums involved in relocation and rebuilding.

The guidelines of the Lottery Unit demand that eight criteria be met. These include that the project be based on a viable business plan, and that the project is completed to very high standards. The grants are one off grants for development and capital costs - buildings and systems. There are no grants for running costs.

The Laban Centre found plenty of viable reasons for considering rebuilding the present complex. The buildings are a piecemeal development of old and new, including a Victorian school and its teachers house, a church, and several buildings specially constructed in a piecemeal fashion over the last fifteen years. We had finally come to the end of our space, some of the studios are awkwardly sized and shaped; the church is a local architectural focus point and cannot be altered externally, the building are costly to heat and run and wheelchair access is nonexistent. We need more studios to accommodate additional courses, the library and archive, despite expanding into an adjacent studio, is still cramped and needs space to develop computer applications and adequately store the archives. The Dance Therapy Department wants to develop a clinic, the theatre needs height to fly scenery and lighting and the administration staff is growing.

We began by commissioning a project to review the development of the present buildings on the present site. This was not funded by the lottery, but by the Centre. Not surprisingly, this survey found that if we brought the buildings up to contemporary standards, for example for wheelchair access, we would lose space rather than gain it and at a cost of several millions. This survey was completed at the time when the implications of the lottery were becoming apparent. So it was a natural progression to consider an application to the lottery for funding to consider the possibility of relocation.

The nucleus of the Lottery team was already in position. The Centre had already appointed a fundraiser who had masterminded the preliminary survey. The actual survey had been carried out by an experienced firm of theatre and studio architects. ABSA (The Association For Business Sponsorship Of The Arts) had also been involved in the business side of the survey and this team now prepared an application to the Arts Council Lottery Board for funding for a feasibility study.

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While we waited for an answer from the Lottery Board, the sectional heads at the Centre were asked to "think big" and define "their wildest dreams" for their departments. This was quite an interesting exercise as our wildest dreams have, in the main, turned out to be severly practical. Most of the "wildest dreams" of the library staff involved developments of information technology and, such is the speed of development, in the ensuing twelve months we have watched wildest dreams turn into reality.

At the same time a team of advisors was recruited in anticipation of gaining the feasibility study funding. Bach was given a special responsibility for writing an advisory report on a particular aspect of the final application in cooperation with the appropriate Centre officer. These included marketing, community relations, information technology and the library and archives and covered a mixture of the areas which the Centre particularly wished to develop and the criteria which the Arts Council Lottery Board wished us to meet. There are eight of these and their requirements have to be very seriously addressed.

[TRANSPARENCY and comments].

The criteria are:

1. The benefit to the public (including maximum access for disabled people). This covers not only our desire to improve wheelchair access, but also ways in which the population of South East London can gain access to the improved facilities of the Centre, for example, by visiting the theatre, using the library. We also considered some less obvious benefits such as increased employment opportunities and increasing local revenues by bringing more residents into the area the form of students and their living expenditure.

2. The long term effect on the organisation's financial stability. We have to develop a viable business plan for the entire operation of the Centre including the Library and Archive, for example what services can we sell to the public, is this a financially sound proposition?

3. The amount of partnership funding. An essential element in the lottery system is that funding has to be found from other sources so that the project is not entirely funded by the lottery. We have to find 30 per cent of the total cost. This can be gifts in kind - or be sourced from such other government funding as the inner city regeneration projects.

4. The quality of design and construction. The projects are to be finished to a high degree of quality. After years of make do and mend, this comes as a distinct culture shock to be able to think in terms of quality instead of achieving the maximum with limited funding. But the requirement for value for money remains.

5. The quality of artistic activities proposed. This has provided a very useful stimulus for reviewing the performances, lecture programmes at the Centre, and looking at ways of making them available to a wider public.

6. The relevance of the project to local, regional and national plans for developing the arts. Again this has provided an opportunity to discuss and review our policies in relation to the other arts organisations in South East London, it has widened our network in the community and broadened our understanding of our relations with the local community. It is very easy for an internationally based enterprise to lose sight of its local roots.

7. The contribution of artists, craftspeople and film and video makers. This also has occasioned much discussion. Such artists clearly play a role in both our performance and educational activities but it was very salutary to have to define and write down the roles that they could play on a wider basis, again including.

8. The quality of the organisation's plans for education and marketing. Again it was a salutary exercise for each department within the Centre to consider their educational and marketing policies. They are areas which tend in the pressure of everyday business to be left to the experts, instead of using their expertise to further the aims of the individual department.

By the time the feasibility study funding had been granted we had already achieved a great deal.

The lessons we have learned have been many and various:

1. The selection of a experienced team of advisors is important, both for their subject expertise and the experience they have gained in similar applications.
2. We underestimated the length of time that each stage of the feasibility study would take to complete. This is influenced by both internal and external factors. Internally it is difficult to fit in such a large all-encompassing project into already busy working lives governed by a strict academic timetable. Externally such factors as local government internal reorganisation and the local government elections are difficult to predict and manage. Together these crucially delayed negotiations about specific sites. The lesson is to share experience with other lottery applicants as much as possible and to allow for budgeting for extra funding to cover delays.
3. We have been surprised that we have received little guidance from the Arts Council Lottery staff. This appears to be one area where money is not lavished on the lottery. The Arts Council staff appear to be over pressured and relatively low grade.
4. We have gained experience talking to wider networks of people in areas outside our usual academic or arts networks. People in local government, the urban regeneration funding agencies, property developers, architects and other outside consultants.
5. We have learned that the lottery demands a considerable amount of comparative analysis to meet the requirements of the criteria on benefit to the public, the effect on other arts organisations and competitors both locally in South London, and nationally and internationally.

Eight months later we are still working on the application. We have been given nine months option on a specific site and are working in earnest on the business plan and the detailed components of the individual projects within the overall application. For this we have to project prices for the year 㲰00.00 and, we have just been informed, find three estimates for each item of expenditure. And, as a final dimension to our learning curves, we are having to consider the possible archaeological implications of our intended site which is on Deptford Creek, and it was the centre of the sixteenth century Elizabethan shipbuilding industry.

21st Congress

URL: http://www.sibmas.org/congresses/sibmas96/hels07.html