Director’s Report
18 October 2012
Programme
Space
We have now made the move across the road to the old Quest House spaces in the Cope
Auditorium. This has provided us with an excellent, and invaluable, suite of rooms which we can
carry out our various activities. Importantly, it has also brought all our activity together in one
defined area. In addition we have a new cafe in Cope foyer, which has so far been very successful,
offering an important meeting point for the whole school.
The key element that still needs to be addressed is the facade for the front entrance, which in effect
will act as a shop window to the inside activity, and will help signify the presence of Loughborough
University Arts, both to students and the local community. The University have ring fenced £50,000
towards the facade and £20,000 towards the landscaping but we need to fundraise for the
remaining amount needed which will be approximately £30 – 40,000. We are currently looking at
fundraising options to make up the deficit.
We were very pleased to have the opportunity to show Margaret Tomlinson and Lindsay Brydson
around the new spaces. Lindsay is a trustee of the Helen Jean Cope Trust and we discussed with her
the possibility of a bid to Cope for the costs of the facade. We are just preparing accurate figures
prior to writing a formal letter to the Cope.
Radar
Radar developed a programme called AfterGold which took place in May/June this year and included
six new commissions to Japanese artists as well as a Matsuri (Japanese festival). There were some
very successful commissions, particularly the longer term residencies and the Matsuri. However,
there were equally some lessons to be learnt. Cultural Olympiad funding created the opportunity to
gain additional resource to develop a more ambitious programme but the funding did not allow for
any increase in staff capacity which did hinder our capacity to deliver some of the projects as we
would have liked. One of the larger projects, to recreate the first journey undertaken by Thomas
Cook did not happen due to Leicester City Council pulling out very late on. As such we still have
money for the commission and we have been asked by the Cultural Olympiad to deliver this at some
point in the coming year.
The forthcoming programme Home/Land has arisen from discussions with Loughborough
University’s Marsha Meskimmon and Marion Arnold, who are both part of an international network
of academics researching ways in which photographies, in the widest sense, play an important role
in the articulation of gender, identity, place and citizenship.
From this network (The Lens of Empowerment: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Women’s
Photography), Jean Brundrit and Sarah Ciurysek, along with artists Nina Mangalanayagam and Mitra
Tabrizian have been commissioned to develop a new series of lens-based works. During the
summer a number of the artists took up residency at the University to work on the project and also
took part in a conference organised by Marsha and Marion. The artists have now created new work
in response to the theme. Two of the works will be shown within Loughborough University Arts new
spaces while the other two are located on billboards around Loughborough.
Music
All the music spaces are now located at the back of the Cope Auditorium. We have a greater
number of practice rooms and the larger groups now use the Cope auditorium for rehearsal.
There has been an increase in the number of students applying for music tuition this year.
Surprisingly the applications have also bucked the downward trend for instruments such as cello and
brass, both of which have seen an increase in numbers. Piano and Singing remain ever popular, and
are again oversubscribed. We have also sold out places on both the painting and pottery classes.
We have been in discussion with the Loughborough Endowed Schools Music School about
developing a far greater degree of partnership working in the coming year. This will involve us
jointly programming the music, and having a workshop before each concert. The school will
contribute roughly about £5-600 towards this and will then bring all the students to the concert at a
reduced rate of around £2-3. This will make a very positive impact upon both the financial outlay
but also the audience (and the average age!)
Spoken Word
We have introduced spoken word to the annual events programme and have Ian McMillan and
Wendy Cope performing as part of this year’s offer. We are also in discussion with the Town Hall,
Charnwood Arts and Writing East Midlands about undertaking future collaborative activity around
literature. This year will also see another series of ‘Speech Bubble’ events following their success
last year.
Other Activity
We worked with Tim Garfield in Sports Development to commission three works for the hoarding
that surrounds the site of the old Bridgeman building. The brief was to celebrate the Olympics and
Loughborough’s involvement in it. One work was in partnership with Charnwood Arts and was done
in partnership with a range of individuals, one was by a Loughborough students and the main one
was by an illustrator called Ciara Phelan.
Collections Management/Staff
We were successful in our application to the University Intern scheme, whereby we can appoint a
graduate of Loughborough as a paid intern for a year. The role is predominantly aimed at addressing
the collection, and ensuring that appropriate systems are in place to ensure that the future
recording and maintenance of work is undertaken correctly. Again, the short listed candidates were
all very strong but Amy Petterson, a drama graduate, was offered the post and started at the
beginning of September.
There is a significant amount of work to be done. A recent visit to the Facilities Management store,
to view work that is currently in storage showed how little consideration has been given to valuable
works of art. In the past there has not been that much work in storage, but with the current wave of
capital developments and renovation many works have been removed and to put it bluntly,
dumped, in a store room in which the atmospheric conditions are not suitable and no consideration
to appropriate storage methods has been given. We are setting about ensuring that this work is
catalogued, properly packed and we are trying to identify a suitable space for the storage of work.
Amy has thrown herself into the task of organising the collection and is busy documenting work and
inputting the details onto the new collections management software that we have purchased.
Student Engagement
We are constantly looking at new ways of developing links with students and this year will allocate a
budget towards supporting arts based student societies engaging with professionals, either through
workshops or through presenting their work alongside the students. AU Dance is particularly keen in
taking advantage of this and we are currently in discussion with a range of other arts based societies.
The Business Plan will set out a range of objectives/actions with regard to our future engagement
with students.
One society that we want to work particularly closely with is Flix and we are currently trying to
support them in fundraising for a new digital projector, as their current system which sees the
delivery of reels of films will soon be outdated and the films will no longer be available in that
format. The cost of a basic digital projector is around £35,000 and while we can contribute
something as can the SU it will still require additional fundraising.
Marketing
We have been working on the development of the new website, which is expected to go live by the
end of the year. This will be far more interactive than the current version, allowing us to use far
more film content. The idea is to have content regularly updated to encourage repeat visits. We
also want to encourage students to get involved in creating content both by uploading their own
videos and through contributing to blogs and forms of critical writing. Another critical element is
that we want it to be the home not only to arts and events organised by us but by any department
across the campus. We hope it will become the place where people will look to find out what events
are on across the University and to some extent Charnwood.
We have also been busy developing new partnerships with the Town Hall in particular, and will
increasingly be looking at joint activity with regard to marketing and distribution of print media.