After settling at 183 Fazeley Street back in 2008, Ikon have confirmed that as of April 2011, Ikon Eastside will be closing up for the final time, due to public funding cuts.
The large exhibition space at the heart of Digbeth, has provided the perfect setting for large-scale work, video and events over the past few years. It’s hosted work by internationally recognised artists, including Andy Warhol, Damián Ortega, Józef Robakowski and Siobhan Davies Dance.
Rites of Spring, a three day music festival featuring Turner Prize winner Martin Creed, Modified Toy Orchestra and Epic45 will be the last event held at Ikon Eastside, from 7 – 9 April.
We are extremely saddened to be losing Ikon Eastside, but our commitment to bringing internationally recognised art to the city is unwavering. Looking to the future, our goal remains to create a permanent museum of contemporary art for Birmingham.
- Jonathan Watkins, Ikon Director
It’s not all sad news though, since Ikon are intending to keep up their involvement with the Eastside district, focusing instead on site-specific events and promoting cultural regeneration through their membership of the Eastside Contemporary Art Consortium. Their current study into the feasibility of this permanent museum, (‘Ikon Two’) also remains unaffected.
In a meeting yesterday it was decided that the Arts Council will not fund any further plans from The Public, West Bromwich, including those for the long awaited interactive gallery. The reasons given are an absence of a firm opening date for the gallery and the considerable increase in annual revenue funding required to deliver the plan. It was announced last year that tickets for the gallery will be priced at £6.95 for adults, which stoked the fires of many angry taxpayers.
They have, however awarded Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council an award of up to £3m to allow them to develop a revised plans and to bring the building fully into public use. The Arts Council’s intention is that the significant investment made by all the funders will benefit the residents of Sandwell.
Sir Christopher Frayling, Chair of Arts Council England, said:
“We are the national development agency for the arts, and investing in ground breaking creative projects that have the potential to give more people access to great art is central to what we do. That is why we supported this project and why, at every stage, we have worked with our partners and carefully weighed the level of risk involved against the potential public benefit.
But the fact is that, although the building is open, the interactive art gallery at the centre of the vision for The Public is not. We have done everything we can but there comes a point where we have to make a difficult judgement – and regretfully, that moment is now.”
The Public will be releasing a statement later on today.
At the kratesitwards (as some are calling them) on Saturday, Coun Neville Summerfield bigged up some of the support initiatives for creative types in Birmingham:
- Creative Birmingham – pulling together key public agencies investing in the creative industries
- Design Space – accommodates and finances new design agencies in the Jewellery Quarter
- SRB6 Creative Industries – offers a range of business support to new businesses in the north-west of the city
- Enterprise City – provides coaching and mentoring services to new and expanding businesses
- Business Support for Creative Industries Programme – £9m flagship initiative. Created 800 jobs, safeguarded 400 jobs, helped start 250 businesses and supported 1,200 businesses in total. Generated over £15m in new sales
As far as I can tell, SRB6 has ended, enrolment in Enterprise City is closed (the scheme ends in March 09) and I can’t find any info about Creative Birmingham at all.
D’log tried looking into the schemes mentioned when Coun Summerfield responded to the issue of support for the creative sector last month. He had problems finding any useful information too.
The thing is, maybe there are lots of helpful support schemes out there but how many eligible people/companies know about them and where’s the information being made available? I guess the place to go would be Creative Launchpad (currently residing online here) or Business Link but it’s a shame the info doesn’t seem to be collected together somewhere useful.
Actually, I’ve just found West Midlands Finance, which describes itself as “comprehensive, continually updated finance information for West Midlands SMEs”. Feel free to register and have a root about but the need to register has put me right off – what’s the need exactly? Humph.
Some good news from the Edge has dropped into my inbox. Having secured a ten-year lease for their premises they’ve now secured funding for a big refurb:
The wonderful SITA trust have blessed us with the resources to install a new heating system, disabled loos, insulation and a new kitchen! Â This will be stage one of our ongoing plans to develop the place as the (informal) venue for experimental arts in the city and operate year-round.
There’s good news and bad(-ish) news: the bad(-ish) news is that public activity will be suspended until late summer while things are sorted out. The good news is that they’d like people to help out with, in their words:
mainly smashing stuff and chucking it away/recycling, quite therapeutic, actually
So if you’d like to get involved drop them a line.
There are still a few events happening at the Edge in the meantime – the Strange Ways Cheapside Show is there until 12 July and there are some talks on 25 July which I’ll blog about later.
