City’s culture club

Feb 6 2009 by David Holmes, Chester Chronicle

A meeting to discuss culture and the arts in Chester took place on Saturday. DAVID HOLMES reports

THEATRE, music, art and dance lovers unanimously agreed Chester cannot wait until a new performing arts centre is delivered as part of the ‘credit- crunched’ £460m Northgate Development.

The regeneration scheme was due to bring a replacement for the Gateway Theatre which was earmarked for demolition to make way for new shopping streets – but the whole project is now on hold.

A meeting of Music in Chester agreed to “get on” with fighting for a new city centre-based performing arts centre designed to complement existing venues without relying on the Northgate scheme.

Geoff Clifton, chairman of Chester Performs, the organisation formed to deliver the original performing arts centre, confirmed it would now be 2017 or 2018 before it was completed and its future was “unlikely at that”.

He said: “Chester has struggled for 15 or more years with its performing spaces and we have got to work in the same direction if Chester is to achieve the cultural activity it deserves.”

City councillor Jim Latham, who chaired the meeting, agreed there were no guarantees the Northgate scheme would include a performing arts centre and therefore people had to make it happen.

He said: “There may be merit in having a building which tries to do a few things well rather than everything fairly well,”

Cllr Latham, favours a site at the back of the library or at the Little Roodee and Gorse Stacks.

But Cllr Richard Short, executive member for culture on the new Cheshire West and Chester Council, warned there would be “no money” available in the first year of the authority and other projects such as Ellesmere Port’s “dilapidated” Epic Leisure Centre would be competing for resources.

The meeting heard about other venues which could help fill the cultural gap.

Nick Fry from Chester Cathedral said problems with heating and draughts had to be cured to make the building more comfortable, while staging should be easier to dismantle. Extending and lowering the stage at Chester Town Hall would make it a more suitable venue.

Maggie Evans of The Hammond School said its dance facilities were open to the community but not always available since the building was first and foremost a place of learning.

Professor Tim Wheeler, vice chancellor of the University of Chester, said its drama and dance hall at Kingsway was again available to the wider world but limited to 132 seats.