This afternoon I went over to Thornton for the re-opening of the South Square Centre. What an encouraging event that was! This community arts centre (with which I have been associated for around twenty years) is opening again after a year of closure for renovation. What a tremendous job they have made of it.
The Centre is located in a small square of former quarry workers’ cottages, dating back to the 1830s. These were taken over as buildings of historical interest by the local authority, and operated as a community centre for the arts, run by volunteers. As time went by, however but became abundantly obvious that very extensive renovation was required. Given the paucity of resources available to the City authorities, they made the building over to an independent charity, which undertook to raise the money to do the work. After a campaign which raised around £1 million, the work is now almost finished. The roof has been completely replaced with period materials, the stonework cleaned, all the windows have been replaced to original specifications, and the internal services (such as electricity) have been updated. When finished the place will have been redecorated inside and outside also. Having not visited it since the work began I was absolutely bowled over by what has been done. The project has been a model of the complementarity of historical conservation and modernisation.
Some of the individual artists’ studios still remain unfinished, but I’m delighted to see the place up and running again as an arts centre. The “Unit 9” group of artists, to which I belong, is once again exhibiting in the place.
It is such a relief to have some good news to report against the background of the usual grim international situation and a domestic government that is an embarrassment. I’ve even become downhearted by the experience of attempting to familiarise myself with egg-tempera painting. I’ll give my current experiment one more day before trashing it. Even if things go reasonably well from now on there is no way in which it can match my original expectations. I guess that the moral of the story is that I should look to the example of the South Square Centre, which has tackled and mastered problems which three years ago we all believed were impossible to overcome.