The Barbican, Rich Mix, the ICA and public funding of cinemas

So last month the Barbican announced it is to close 2 of its 3 screens to provide facilities for new flats being built, with a view to opening 2 new ‘state of the art’ screens in 2012.   http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/jan/07/barbican-cinema#start-of-comments Let’s take this on merit that it will actually happen and ignore for the moment the 2 or so years where the centre will only have 1 screen. A good thing, or bad?  Well, aside from a piece in the Guardian (linked above) and some discussion on the resident’s forum for the Barbican, there hasn’t been that much outcry.  But the comments on the Guardian website does make me want to add my own twopenneth worth on the Barbican’s situation and that of public funding to cinemas in general.

The Barbican arts venue is publically funded, albeit via the Corporation of London (which in itself derives most of its monies through the companies within the square mile rather than residents) rather than the general tax-payers funded Arts Council.  So in essence, it’s funded on public money, but what strings does this attached with, and indeed should come attached with? Firstly, it should be noted that the Barbican cinema does apparently (or according to the Artistic Director about a year ago) actually turn a profit, i.e. could live off tickets sales and hires alone.  Though you’d have to say that the inclusion within a massive arts centre and programmes and central marketing / advertising teams certainly doesn’t do any harm to the business of the cinema.

But what of the programming?  It’s widely acknowledged that the Barbican Cinemas do have a varied mix of festivals, seasons and the like alongside the pick of recent releases and is a good model of cultural cinema programming.  So cultural cinema and profitable?  Do these things go together?   It’s often believed that cultural and commercial are at the opposite ends of the spectrum and that by showing ‘cultural’ films you take a hit which is made up by screening the commercial ‘profitable’ films.  Is this what the Barbican is doing?  I’d say it’s unlikely.  What the Barbican does very well is attract big audiences to big cultural events, across all the artforms, and backed up by a very good marketing department.   And it appears that cultural success is not  the enemy of commercial success here. The subsidy may be necessary to cover the costs of the infrastructure, building and central marketing teams etc. as well as funding the larger flagship events at the centre, but it doesn’t appear to be exclusively necessary for the promotion of culture over commerce.  Which is partly why one of the comments “Sometimes limited financial revenue is a very small price to pay for cultural education.” does grate on me.  Does all cultural education mean limited financial revenue?  And should the Barbican be required to offer ‘cultural education’ regardless?  Shouldn’t the Barbican be left alone as a model of good cultural provision?  If they choose to close two cinemas for commercial reasons with a view to improving the offering in the next 2 years should they be allowed to? Maybe it’s a little easier to answer by looking at another publically funded institution.

Rich Mix on Bethnal Green Road was opened a few years ago to great fanfare and claims of cultural programming.  This cost many millions to open and receives around £700,000 a year from the Arts Council to ‘contribute to its Arts programming’  (see http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/rfo/rich-mix-cultural-foundation/)  yet what actually does it provide in terms of cinema programming?  Last week its playing A Single Man, Wolfman and Lovely Bones.  So one ‘arthouse’ film, albeit from a world famous fashion designer, with a very popular leading man in Colin Firth, destined for many awards or at least nominations, a big budget blockbuster, and a big budget adaptation from Peter Jackson.  So far, pretty mainstream.  But it has a section for Independent, Art and World right?  Well, Jazz on film every third Sunday of the month, a monthly shorts night and the occasional retrospective screening on Sunday afternoons at 2pm is not in my opinion much of a cultural programme.  Sunday at 2pm?  A retrospective of Yavar Abbas or Satyajit Ray with only 4 films in each?  Frankly, this is poor.  The cinema might be providing a service to an underscreened area of London, but when it’s only showing what is screening at the local multiplex, £700,000 for ‘arts programing’ does seem an awful lot of money for very little. So what’s going on here?  From the grapevine Rich Mix is doing pretty badly and is badly run and managed.  But as a flagship new arts centre, can it be allowed to fail or close?  Obviously not.  At least not yet.

But over in the West End of London, there is another flagship arts centre for which the prospect of closure seems very real. The Institute of Contemporary Arts, or ICA was founded in 1946 more as an artist’s space, but with the 2 cinemas in its Pall Mall home, film has been a central part of the organisation for a long time.  Here around £1.3million a year is pumped into this organisation, presumably with a view to providing ‘cultural education’ from limited financial revenue.  Yet is this successful?  Is the ICA film programme particularly good / worthwhile?  And even if it is, with the threat of closure hanging over, it doesn’t seem a particularly sustainable business model.

What is required is a change in thinking, from the people that write comments on blogs, right through up to the funders and decision makers.  Should cultural education = limited financial revenue?  In some occasions it should be argued that yes, the arts are not finanically self-sustaining in today’s current marketplace.  By and large the Arts Council can be seen to be a successful organisation in terms of improving the cultural provision of ‘the Arts’.  But particularly with film exhibition, which is a cultural and commercial marketplace, it seems to be accepted that a lot of public money can be thrown at large organisations in exchange for a measly amount of cultural provision.  The Barbican should be held up as a shining example of a large arts organisation.  If publically funded arts organisations are to be held to account for their lack of cultural provision, the list should start with the ones that are poorly run and rely on cultural education to require limited (read publically supported) financial revenue.

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