Threat to The Arches risks our place as a hub for creative arts
SINCE it opened in the early 1990s, The Arches has played a key role in Scotland’s performing arts ecology. Throughout this time it has been a special friend and partner of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) and its students and graduates as a place where new work and new ideas can be born and nurtured, where emerging artists can develop, not only as practitioners but as audience members and useful engaged citizens.
With its rich diversity of spaces, the venue has provided a versatile canvas on which our Contemporary Performance Practice (CPP) students in particular have showcased their work via the annual Into the New Festival and been able to experience the latest work of internationallyacclaimed contemporary artists and performers who are leading the field. The Arches is also the place where RCS production students have enhanced their technical knowledge and generations of our performance students across music, drama and dance have experienced and participated in a diverse range of artistic opportunities.
Throughout the UK and internationally Glasgow has a hardearned reputation for being a place where contemporary arts and creativity can flourish. That is why individuals and collectives enjoy creating new work here and are enriched by sharing it with receptive audiences. This in turn creates opportunities for our students to engage and participate with the finest professionals which in turn makes Royal Conservatoire of Scotland graduates highly-regarded and highlyemployable within the creative sector.
But The Arches is more than a venue. It is a place which enables emerging performers to experiment and challenge boundaries without the risk of censure. It is also place where those who will influence the future can interface and connect with that which is most challengingly creative in the present.
Any threat to the future of The Arches as a contemporary performance venue is a threat to Glasgow’s place within Scotland, the UK and beyond as a creative performance hub. At a time when Scotland is leading the world in active citizenship it would be a matter of great regret if one of its most influential contemporary performance venues was no longer playing its vital role in broadening boundaries and challenging cultural conservatism. Hugh Hodgart, Director of Drama, Dance, Production and Screen, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, 100 Renfrew Street, Glasgow.
ALAN Taylor’s arguments over The Arches appear disjointed (“The Arches is a victim of drink and drugs”, The Herald, May 20.
To make the connection between a nightclub and chronic drug addiction seems facile. He references “young men, their eyes as blank as canvases, their gait that of headless chickens, making their way from the city centre to the east end and beyond”. No-one is disputing that Glasgow has long seen issues with drug addiction among a small section of its people. However, this is completely separate from the question of whether a popular cultural venue should close. The sort of addiction Mr Taylor is referring to has roots in the city’s social landscape that run deeper than a night on the tiles.
Glasgow is known far and wide as a great destination for weekend breaks; yes, visitors to the city can be taken aback by hubbub of Buchanan Street at 3am on a Sunday morning, but just as many of them revel in the open, welcoming party spirit of the place. I’ve a three-year-old, and another on the way, so it’s been a long time since I’ve been to The Arches. But having met and played host to many visiting clubbers, artists, DJs and culturelovers in the past, I am in no doubt that what brings them to Glasgow, and brings them back, is this unique atmosphere. People make Glasgow; let’s not ask them to behave like monks after a good night out. Let’s celebrate the fact that we live in a city (a UnescoCity of Music no less) in which music and culture form a living, breathing part of the economy.
Mr Taylor acknowledges The Arches as a hub for theatre; it’s a hub for more than that. Its business model in which its clubbing core provides income for the more “avant-garde” and ambitious parts of its output is in fact one that should be applauded; it has set itself up to work beyond the vagaries of short-term funding. Just because the clubbing element is not to one’s taste, doesn’t mean clubs don’t count as culture. For many young people, going to a club is their first door into a world that extends to other music, other artforms, other experiences that go on to shape their adult life. And no, by that I don’t mean drugs and drink. Drugs and drink are part of life in Scotland with or without nightclubs like The Arches.
As many other commentators have already stated, The Arches is one venue which has been consistently forward-looking in its approach to drugs; with a high level of trained security and first-aid staff on hand, it has actually been one of the safest places to go out and enjoy yourself. There is a whole other issue here about how Glasgow, as a 21st-century city, should be working with the police to create a more enlightened approach to drug and alcohol safety. Closing down a nightclub is not part of that solution. It’s a shame to see such hackneyed opinions as Mr Taylor’s muddy the waters on this. Clare Harris, 125 Bellwood Street, Glasgow.