News
Band on the Wall back in business
Published 15.11.07
Creative Times talks to Ian Croal, Chief Executive of Inner City Music and Director of the Band on the Wall project, about the venue’s much anticipated return and what’s in store for us on Swan Street.
Four years after Band on the Wall shut its doors, Manchester’s legendary live music venue is set to reopen in Spring 2009. The Swan Street site will be fully refurbished and extended - occupying two buildings - thanks to a hefty investment of £3.2 million.
The Arts Council Lottery Fund, Heritage Lottery Fund and Manchester City Council have provided the sum after a lengthy and sometimes arduous fundraising process. “There’s no doubt about it, a catalyst in this was the Manchester City Council and their very strong support from the outset,” says Ian. “In terms of making sense of the whole redevelopment at later planning stages, the Heritage Lottery Fund was critical. Really though, the fundamental offer was from the Arts Council who earmarked £2.5 million for the project from as long ago as 1999, when we produced our original feasibility study. Since then, it’s been a matter of trying to make it all stack up by fitting the capital costs plans to the available funds – that’s been a difficult process.”
The last few years of fundraising have not been without drama. “In 2004,” explains Ian, “we had to do a fairly rapid redesign and rethink of the whole project, after funds that we were hoping for from other agencies were clearly not going to materialise. We were forced to reduce the projects in its scale and scope but going through that process required us to face up to what really were the core things we wanted to achieve. The project now is smaller than we first intended, but we believe it’s better.”
So what are these core elements that Band on the Wall will focus on? “Music performance is still top of the list, but in addition to that, we’re looking to develop our education and training side,” says Ian. “Since the late 70s Band on the Wall has had some form of education programme. We will be running courses but saying that, we have no intention of becoming a big educational institution. Rather, I see the developed venue as a resource for established education providers in the area.”
Creating an archive will also be a priority for the Band on the Wall team - but it will be about an awful lot more than just retaining old posters and memorabilia of times gone by. Ian explains – “We want to create a living archive to record what’s happening now. A large proportion the music played at the venue over the years is not written music, not heavily notated. A lot of it has never been recorded so it’s lost for all time. We would like to develop an archive of live music and video footage, which we envisage being presented as part of the programme in our new space, The Picturehouse.”
The Picturehouse occupies a building adjacent to the original Band on the Wall. The two will be connected; though not by anything creating a sightline, so the spaces can be used independently. The ground floor of The Picturehouse will be home to a café style venue hosting live performance and serving as a networking and information point for musicians and, in the long term, become a hub for the Northern Quarter. “We want the café’s identity to develop organically,” says Ian. “It’s something that will need to evolve over time” The Picturehouse will, significantly, introduce a daytime, multi-use arts space to Band on the Wall.
Building work starts in January, under the expert eye of Liverpool architects Shed KM. That’s when the end of the city’s wait for the reopening of this irreplaceable venue will finally be in sight.
