The council is still hoping a major art gallery will eventually be built at Black Rock on Brighton seafront.
Brighton and Hove City Council’s cabinet yesterday approved a five-year project to use the former swimming pool site for sports and leisure – with padel courts the preferred option – when they met at Hove Town Hall yesterday (Thursday 15 October).
But deputy leader Jacob Taylor said the long term ambition was to find a partner to make an art gallery there a reality.
He said: “Black Rock has waited long enough.
“At the heart of what we’re exploring is the potential of creating a nationally or internationally significant cultural destination, ie a major visual art gallery.
“What’s worth noting is that Brighton is one of the country’s creative cities. We have amazing artists who live in the city, an amazing festival annually, amazing architecture and art being produced, but we don’t have a major visual arts gallery.
“It’s quite unusual. When we talk to people nationally, they’re surprised that we don’t have a modern art gallery in the city, but to get to that we need to take a phased approach.
“Work is underway to work towards that long-term ambition of a major art gallery and discussions are underway with national funders, government and with major cultural institutions.”
The temporary measure for up to five years would provide sport and leisure and get people visiting that part of the city, while providing a rental income for the council, Councillor Taylor said.
The preferred bidder has proposed a temporary active leisure and sports facility with padel, fitness, a mental health programme and food and drink. The proposal does not require any further investment from the council.
The second bidder proposes a public beach hub and events space, with food and drink.
Whitehawk and Marina councillor David McGregor said when knocking on doors in the east of the city, people said they felt left behind.
The cabinet member for the economy, culture, heritage and tourism said: “It was very much like ‘the council doesn’t give a monkey’s about us’, we were determined as soon as we started to change that impression.
“Many things have changed that impression. Just look at it along the seafront – the eastern seafront is so much more vibrant and this is going to be the next part of that.
“When we get the art gallery there, it’s a real symbol of our values and our point that we’re not just about the city centre, but the whole seafront and Brighton and Hove as a whole.”
Cabinet member for sports, recreation and libraries, Alan Robins, who has been a councillor for 16 years and was born in the city, said he has heard more visions for Black Rock than he had hot dinners.
Councillor Robins said: “Finally along with things like the King Alfred, we’ve achieved more in four years then we’ve achieved in 20 years, we’re actually looking to do things.
“I remember talk of building a conference centre along there and all sorts of things along there and doing nothing, putting it on a shelf.”
Successive councils have invested approximately £18 million in the regeneration of Black Rock so far.
The money had been spent on diverting utilities, realigning and extending the sea wall, improved coast defences, the 800 metre boardwalk along the beach, and improved walking and cycling connections to Brighton Marina.
Other improvement works in the area include the first phase of restoring Madeira Terraces, the restoration and letting of the Reading Room and Temple building, and the refurbishment of Volks Railway Black Rock Station.
The financial details and identities of the two businesses linked with the temporary use remained confidential.
How terribly exciting to hear, once again, what the council and its officers would like Black Rock to become. One does wonder whether, just occasionally, they might consider closing their mouths and opening their ears.
And what an inspiring artist’s impression! A splendid gallery gazing out towards a flyover and a concrete sea wall. One can almost hear the tourists booking their flights.
But what do the young people of Brighton actually want? What about the families of East Brighton, who have waited decades for something rather more inspiring than another architect’s rendering?
A proper concert arena, perhaps, attracting the international artists who routinely grace Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield and Leeds, but somehow bypass Brighton? A spectacular indoor waterpark with flumes, lagoons and wave pools, rather than the dreary rectangular swimming lanes that were terribly fashionable in 1983?
Or, heaven forbid, a permanent ice rink! Particularly appealing given that Brighton’s much-loved Pavilion ice rink will not be making its customary appearance this winter. How splendid to have a city by the sea where one must apparently travel elsewhere to go skating.
An adventure and extreme sports centre? Somewhere young people might actually beg their parents to take them?
The possibilities are positively endless.
And yet, of all the things one hears families and young people wishing for, a major contemporary art gallery is curiously absent.
Now, Lady Bracknell has nothing whatsoever against fine art. Indeed, there is nothing more agreeable than an afternoon spent contemplating a masterpiece, preferably followed by a rather good lunch. And if our councillors enjoy such pursuits, how absolutely delightful for them.
But one cannot help wondering whether the purpose of regenerating East Brighton is to provide the councillors with somewhere agreeable to spend their Sunday afternoons, or to create something the people who actually live here might want to use.
Perhaps before commissioning another grand vision, someone might commission a rather more radical exercise.
Ask the public. And then, extraordinary though it may sound, listen to the answers.
Brighton and Hove is one of the few cities without a major art gallery. It’s a glaring deficiency..
Dearest Rostrum,
Brighton is extraordinarily fortunate to be barely an hour from London, home to Tate Modern, Tate Britain, the National Gallery, the Royal Academy and a positively embarrassing collection of other world-class galleries.
Those wishing to spend an afternoon contemplating fine art are therefore rather splendidly catered for.
I have, on occasion, accompanied younger members of the Bracknell clan on something of a pilgrimage to our ancestral home, Coral Reef Waterworld in Bracknell, as well as to Guildford Spectrum. Both establishments have somehow mastered the apparently revolutionary concept of providing swimming pools in which children might actually enjoy themselves. The journeys, however, involving excited youngsters, damp towels and the inevitable missing goggles, are not experiences one particularly wishes to repeat.
Both towns have managed to provide wonderful leisure pools with flumes, wave machines, rapids and all manner of aquatic excitement. Yet here in Brighton, a city with a substantial population of families and young people, we seem perpetually wedded to the idea that swimming should involve travelling up and down a rectangular pool, preferably in a straight line.
Travelling an hour by railway to London for a major art exhibition is a delightful cultural excursion. Travelling an hour or more simply to take one’s children to a decent leisure pool is quite another matter.
One is a destination experience. The other ought to be an accessible local amenity.
I have nothing whatsoever against art galleries, my darling. I simply question whether Brighton needs one quite as urgently as it needs somewhere for its families and young people to have some actual fun.
Perhaps, before commissioning another artist’s impression of a gallery overlooking a concrete sea wall and flyover, we might ask Brighton’s children what they would actually like.
I suspect the answer might involve rather more water slides and rather fewer watercolours.
…. What are you blabbing on about….