Going round the Roundhouse
Another day, another great arts centre, with another great director. This time it was the Roundhouse and its chief executive, Marcus Davey. The Roundhouse has a colorfoul past - a train engineering works in the 1840s and 1850s (and thus one of only three of its kind left in the country); a bond house for Gilbey’s gin thereafter until the 1950s; and then centre 42, the brain child of the playwright Arnold Wesker, venue for Pink Floyd’s first gig and other great events like Oh! Calcutta! (starring one Tony Booth).
It closed in 1983 and lay empty for more than a decade, until it was revived by the vision of one man, Torquil Norman. The self-effacing toy millionaire (he refused to let the Roundhouse board name the bar after him, and when they did anyway, forced them to put up a sign recording his objection) bought the site and spent ten years doing it up until it opened last year. And what a venue it now is, with the most amazing performance space and loads of other stuff like recording studios and the like.
So why did he do it and what is he and Marcus up to now? Well, this is where, for me, it gets interesting. He didn’t want to start an arts centre, he wanted a place for young people to go. So the Roundhouse, really, isn’t an arts centre, it’s a place for kids (defined as 13-25) with an arts centre being part of that. And when I was there, it was pretty full of them. No one is forced to come to the Roundhouse, but every course is over-subscribed. And according to Marcus, in the year they have been doing this, not a single piece of equipment has been nicked or damaged by any kid coming. The choir now has 120 people, and those that first came a few years ago (the Roundhouse outreach programme started a few years before the venue opened) are teaching the newcomers.
Of course, the Roundhouse cost £30 million to get off the ground and costs £4.5 million to run (60 per cent from private sources) so it should be good. And it would be quite difficult to recreate - as I am rapidly learning, so many of these kinds of places depend on the passion and vision of just a few people. But there is an important lesson here. The first rule of any arts organisation should be to strive for excellence first and foremost. But the Roundhouse shows that arts can also come in at the end of the process as well. You start by thinking about how to get kids focused and off the street, and you end up again and again at the arts and their power to help rebuild our communities.
The lesson of the Roundhouse is that we need more of them, perhaps starting in Peckham.