From Dream to Reality?

KATHY HUBBARD is steeling herself to help spend £7 million of public money.

ONE OF THE best things about my job, I always tell myself, is that there is no chance of getting bored – ‘every day, something different’. The learning curve upon which I’ve travelled since leaving over twenty years of working for the criminal justice system has often been steep, and occasionally vertiginous. Next week I shall be needing a head for heights, as it’s about to get a whole lot steeper.

Next week is the week I sit with colleagues from the Shetland Islands Council to interview the firms of architects who are applying to be the lead consultants for Shetland’s proposed new cinema and music performance venue. And I can hardly believe it.

It’s ten years since we first sat down to talk about a new cinema for Shetland, and at about the same time, others were dreaming about a purpose-built performance venue for music. Ten years and many, many reports, meetings, debates and presentations later, here we are at Phase 2 of the Scottish Arts Council’s National Lottery Capital Fund application process; the Council has promised matched funding.
 
If we get this next bit right, it really is going to happen. Choosing the right architect/lead consultant is absolutely crucial. We are on the verge of spending £7 million of the public’s money. Feeling the pressure, me? You bet.

But I’m really excited too. It’s been a very long haul, and the workload can only increase should our application be successful, but what an interesting journey it has been so far.

The sense of excitement and achievement amongst those involved is palpable, and has been a spur to us whenever the going has gotten tough

Whilst I have always been a lover of beautiful architecture, it was only ever the ‘outside’ of buildings that I noticed before we started all this – I never really thought very much about how the interior space worked, and how much design and thought goes into every aspect of building in order to make it fit for its purpose.

It was relatively easy for me to sit in awe outside the Guggenheim in Bilbao – but I’d never really thought about the finer points of what was needed to make it a great gallery space.

It has been my privilege during the past seven years, as the campaign for a new cinema and music performance venue for Shetland gathered pace, to be helped to look at buildings in a whole new way.

Our first consultant, Ron Inglis, patiently hauled me around a host of arts venues, helping me to see what worked and what didn’t (even though it often looked great) in terms of how each building was meant to be utilised.

He helped me to concentrate on some of the vital details rather than allowing myself to be seduced by the bigger picture (I am fast becoming an expert on toilet design, for example – go on, ask me anything).

Once Shetland Arts Trust joined up with the Local Authority as partners in the Lottery application process, there was more to be learned, particularly from colleagues in the Council’s Capital Programme Department.

I have come to have enormous respect for their expertise and their professionalism; they, in their turn, seem to have accepted that being ‘arty’ does not necessarily mean that your brain has taken a permanent holiday. That journey towards mutual respect has been a particularly rewarding one (and the bruises have faded now …..)

Some years ago I had my first experience of being involved in what for us was a major drama project, from the commissioning of the play to its production – the fundraising, the partnership working, the location search, the set design and building, the sourcing of props and costumes, the rehearsals, front of house, and the final production.

It was exhilarating, not just to be part of all that, but to watch something grow from the germ of an idea to a full-scale event: to see how the process works.

If (no, when) our new venue opens its doors I will have had the same privilege, on a much larger and more challenging scale, of seeing something through from a dream to the reality, with all the learning that this entails. I feel very lucky to have been part of it, in spite of its effect on my blood pressure and on the greying of my hair.

I have been encouraged, throughout all our struggles so far, by watching a similar process occurring on the site next door to where we hope to be, namely, the building of Shetland’s new Museum and Archive. For those involved, this has been a dream even longer in the dreaming than our own, but it is well on the way to opening its doors.

The sense of excitement and achievement amongst those involved is palpable, and has been a spur to us whenever the going has gotten tough.

No doubt it will get a lot tougher, but the results will be worth it – a new amenity which will contribute so much to the cultural, artistic and educational life of Shetland, and to its future economic development.

‘Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act,’ wrote TS Eliot, ‘falls the Shadow’. Which in my case is represented by box files of paperwork that are fast becoming a construction project in themselves, and several years of hard grind.

And we havn’t even got our trowels out yet….

Kathy Hubbard is Projects Manager for Shetland Arts (formerly Shetland Arts Trust)

© Kathy Hubbard, 2006

Link

• New Shetland Museum