Upgraded but downbeat

I was made Interim Director at Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in 2006, whilst discussions were held between the organisation and its core funders. The CCA was founded in 1992, replacing the Third Eye Centre, an experimental arts organisation. The CCA was more focused on a visual arts and live arts programme. Awarded a major Lottery grant, it was refurbished and relaunched in 2001. The impressive new building promised much, but it was perhaps too upmarket and somehow out of sync with the bohemian art community audience that once inhabited it. The much larger facilities also encouraged a larger programme, though the programme funds had not increased in proportion. By late 2005, the CCA had run into large debts.
 

When I started, there was a debate with funders on whether there was a need to keep the CCA in a city that had acquired a large and sophisticated arts infrastructure. It was decided that the CCA would stay open, under the overall care of the Scottish Arts Council (now Creative Scotland), while we experimented to see if it could re-establish a relevant role in the city and broader cultural community.
In a large building, then silent and inactive, it was clear that momentum had to be quickly established. Many organisations offered to take over the space, but that risked the loss of the unique contribution that the CCA, and before it Third Eye Centre, had made to Glasgow and the wider arts community. It also meant that the building could become closed to the public. We redefined our relationship with a number of cultural tenants and developed an ‘open source’ policy for the whole building, asserting creative control over the selection of partners who we felt were proposing programme ideas that were a complement to our own programme and purpose.
This approach has had several clear benefits: it has facilitated the expression of other curatorial voices in the building; it has created a shared sense of ownership of the CCA; it has brought in a wider and more varied programme and new audiences. Sharing resources has enabled the CCA to provide in-kind support to other publicly funded arts organisations and cultural practitioners. This new way of working is enabling our staff (who are all employed on a part-time basis) to re-establish a core programme, co-ordinate a series of partnership programmes and provide a platform that supports a huge range of artists and organisations across the city.