A candlelit vigil was held on Friday 22 to mark the passing of the Brewhouse Theatre and Arts Centre in Taunton following its closure as a result of cuts to arts funding over recent years. This is a very real loss to the community and the gesture seemed a fitting and eloquent one, for it does feel as if something has been stamped out and cut down.
It also, of course, means that a large number of touring companies have been left damagingly out of pocket, as Marcus Romer discusses over at his blog and as reported in The Stage. Countless ticketholders stand to lose out too, though some acts, like the comedian Mark Thomas, were ensuring tickets would be honoured elsewhere, albeit at their own expense.
Back in 2009 Lyn Gardner was already blogging in the Guardian about the difficulties facing the venue: the work they were staging was exciting in its diversity and range, programming companies like Derevo and Look Left, Look Right, yet the threat of closure hung over them. Despite the considerable efforts of artistic director Robert Miles to turn the venue “around to become a crucial part of both the local and national theatre ecology and the local economy,” increasing it audience and its presence on the critical radar, it continued to struggle without the necessary subsidy.
Speaking about the venue’s programming, Miles said in his address on the night of the vigil, “it is really easy to say we didn’t get the right acts if you don’t know the way the industry works.” (Miles also wrote an impassioned post about the Brewhouse’s closure on the venue’s blog, which interestingly has since been removed). The idea that regional venue should avoid taking risks is something Gardner also challenged in her 2009 blog:
“Faced with more challenging and contemporary work, audiences have not stayed away; on the contrary, they have embraced the diversity of the programming.”
In a statement released by the venue, Paul Birch, chairman of the board of governors, said he hoped that lessons would be learnt from what’s happening in Somerset and that Taunton would be “a poorer place, culturally and economically, without the Brewhouse.” And that’s the crux of the issue; yes, there are short term losses, severe ones for those involved, but there are also broader implications. Culture is not just an optional extra for when times are good, it’s part of the pulse of any healthy society and the sense of that is being eroded. Taunton and its surrounding area have lost a real asset in the Brewhouse.
Colin Blumenau, the venue’s former artistic director writes about the closure in the most balanced way, concluding that now is not the time to attribute blame but to look deeper at the system in which this can happen, and seems to be happening with increasing frequency, sounding a warning that
“The demise of the Brewhouse is the most recent nail in the coffin of the live arts experience which, like the continued existence of the topical black rhino, is in real jeopardy. Society’s seeming indifference will result in people turning around to demand “Where has it gone?” And it will, by then, be too late.”
