£15m set aside for new theatre in Berwick, Blyth to get an unwanted 'Culture Centre' while Ashington promises 'founder on the rocks'?

 

It's great to see that the 'Borderlands' project has been accessed to locate £15m worth of funding to replace the maltings theatre in Berwick. 

It is expected a good number of architects will engage in the competition to design a 'theatre for the future' as it's been described in the arts world.

Luckily according to the information issued on Scottish Borders and Cumbrian web pages, Borderlands projects are being handled by regeneration teams from the Council's involved with the project.

Northumberland County Council's regeneration team are also named in the delivery of the 'Blyth Culture Centre', to probably the least enthused public in the County on the back of underlying fears that its creation and centralisation agenda will destroy the culture and services people benefit from across the Counties largest Town. Along with rumours from facebook cads, who assure the public will contain a Levy Lounge, an Oliver Office and a Sanderson Suite all unwanted since 'partygate' and 'energy-gate' showed how little the Conservatives care.

But the (Whole of) Ashington doesn't appear to have any input from a regeneration team with the promises spun out from the mouth of the disgraced Tory Councillor Peter Jackson that he wanted to build a cinema on the site reserved for a new Council Office valued at £4m and that the Council would bankroll the losses of a cinema delivery company to have the project brought to life.

Northumberland Conservatives should have had Councillor Jackson's lips sewn together (metaphorically speaking) as his mate, the Tory mayor of Teesside has shown Northumberland what it costs to build a cinema and how to bring in a provider to deliver the project that will not burden the already stretched Leisure Management budgets of the Teesside Council's.

Mayor Ben Houchin has engaged with his local regeneration body, its combined authority who agreed to spend £9.7m on a similar project in Redcar, more than twice the figure quoted by Peter Jackson and when the Berwick theatre project is analysed, closer to what people would expect.

Northumberland has left thehandling of their promised project in Ashington to its Leisure Services management team, a team they are slashing £600,000 from in this year's round of cuts.The
Theatre, arts and sports groups are wondering how Arts Council, culture and sports grants will be handled and managed in future when staffing costs are so massively cut,  they don't seem to be getting any answers from the 'Morpeth Mafia' and ask is there a future outside of the Council's own core funded empire once Morpeths new Leisure Centre opens?

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