Council has to act in the arts' best interests

Letters to the Editor, Published Date: 30 October 2008

As one of the officials responsible for recommending the purchase of The St Andrews Arts Centre building at minimal cost 20 years ago (at the suggestion of the late Councillor Joe Boyle), and for seeing it develop on a shoestring with its gifted staff doing marvels with the children from across the Borders, its demise would be a blow to the education service.

Is this one more example of how populist measures such as freezing the Council Tax end up cutting and damaging a service which people have spent their professional lives jealously shielding from those who continually think that education is so big that chopping out bits here and there won't make a difference?

This centre is a toehold in the arts world in a small authority which will never be able to splash money about for the arts.

Let's not shut the door and pretend that we can produce a better service by splitting it somehow into half a dozen locations.

Will they all have to have one sixth of the huge costume collection at the centre? Have the practical issues been looked at on site? Does the public know this is the sort of cut that is being proposed? Do the council members themselves know?

Most of the outdoor centres have gone. Is St Andrews to go as well? Is the good work of Borders Regional Council a sufficient reason for the new-broom Scottish Borders Council to sweep it away? If this goes, the reputation of SBC goes as well.

Ingenuity used to be the watchword – and fighting to maintain what cannot otherwise be replaced.

DONALD GORDON

Melrose

 

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