West Bromwich is one of the most destroyed places I have visited in this country. A new centre, due to open there in autumn 2006, will test the theory of urban regeneration through the arts. It is a gargantuan fun-box 26 metres high, 22 metres wide and 115 metres long. Deep indigo with pink trimmings, it is an astonishing, cheering sight in this town of small, often shabby buildings.
West Bromwich is deep in the Black Country: that cluster of towns northwest of Birmingham where they discovered how to smelt iron with coal and where William Murdoch invented gas lighting. But industrial wealth was long ago wrung out. When the architect Will Alsop came here to talk the new project over, he was stunned at the all-encompassing grimness: far drearier than Peckham, in south London, where he built his colourful, prizewinning library. The Albion soccer stadium was the only modern building within sight. No cinema, no swimming pool, an unemployment rate twice the national average. Previous "regeneration" had worsened the wreckage: an inner ring road and blanket demolition were the magic answers—better to have done nothing. The high street, once known as the "golden mile," is so run-down that the only shop fascias I recognised were William Hill, Coral and KFC.
Sylvia King is chief executive of the fun-box, which has been given the rather odd title of "The Public." She fizzes like a Black-Country firecracker, and gives me hope that the new centre will sparkle as brightly. She shies away from calling it an arts centre. Ben Kelly, the principal interior designer, who is about to start the fitting-out, calls it all "an interactive digital adventure playground." There will be no permanent collection, and, I think, no high art. "I have no problem with high art," King says, "but the poor can easily see it as an attempt to civilise them." Black Country-born, she has worked on community arts for 25 years. She is very conscious of the people she sees herself as working for. "Around here, lottery players ask each other, 'Have you put your money on the tax on the poor?' Well, this is their slice of it." Almost half the £54m cost of The Public comes from the lottery.
The ground floor can be walked through, and King is happy that people may use it as a short cut to the Cascade Bingo and Social Club behind, or to have a drink at The Public's café. Once they're in, she hopes to tempt 150,000 customers a year to pay to saunter up to the exhibitions along a long spiral ramp (Alsop's homage to Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim museum in New York). "It must be run as a business," she says. There's space for conferences, for weddings, for clubbing. She's determined to dodge the fate that's befallen so many lottery-funded arts schemes.
In Britain, the claims made for urban regeneration through the arts sprang from Glasgow's experience when it had its year, in 1990, as European city of culture. There is no doubt that Glaswegians used this accolade to upturn the image of a city in irrevocable decay. Solemn studies then purported to prove the amazing knock-on effect on the local economy; everything, down to sales of new televisions, was used to make the point. Undeniably, the changes did burnish the experience of visiting inner Glasgow, and pull in tourists. But away from the centre of town, little has changed. The same goes for the much-touted regeneration of Manchester.
Once lottery money arrived, the theory rapidly ran into darker trouble. The most notorious catastrophe was the Millennium Dome. But almost everywhere, forecasting was propelled by wishful thinking. Sheffield's National Centre for Popular Music closed almost as soon as it opened, and is now a students' union. The Baltic art gallery, on Gateshead's riverfront, was carved out of an old flour mill at stupendous expense, has no permanent collection and has shed directors like autumn leaves. Without a special lottery grant for running costs, it too would close. Within the Black Country, the attractive New Art Gallery at Walsall—designed by Caruso St John, and much praised—has teetered on the edge since it opened five years ago.
This isn't an argument against art galleries, or even digital adventure playgrounds. In themselves they can add to a town or city's attractiveness. The Tates at Liverpool and St Ives have achieved this, though with back-up and funding from London. But West Bromwich? As I go around, I cross my fingers for everyone involved. The Public is to be surrounded by a new public square. Alsop hopes that a "silver kilometre" will supplement the decayed golden mile; he acknowledges that architecture is not enough in itself. A new health centre is already in place; a Tesco Extra is promised. West Bromwich—so the borough council prays—will thus become the heartland of the Black Country.
It is a task for giants. At present, a huge mall at Merry Hill, a short drive away, tugs shoppers elsewhere. A dinky tramline, opened in 1999, wafts you into the hotspots of Birmingham. There are many reasons to leave West Bromwich; few, so far, to arrive there. But Alsop's mood-indigo fun-box is a shot in the arm. I wish it well. West Bromwich needs all the uplift it can get.
