A former town hall building in the London borough of Wandsworth, Battersea Arts Centre was established in 1974, and since the 1990s has focused most consistently on presenting theatre, although in 2017 it also became a Moving Museum, and home to the Wandsworth Collection. Artistic director David Jubb has led the organisation since 2004. Of the 49 staff, 42 are full-time; it also benefits from a loyal team of volunteers, particularly as front of house. Its finances have been disrupted by the fire that destroyed its largest room, the Grand Hall, in 2015; in a more usual year, it has a turnover of approximately £2.4m, of which roughly a third is earned income (both ticket sales and commercial hires), another third private income generated through trusts, donations and sponsorships, and the final third public subsidy via Arts Council England and the local authority.

Mission: To inspire people to take creative risks to shape the future

“not for me, not for you, but for us””

Until 2015, BAC described its mission as “inventing the future of theatre”, and David Jubb is frank when explaining the change: “When I said to a local councillor or GP or teacher, and sometimes even an artist, inventing the future of theatre, people would glaze over and I would feel like an idiot. Whereas I can hand on heart say that the mission is to inspire creative risks, and very quickly people understand in shared language what a creative risk might mean for me or for them or for us.”

His words echo the motto of the former Battersea Town Hall, inscribed in the fabric of the building itself: “not for me, not for you, but for us”. This is one of BAC’s key values, along with two sets of pairs designed so that one word resonates with the other: ethical and entrepreneurial, kind and collaborative. A final point to note about the mission is its presentation as a visual diagram: arrows point in a circle from one element to the next, so it’s clear that shaping the future renews the cycle of inspiring people.

Empowering communities

Some of BAC’s work looks fairly conventional: although weighted towards beatbox and hip-hop, its Homegrown strand is a classic youth theatre programme; its Bee’s Knees room, offering daily provision to under-fives and their carers, is a standard childcare setting. But that nursery provision points to the influence on BAC’s approach to participation of a set of international visits Jubb undertook in the period 2005-2008, particularly to Brazil, where he encountered “SESCs: amazing centres of social change where you’ve got an art space, a library, a games room, a gym, a football space, a dentist, a doctor. These are places of well-being.”

The desire to be a “centre for social change” has shaped three key activity strands now embedded at BAC:

1: The Agency

Inspired by the Agenica Redes Para Juventude in Brazil, The Agency is a collaboration between BAC, Contact Theatre in Manchester, and People’s Palace Projects, and works with local young people, particularly those living in social housing, to enable, support and produce their creative ideas. BAC producers do not take ideas to these young people, but ask potential participants what idea they have for positive change in their community. BAC then support participants in developing their entrepreneurial skills to bring those ideas to fruition. Successful projects to date include a board game allowing players to test out potential life paths through their housing estate, a theatre company for care leavers, and a production company for local artists.

2: Agents of Creative Change

This professional development programme partners artists of all disciplines (from musicians to theatre-makers to photographers) with people or organisations in the charity or public sector, to encourage creative thinking and propose different solutions to challenges in the latter’s sphere of community influence. For instance, the team manager for Integrated Offender Management in Wandsworth worked with the artistic director for the interactive company Coney to develop an idea to reduce re-offender rates through co-designing a creative app that uses cognitive behavioural therapy.

3: The Create Course

Based on the Alpha Course, but replacing the word “religion” with “creativity”, this course is targeted at adults in the local area, particularly those who are unemployed or single parents and living in social housing, and aims to reignite the “innate creativity that you had rubbed out of you at school”. Jubb emphasises that the goal is inspiring people, not building audiences: “It connects us with incredible people that we would never have a connection with, who probably aren’t that interested in coming to see the shows that are on here – and the course is not trying to get them to come, it’s about their creativity, and what role your innate creativity can have. So what does creative parenting look like, creative home care, creative employment-seeking?”

“It connects us with incredible people that we would never have a connection with”

Jubb is so resistant to “the hierarchy of the main theatre programme” that in 2006 he redeveloped the organisation internally, merging the education and programming staff: “So many engagement programmes are ultimately servicing the machine of what happens on stage. I’m not saying those hierarchies are gone for us, but they started to go when everyone on the team was expected to be able to programme a festival and run a workshop for four-year-olds. With all of these programmes we’ve moved from a model of delivery to one of enabling. It’s what arts organisations do all the time with artists, so why aren’t we doing that for young people living on local housing estates? Why aren’t we developing their creative ideas?”

This merged team operates a project-working structure, to emphasise organisational fluidity: “Project working helps us react more quickly, to respond to things that are happening to people in our community.”

Barriers

This merging of education and programming teams is one of two fundamental changes within BAC that have shifted its outlook and approach to encouraging participation. The second is its adoption of “scratch” – a trial and error process, with in-built feedback mechanisms – for every aspect of its work, including its collaboration with architects on the redevelopment of the building. It isn’t unique in these approaches, but the barriers it encounters – primarily in relation to funding bodies – do stem from how unusual both are in the wider world.

In the first case: “Funders have an art strand and then they have a social change strand: they’re two different teams, the teams don’t talk to each other, and the assessment processes are different.” A programme like The Agency – which is both social enterprise and arts development – risks falling in the gap between the two.

In the second case, the scratch model doesn’t fit with expectations around proposals and outcomes. When applying for funding for building redevelopment, Jubb recalls: “We weren’t clear on what we wanted to do, or how we wanted to do it, we were working it out as we went along, and because of that funders think that you don’t know what you’re doing. And the truth is that you don’t know what you’re doing in terms of what they want – but you do very clearly know what process you’re following, and by following that process, you find out.”

This is an issue because time that could be given to experiment and creative thinking instead must be focused on “delivering on funders’ objectives”, sapping vital energy from the organisation.

What next?

Jubb is aware that vital organisational changes are still needed, not least to address diversity among staff and particularly board, to make both “look more like London”. He also knows that until the rebuilding of the upper and lower Grand Hall spaces is completed (in 2018), BAC is unable to support the social enterprises that emerge through the Agency long-term. The Scratch Hub that will open in the Lower Grand Hall will have space for up to 100 start-up creative enterprises focusing on social change, and link BAC more widely with charities and social entrepreneurs across Wandsworth and Lambeth.

He also aspires to more connectedness – both within the organisation, and externally. At present, it’s unclear to someone who participates in the Create Course, or the Agency, what other provision BAC offers for social enterprise or creative development. He wants to make the building more porous, by thinking about “people as active agents, defining their own journey through the building. Often communications teams think of people’s journeys as consumers, as buyers of tickets, whereas I’m more interested in the idea that I’ve taken that creative risk and now I want to take another.”

“Often communications teams think of people’s journeys as consumers, as buyers of tickets, whereas I’m more interested in the idea that I’ve taken that creative risk and now I want to take another.”

And he wants to build a similar map of activity nationally, ensuring that organisations engaged in similar areas of work are communicating, sharing best practice, and working together for social change through “shared leadership”models, in partnership with the public.