An arts centre based in Deptford, in the London borough of Lewisham, the Albany is also responsible for the programming and management of two other venues: nearby Deptford Lounge, a local-authority community venue which contains a library and gallery spaces; and Canada Water Culture Space, housed in a library building run by Southwark Council, which combines a theatre and learning spaces. Overall turnover is approximately £2.7m, of which roughly £175,000 is received from Arts Council England and slightly more from Lewisham Council; another 20% is raised through trusts, foundations and lottery sources; while 55-60% is earned income (through renting space to arts and community organisations, catering, delivery of contracts, etc). It has approximately 53 full- and part-time staff, including apprenticies, and the same again in casual staff. The organisation has been led since 2003 by chief executive Gavin Barlow.

Mission: community development

The Albany was a community organisation in the 1970s before becoming an arts centre in the 1980s: that history is important to Gavin Barlow, who says that “everything we do has creativity at the centre of it, but our core mission is about community rather than about culture or the arts”. As an arts centre, the Albany seeks to nurture talent and create high-quality creative experiences, but always in ways that “are relevant to the people that we serve, that benefit the local area and develop the potential of people in the local area”. Its commitment to representation is reflected at governance level, with six of the sixteen members of the board voted in from user groups, including three people from the youth programmes and one from an elders programme.

Participatory work is “not separate from our creative mission, it’s part of the same thing”. And working in partnership is crucial: of the 450 performances the Albany programmes each year, over 60% will be generated through partnerships, support or co-production. “We have 26 resident organisations, mostly community organisations who we try to facilitate – we think of ourselves as a social enterprise in that sense. We try and take a holistic approach: when community groups want to hire the building, we don’t just take the fee, we choose to work with them based on how we can build on what they do. Similarly, when artists come to us, we challenge them to think how they can develop their work in conjunction with our communities. We also work cross-sector, with health and social care. I sense a fear in lots of organisations that as soon as they get involved in those kinds of sectors, they are somehow diluting what they are as arts organisations. We feel very strongly that that’s not the case. It enriches your work as an organisation, but also enriches your work artistically.”

“I sense a fear in lots of organisations that as soon as they get involved in those kinds of sectors, they are somehow diluting what they are as arts organisations.”

Three key partnerships

 It’s worth looking in more detail at some of the key partnerships the Albany has developed:

1: With Entelechy Arts

Entelechy has its office at the Albany and works primarily with older people. Entelechy and the Albany jointly produce and manage Meet Me at the Albany, a co-creative and participatory programme for older people that takes place in the Albany’s cafe, which grew from the question: could an arts centre also function as a day centre for older people? For Barlow, the project “demonstrates a real cross-sector partnership, not only with Lewisham council and Entelechy, but with different kinds of health-care provision, as well as being a genuine co-creation process putting the participants and artists at the centre”.

Meet Me, he argues, is already changing the attitude of Lewisham council towards adults’ social care. It also exemplifies a more general concern of the Albany: “how can an artist and an arts organisation take a really key important issue and reframe it and rethink it, not as a problem but in a way that develops people’s creative potential? So instead of the reality being, how can we find the money to pay for that, it’s: how can we develop people’s potential to contribute to their local area? What is their potential as human beings, as members of the community, what can they contribute?”

2: With Lewisham Homes

As part of the partnership it has been building with Lewisham Homes, the local social housing provider, the Albany has taken on existing youth programmes, and developed new programmes across the borough, co-invested in family events, and extended the provision of Meet Me across six sheltered housing units. “That partnership has helped us reach different audiences but also change what we do, and has been part of a development of being outside the building as much we’re in the building. So many people talk about engagement in terms of how to engage people with what we do: I think it’s so much more important to engage people on their own terms.”

3: With the local Vietnamese community

That last point is illustrated by the Albany’s work with the local Vietnamese community – the second biggest in the country – who weren’t using either the library at Deptford Lounge nor the Albany itself. “We went through a two-year process of going out and working with those groups and now Vietnamese elders do their tai chi in the front of the library, we co-create family days and events with that community, and other people join in.”

That process is ongoing: “We’re continually thinking, who are we not reaching, and how can we engage with them in different ways? There is a genuine diversity of different communities here and that is changing all the time, so it’s how we address that: by asking what are you interested in, how can we help you? It’s a very deliberate co-creation process.” This approach also guides the Albany’s involvement in questions about local gentrification, for instance working with the Albany Young Creatives, a youth leadership group, to make a film about local regeneration, and hosting events at the library discussing issues of displacement and change.

Challenges around communication

Barlow identifies the great strength of an arts centre – “the diversity of what you do” – as potentially its weakness: “It’s very hard to have a clear message, to explain in a couple of sentences the range of things that you do. And your visibility within the arts is limited because the media is about reviewing shows, it’s not about talking about the kind of work that we do. That’s something that we keep struggling with: how do you have a clear sense of how people can understand what you do, when actually you’re relating to people in so many different ways? We’re often guilty as arts organisations of not shouting about what we do enough, either within the arts, or locally. We’re a little bit guilty sometimes of just quietly getting on with it, and feeling the work will speak for itself, whereas actually we need to be really clear about what we’re doing and why it’s important.”

In response to this challenge, Barlow has collaborated with the directors of other arts centres across the country to form the Future Arts Centres advocacy and peer support network. Its central argument is that: “When our social and civic role is crucial to what we do, we reach different kinds of audiences that other arts organisations don’t; we tend to have dynamic business models, because we think cross sector, and because we fundraise in different ways; and we are a safe haven for artists that don’t necessarily fit in elsewhere, who are interested in – I hate the term socially engaged practice – but I guess are interested in that. People somehow thought that your social role meant the quality of what you did artistically was maybe lesser, and we wanted to say, no: it’s different in approach, but the quality of what we’re doing artistically has been as high as anybody else, and the way we’re doing it enriches what we do artistically, not compromising it.”

What next? 

Key to the Albany’s future is a building redevelopment plan which will “allow it not only to be a better building but a more sustainable building. We have quite a lot of land here, and we’re advancing plans for developing the whole building, with housing on the side.” This has raised an ethical question for the organisation: “The more flats we sell on our site, the more money we have to spend into the Albany – but is that what we want, in terms of our community that we’re creating? When talking to developers, for instance, they’re talking about the value they can get in three years’ time, before they move on. What we’re trying to think of is the value, over the next 30, 40 years, in social as well as economic impact.”

Thinking about sustainability also means thinking about succession. Barlow transformed the Albany from a venue with a £250,000 deficit to a thriving organisation, and says: “@ That’s part of our development plan: knowing that it can be doing what it’s doing in a generation’s time, in a new way.”