The Baroness Young of Hornsey OBE:
Seriously, I am really, really pleased to be hosting this afternoon’s event. I hope Simon doesn't mind if I go way back, about twelve years I think it was. Twelve years ago when we first met, I was head of Culture at the GLA and along comes this guy with this slightly crazy idea, and I'm thinking what's going on here, how is this ever going to take off. It was so ambitious; conceptually, intellectually and of course financially and those were different times financially of course, pre 2008. Nonetheless I must say I have the greatest admiration for Simon because he’s an absolute embodiment of somebody who makes a commitment, has the passion and then just keeps at it like a terrier at a bone or something. He’s really, really gone for it and it’s a great idea, otherwise we wouldn't be sat in this room. Now, I haven’t had an update so, I'm really looking forward to understanding about where the concept and the vision has gotten to and what are the next steps and after I've finished speaking I'm going to hand over to Simon and there will be time for everybody to ask questions or make their points and so on and so forth, but it’s a really, really interesting & exciting project so, over to you Simon.
Simon Elliott:
Thank you very much indeed. I’ll let some of the images speak for themselves. The purpose of this event is to inform Government who are increasingly supporting Garden of Ideas and to meet people with specialisms that may wish to tie in to some of the work that we’re doing. It’s an absolute privilege to be in this room and I'm most grateful for your invitation and it’s also a great privilege to be amongst such an esteemed group of specialists who've been supporting the project. I think let’s bang on with it.
[Garden of Ideas opening sequence video is played]
Simon Elliott:
So what is it, the Garden of Ideas? Where does it draw its inspiration from? The Great British Pleasure Garden. Many know what it was. A great platform for people to come & meet in London to look at each other’s fashion, kings & queens disappearing into the bushes but also tasting the famous London ham so thin you can read a map through it but more importantly to listen to the very best of world culture. Mozart first performed there. It was also the place where Handel’s firework music was first written for. It was a place of international excellence. Our thinking within GOI is to explore the very best of Arts, Culture, Science & Technology within one destination. The Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens was where the first balloon ascending was ever seen in London. People from all over the world came there & the architecture was spectacular. So, our vision for a pleasure garden for the 21st century is a place which will include all of those elements. The most spectacular gardens.
We’re working in partnership with the Eden Project and Sir Tim is signing a contract in China as we speak & we have a small short video a little bit later. Pavilions on the roof of this building which is in a hill shape. We’ll attract people, and we’ll host food, there will be entrances to hidden underground excitements and large scale installations that you can walk through or indeed ride through. The most spectacular towers ever seen depending on which site or in which city we are developing the project. Tree houses. We’re offering artists residencies so work can be developed there, incubated, market tested, tried out and then developed for some of the larger installation halls later on.
Within one of the halls we've got a concept by Dale Chihuly, we've just come from China where the MGM Grand has in its entrance hall Dale Chihuly’s blown glass. Dale has agreed to work with us to create a hand blown concert hall where you ride through on water through a series of caverns, tunnels and caves to listen to music it will be the most extraordinary music venue in the country many people have already expressed interest in playing in it. There will be a spectacular set of installations. We’re working with Punchdrunk, the famous company who has just been working at the National Theatre where you actually enter the artwork and walk through the narrative. We’re creating hotels that will be extraordinary, not expensive but will facilitate your visit there like no other and I’ll show you a little bit more about this. We’re hoping to lead the way in which food and drink are going to be experienced in the future. We’re building the world’s first slow food moving restaurant. You actually connect the chairs and tables together and they move and float into rooms which are specially designed to eat in. It’s a ride it takes about 20 to 40 minutes to complete and a bit like Willy Wonka or something out of Roald Dahl you’ll be experiencing something spectacular that you could not experience anywhere else. The architects who have been working on it have created the most extraordinary building. Depending on whether it’s needed or not. We’ll have some biomes, in cities where the air is not so good or places where it’s too hot or too cold. These are self-supporting biomes, their made out of plastic. They’re not as expensive as glass. It’s about a quarter of the cost and these fantastically natural biomimic shapes are now possible to build. We’re going to be creating in the tower an extraordinary place where you can float about, step out over netting and explore the artwork from a perspective that is not usually explored from. Like a theme park we’ve built our model on a ticketed attraction and it’ll pay for the commissioning of the arts. Unlike a theme park we will create work that constantly changes and updates like a modern theatre or a cinema. Unlike a traditional theme park where a film tie in is then stuck there for the next 25 years. So, spectacular gardens something on the scale of which we’ve not often seen in the UK. Artworks are included in the gardens and we’d like to show you an example of what the planting might look like.
[Video of world illusion is played]
Simon Elliott:
This was shown outside the Hotel de Ville in Paris. It’s a garden but when it’s seen from one perspective. So with modern technology and computers we can create a garden that gets us to think about what the purpose of a garden is from a fresh perspective. We’re partnering with the Eden Project because the Eden Project is asking people to look at the planet, the things that grow on it and how humans are relating to that. How we’re looking after the planet. Garden of Ideas is to explore how we humans are amongst each other and that’s why Sir Tim is working with us. Stunning pavilions, installations, artists that we put up for the Samuel Beckett award and they've won it, they were the best innovators of British theatre for a year in 2012, artists that have been shown at Tate Modern, The Museum of Modern Art in New York MOMA. These artists don’t usually place their work in theme parks. These are leading artists that are creating new ways of engaging with art and culture. Biomimicry we’re very interested in. In the 60s it was outer space that was offering us excitement and places to learn from and now it’s actually within our own bodies and so we’re going to be taking people on journeys in miniature in a way that hasn't been seen before. So, we’re very basically a garden and underneath are these large visitor ride through attractions and entertainment spaces, live performance, festival events, marriage garden, community spaces and of course there will be a hotel experience and retail and beverage. It’s a profit making social enterprise.
We did some modelling on one site in North Greenwich and these are the types of visitor figures we were told to expect, 2.7 million visitors and the cost of entry was between £29 and £39 depending on whether you got your ticket online or afterwards. The modelling I think Hector will talk about in a little while because we’re working up a generic model that’s based on the experience that Roy Holburn has of delivering profitable theme parks internationally for many years. My experience? I hold the box office record, I believe I still do, of having the most visitors walk through an installation, not a traditional theatrical performance, at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. 15,000 people a day went through it. That hasn’t happened since. Some of my team will be talking about their brilliance in winning best building in the world. They created the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore and also some of the team will talking a little bit more about the Eden Project. This is the structure, it’s carefully thought about how each element will relate to each other and I’m happy to send anybody who wants more information about that.
We’re so excited because Andy Serkis, who is a famous actor who you’ll know from playing Gollum in The Hobbit, King Kong in King Kong. He runs the Imaginarium and he says this is one of the most exciting projects he’s heard about. He’s been waiting for something like this to happen because his very purpose in life is to bring the charm into technology. We’re very lucky that Katie Kopec is here, who works closely with Gordon Innis from London & Partners, is here, as are Dame Judy Dench, people from the Eden Project, Hollywood actors & many people who are in industries related to what we’re doing whether it’s the Live Art Development Agency or the Head Curator at Tate Modern. These are the top end arts organisations feeding into a platform that the UK has not been given internationally before.
I’d like now to introduce Graham Sheffield’s private words, talking about Garden of Ideas. He is head of Arts for the British Council.
[Graham Sheffield CBE - video played]
It’s a new concept of a space for the arts. We talk a lot in the Council now about different kinds of spaces; digital space, a reinvented library space, temporary space, in countries which do not have the infrastructure to spend £100m on a multi-arts centre. It’s essentially an international concept using British design skills and the expertise of the British cultural sector but I suspect it will be a very international experience. I see a lot of countries or several countries being interested and attracted to the notion of this as an additional attraction for their tourism business innovation sectors.
You seem to be conceiving this inside out in the sense that it is the experience leads the architecture. Although the architecture may be spectacular in the garden, it is actually content driven, or an idea of content driven, which I think is certainly unique.
It could be an extremely inclusive venue, maybe in a way that some of our more venerable institutions cannot be, and that the trick will be to do that without lowering the common denominator in terms of the arts, the art experience and the artists who work there. I would hope there would be space for creativity, not only on the grand and epic scale, but also on the small scale by individual artists who are seeking to find a larger market, or for people who feel that they are engaging with the arts without necessarily having to make that huge investment for a single show and may be able to explore different art forms in different experiences in a way that they find actually quite congenial and informal; people who are wanting to be inside the art and that experience.
I think the concept, as described to me, will give people the chance to do that at a high artistic level but it puts the power much more in the hands of the audience who have got to make the commitment to go to the garden, to know that once they are there, they have quite a bit of choice as to how they design their day, what kinds of art forms or experiences they go to and I haven’t seen anything quite like it. It’s got a kind of unique take on history but in an entirely contemporary framework.
Simon Elliott:
I’d now like to introduce you to Richard Parry, I'm hot back from Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong & Macao, where his team have brilliantly aligned potential investors, potential sites and I think it’s best Richard describes what he does himself.
Richard Parry – Head, Experience & Attractions Industries, UKTI:
Hello everyone, I'm Richard Parry, UKTI is sponsoring food & drink. UK Trade & Investment has one principal role in life which is to connect supply and demand internationally, we support UK business and try to get them connected to overseas markets & that’s what we've been trying to do for Simon. I'm the head of the experience economy team. There are two of us, it is me and Barry over there & I've taken another picture us in action and here we are chasing these projects around the world in the best way we can, but it’s not just me & Barry, it’s a team of people who are embedded in all our embassies, consulates and high commissions around the world who are working to find opportunities for people like Simon people in this room. And about a month ago I was talking to one of my European colleagues she said to me, well you know have been banging on about creative the UK is how wonderful it is, and cutting edge & full of imagination & all the rest of it, prove it to me, so I showed her the GOI and after 30 seconds of silence she said, “Ah OK, now I get it.” And that’s a very powerful tool. But Simon is a micro company for all his backers that he has that you have just seen, and for a micro company to pull off something like this either here in the UK or preferably from my point of view internationally will require support and advice, backing, and a network, I'm very proud to be part of that network and I hope after today you will be too.
Simon Elliott:
Thank you very much.
[Sir Tim Smit KBE – Founder, Eden Project – video played]
Hello, I'm Tim Smit from the Eden Project in Cornwall and I'm really sorry that I can’t be with you today to share the stage with Simon and Roy and talk about Garden of Ideas and why we at Eden support it and are hoping to collaborate with Simon and Roy overseas. What Simon is suggesting is, if you like, a Tivoli Gardens for the 21st century but it’s a stage on which there will be ever changing exhibitions and performances and things to stimulate the imagination; to make people excited at the thought of other ways of looking at the world. I believe investing in something this unique, again unique is a word that’s overused; people abuse that word but this is unique. Is there anyone in the audience who’s come across anybody doing this? I haven’t. I think it is a marvellous, marvellous thing and I'm hoping that the assembled audience feels as excited about Garden of Ideas as I do. Farewell and I hope that the day is a great success. Thank you very much.
Simon Elliott:
Now I’d like to introduce you to Jolyon Brewis.
Jolyon Brewis – Chief Executive, Grimshaw Architects:
Thank you Simon. Hello everybody. I'm Jolyon Brewis as it says there, I am an architect and I am Chief executive of Grimshaw Architects and one of the projects I've been very proud to be involved with, with Sir Tim was the Eden Project in Cornwall, I began working on that project at a time when there were a huge number of obstacles in its way. In many ways it felt like somebody’s pipe-dream, and yet here we are and more than 15 years on, certainly 15 years from opening, the project has a huge success. It was a terrifically exciting project to work on, partly because of the ambition that was inherent, partly because of Sir Tim as you just saw, and sometimes he asks me to deputise for him, and glad he was here on video because he’s a very difficult man to impersonate. It’s been terrifically exciting to work on something which combines large infrastructure, large and challenging building works with a programme of, in this case, largely botanic exhibits but also artistic exhibits alongside, and as you’ll see in this corner, a terrific platform for education which I think is something else that the GOI can bring. So, that’s the Eden Project. Along the way, a couple of images there. This is the plan of the education centre called the Core at Eden Project, where we were fortunate to work with a sculptor, so the combination and collaboration between architecture and art & actually picking up on the scientific & mathematical patterns in nature & making them manifest in the buildings & indeed in the sculptures that then sit within the buildings is something that we have enjoyed. This was work with an artist called Peter M Page who I then carried on working with, and this is phase one of a new science laboratory building at Dulwich College in South London where we've worked with Peter again who has just become a Royal Academician very recently and this way of bringing together different cultural forms into a physical manifestation is what I find so exciting about Garden of Ideas because I think Garden of Ideas takes all of that kind of thinking, all of that practice of combining great talents & skills from different disciplines and takes it all to an entirely new level. Thank you.
Simon Elliott:
Thank you very much Jolyon. May I introduce Professor Neil Thomas who we are most privileged to have today because he committed his whole day to a great responsibility, and he’s given up a chunk of it to come here today. Thank you.
Professor Neil Thomas - Director, Atelier One:
Thank you very much Ladies & Gentlemen. Neil Thomas. I'm an engineer actually and known to be working with Simon for two or three years now. I've supported the idea of Garden of Ideas, but what are we bringing to the project?
We've done a lot of work around the world on a whole variety of projects but this particular project in Singapore two years ago, we did with a Glasgow landscape architect called Grant Associates, architects Wilkinson Eyre and Atelier One, our sister engineers and two years ago we won World Building of the Year Award for this building. There were two conservatories and a whole series of what we describe as Supertrees within the gardens. One of the most popular visits in Singapore now and it is in fact on the front of the new Lonely Planet out this year. Same location, Singapore, we worked on the Esplanade theatres with architects Michael Wilford, where we developed these two buildings for two theatres and these have now become very prominent in this whole story of Singapore as well. So, those two particular projects are the kind of scale we do.
Then more appropriately, or more interestingly, the work we've been doing over the years with artists, to which we’re bringing not only the experience of working with building structures but working with the artists to help them realise the scale and nature of the projects that they do. Here is Anish Kapoor, who I spoke to yesterday, who also apologised for not being able to make it here today, but he unfortunately is abroad. This is his project and we worked with him in Chicago, Cloud Gate. Marc Quinn, also a supporter of the Garden of Ideas. This is his project Planet, at Chatsworth House, which is nine and a half tons of bronze sitting on its hand. Anish, and another project we did in Gateshead near Newcastle, Taratantara, a big fabric structure within an existing building there, that moved shortly afterwards three months later to the city square in Naples. Rachel Whiteread who I spoke to about this project a little while ago but haven’t spoken to her for a while, but she’s also on board. This is House that we engineered with her which won the Turner Prize at the time and finally I think Marc Quinn’s project is one of the favourite projects that I particularly like and Simon and I have talked about this quite a lot. It’s called 1 + 1 = 3 Rainbow, in the shipyard in Cammell Lairds in one of the big sheds there, big fountains on the left here on the right, light and we made a rainbow inside the shed. The kind of scale and nature of the work, this Termite Pavilion which was constructed from timber. We work with all sorts of materials and we’re very, very excited about the Garden of Ideas and completely in support. Antony Gormley, also we continue to engineer his work and he’s also on board with Simon and so there are a lot of major British artists & international artists who are very interested in being involved when the thing kicks off wherever it does.
Thank you.
Simon Elliott:
Neil, thank you very much indeed. Now we've got Caroline Norbury speaking from Creative England.
[Caroline Norbury MBE – CEO Creative England - video played]:
I’m Caroline Norbury, I’m the Chief Executive of Creative England. Creative England invests in the best creative ideas and creative talent and creative businesses all over the country. What I love about the Garden of Ideas concept is that it brings together the real world and the virtual world, the digital world. And I just love the concept of a garden being the place where you nurture new things to grow and what’s really interesting about this proposal is that you are nurturing creativity so you’re providing an environment in which your imagination can run wild and anything that lets us imagine in new creative spaces can only be a good thing. It wasn’t that long ago that we hosted the Olympics here in the UK and what I think that event showed us was how creative we are as a nation. What this project is doing is it’s continuing to harness that creativity and provide UK artists and UK creative businesses with more opportunities internationally to showcase that creativity and work with their counterparts in other countries. What I am hoping this project will do will provide, if you like, a seedbed using the Garden metaphor, a seedbed for those different creative people to come together and imagine new and amazing things.
Simon Elliott:
Jerry Tate, thank you very much.
Jerry Tate - Partner, Tate Harmer LLP:
This is an installation we did with Open City, where we built a chicken coop in Hackney City Farm outside Lloyd's TSB, and the chickens kept escaping, very funny. And we've also done work at the Eden Project, so we've put a rainforest canopy walkway inside Jolyon’s biome and he didn't get too upset (because he’s still talking to me). And phase 2, hopefully this winter, we’ll be building something called the biodiversity nest in the biome. Each one of these fronds represents one of the 400 species that you get in a single rainforest tree. So, it’s about education and it’s about nature and that’s really what we’re obsessed by. We've just built a tree house in Hoxton, which is a co-working office space. We do a lot of work around very, very sensitive trees and natural settings.
We’re working with a lot of other major natural cultural institutions now. For example, we are looking at building a new entrance at Kew and doing some high and low level ‘interpretation’ spaces there, as well as playgrounds for the National Trust. So, we do lots of interventions in sensitive, natural landscapes and performance spaces for the Brunel Museum. Sometimes we work at a larger scale, so this is an extremely large family entertainment centre in a space that I'm not allowed to talk about too much, because its location is confidential.
The reason we are really interested in the Garden of Ideas is because we are so fascinated by culture, education and nature. Garden of Ideas seems to bring all these together for us. It’s creating a really 21st Century way of appreciating art. These kind of artworks, they didn't exist 50 years ago, these sort of experiential interactive artworks, and we don’t currently have a kind of up to date version of the sculpture garden in which we can understand and experience these artworks. So it could potentially be a fantastic worldwide visitor attraction which could be rolled out in lots and lots of different places.
I thought I’d finish with a Robert Kesseler photograph of three seeds because I love seeds, but also, they’ve got such amazing potential and they’re functional and they can turn into something beautiful in the end, which is what I think is going to happen with the Garden of Ideas.
Thank you.
Simon Elliott:
Thank you that is fantastic. Are these Rob Kesseler seeds?
Jerry Tate:
Yes
Simon Elliott:
Yep, fantastic. Rob Kesseler is one of our artists. He’s very interested in developing the project.
Will Alsop wanted to be here today but he’s collecting an award so he can’t be here. He has sent in this film to show what he can do with his design, and how nature is inspiring his work.
[Prof. Will Alsop OBE RA – Director, All Design – video played]
Simon Elliott:
Thank you. I’d like to now hand over to Jenny King, who’s one of the most important influences I think, and connection to Joan Littlewood, who I’ve admired greatly and I’m very grateful for you to be here.
Jenny King - Producer, The Touring Consortium, Theatre Company:
I think I might probably bring the tone down a bit Simon. I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to do here or what I was supposed to say. But I thought in thinking about it yesterday, I wanted to talk a bit about what it means to be cultured because as the roots of the word are to do with the tilling of the earth, I thought it was kind of appropriate to the concept of Garden of Ideas. And I just thought it’s useful for me, at any rate, and everything I do, to remind myself that being cultured is something that we all do. We have to be cultured in order to live, because that’s what it means and it covers all aspects of human life, it seems to me, from eating to getting dressed, whatever we do, to telling stories. So being cultured is not the preserve of the rich, or of the educated, or of the holy, it’s something for all of us. And that is of complete importance to me and it was to Joan.
As a child of the 50’s, which is what I am, and a teenager of the 60’s and a young theatre maker of the 70’s, I was lucky enough to live through an epoch of tremendous optimism which was dashed to smithereens, but nevertheless at the time, it was a period of huge optimism. The highlight of my theatrical life actually happened in Glasgow during the dustmen’s strike and then there were huge mounds of sh*t all over Glasgow which were not being moved because the dustmen were on strike. I was teaching percussion at the time on a movement course and the professor of the course was teaching something called the bonfire dance, and there were 25 students all learning how to do this bonfire dance, which was a folk dance. And I thought it would be kind of brilliant to go out into the streets of Glasgow. So I got a band. I can’t remember what they were playing now. I got hold of some lights and I went to a tenement building in the Gorbals and lit up the close with these lights and had microphones and a sound system. I don’t know how I got away with it. I was about 22 and knew nothing about health and safety or about applying for licences. Then we all assembled, the students, me and a band and the professor of dance at the art gallery and we marched down the streets behind the band and we started picking people up. It was like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. We went to the close and we performed a bonfire. We lit the rubbish into a big bonfire and we danced around it. I'm giving this as an example of how for me, theatre is an explosion of, an affirmation of, life and it’s an interruption of life. The more that it interrupts us, the more lively and important it is. That’s a very grand statement, but it’s really what drives me.
Then what drives me is what kind of world we’re living now, and I have to say, during my life, there have been three things that have really affected us massively and changed the way we all have to think and live. The Twin Towers, devastating. The development of the internet, for me, equally devastating in its own way and then 2008 and the crash of the banks. For me that was kind of exciting. Why did we rescue the banks? I don’t know, but we did. There was a big crisis wasn’t there, and there still is a crisis in the confidence in capitalism. And I think it is important to ask how that impacts on the culture of how we live and particularly on the culture of arts. Firstly, the impact of the Twin Towers and the rise of Isis demands now that we simply have to confront and embrace a diverse and inclusive cultural framework. It’s not an option any more. Secondly for me, the invasion of the internet into our lives, demands that we balance the explosion of digital art with an exploration of live human engagement otherwise we will forget how to talk to each other, let alone how to love and care for each other. And thirdly, the impact of austerity and the divisions it has caused in our society demands that we confront the issues of class diversity and inclusion, and face the economic realities of the provision of culture of the arts in today’s harsh climate. And that doesn't mean that we don’t have to invest everything that we can into Garden of Ideas.
The later business of the economy was faced actually by one of the producers of Vauxhall Gardens back in the 1800’s. He used the philosophy, which was quite an acute one I think, of letting the rich subsidise the poor. So they used to have huge spectacular openings for the Vauxhall Gardens and sold tickets at enormously high prices, I mean the equivalent of probably £20,000 for one ticket for one night. And he used that income to subsidise the tickets for the general public. Brilliant idea. For my own part, I don’t know how relevant it is, but I use commercial work to subsidise our subsidised work, and I’m sure something of that would be embraced within the concept of Garden of Ideas because it has to be. We live, and have to live, in a mixed economy because we did rescue the banks and I guess we need to try and keep the economy going. I don’t think I will talk too much about what I do but suffice to say that, the commercial work like Hairspray which we’re involved in; the tour of Hairspray, Railway Children at Waterloo, which is a tremendous success, Slava’s Snow Show which we do year on year at the Festival Hall; all that subsidises the work that I do which is supported by Arts Council, which is to take text based drama in large scale theatres around the country to areas of low cultural engagement. And we run creative projects to try and attract people who don’t normally go to the theatre, to come and see text based drama. I am now working with literacy groups because that is also key to getting people into the theatre, and to make connections between what people are seeing and their lives, and this is all very, very important to me.
And finally, what is also very important to me is that our citadels of culture, our theatres, our museums, our art galleries, are simply not accessible for many, many, many reasons to ordinary people. There is a huge block. I mean I can remember when I was a kid, my dad, who’s a working class chap from King’s Cross, didn’t understand classical music. He didn't understand it. He thought it was for rich people. And my mother who was the daughter of a Jewish immigrant actually loved classical music. And I thought, actually this has nothing to do with class. It’s to do with experience. My dad had no experience of classical music, my mother did, so I am acutely aware of all the blocks that we support in this society in this country, towards making art, I use that word advisedly, but art, music and theatre, accessible. And I think this Garden of Ideas, which in a way is the child of Joan’s Fun Palace, which didn’t get half as near to conceptualisation as Garden of Ideas is, is about making our lives richer and of making them accessible and it’s why I am drawn to it. And that’s all I have to say. Thank you very much.
[Round of applause given]
Simon Elliott:
Fantastic, thank you very much. And now for Heather Newill.
[Heather Newill - Managing Director, AEM International Ltd - video played]:
The Garden of Ideas can work really well with artists and they will have incredibly creative, wild, wacky, huge, amazing ideas and it would create an amazing number of jobs within our sector, or within actually all the sectors that I work in. On the one hand of course here will be people who will be doing the operations side and then of course you've got the hospitality side that will be there; the restaurants and the bars. There will be facilities for people. Ultimately it works for everyone. It works for your money, your finances. It works for an international, cultural audience. You’re going to have opportunities for a much, much broader range of artists and suddenly they will find within the Garden of Ideas the opportunity and the willingness and the welcome to be able to develop those ideas in ways that they never would have dreamed imaginable anywhere else because there isn't anywhere else like the Garden of Ideas.
Simon Elliott:
Thank you. I’d now like to introduce Tamara Pekelman who has been working with the creative industries and social enterprises for many years.
Tamara Pekelman - Social Enterprise Specialist:
Hello everyone. My name is Tamara Pekelman and after spending few years working in the large private sector in Brazil and the US, I thankfully made the transition working on culture production for a few years before moving on to specialising in advising grass roots cultural and creative organisations and more recently, social enterprises in the UK.
We've heard so much about the creative potential of Garden of Ideas and today I want to talk a little bit about the boring stuff which is the business side of things which is equally, if not almost more, important in these kinds of projects. These are just examples of organisations that I've worked with. This is Artburst. They’re from Hackney, doing really fantastic innovative work with disadvantaged young people. If you would like to know a little bit more about some of these wonderful African cultural productions, Yemesi is here from Hatch Events and they are one of the premiere supports of African culture in the UK and do development work in Africa as well. And Auro, from Village Underground will be here to talk about his fantastic projects. So, a whole myriad of different organisations that I've worked with in the past. It’s in this time that I first met Simon over a decade ago, and the time when he was running his arts charity, Arts Igniting Minds.
From the get go I was fascinated by this remarkable project, Garden of Ideas. I remained an undying supporter of Garden of Ideas, all this time, and why is that? It really must, and I believe will, become a reality. It will draw audiences from around the world, experiencing the most remarkable convergence of technology, engineering, creativity all coming together in the most sensory experience that someone can experience. I don’t need to talk too much about what it will do creatively, but I want to highlight that it’s going to be a rotating platform for the best of UK and international talent, so it won’t be static. It will be continually renewing its programming, which I think is fantastic and will be a destination that, for sure, no tourist or visitor will want to miss. But importantly how will this become a reality?
The reason why I've always been fascinated by Garden of Ideas is that it has never, or will never, expect handouts. It’s offering a real opportunity for investors. So for me, this is the ultimate social enterprise. Firstly, it will never compromise on its social and artistic objectives, as it’s this essence that will keep it attractive and competitive for many, many years to come. Secondly, it will act worldwide as a prime example of a sustainable model of commercial investment, art innovation, experimentation and social ownership at a huge and grand scale. In my opinion it has the potential to be replicated across the world and inspire many potential social entrepreneurs to keep thinking big. Thank you.
Simon Elliott:
Tamara, thank you very much indeed. Angela Brady from RIBA, thank you.
[Angela Brady RIBA – Director, Brady Mallalieu Architects - video played]:
The Garden of Ideas gives the opportunity for school kids, for university kids, for families, for older people, in other words, everybody, all together in a wonderfully diverse and inclusive way. It has the potential to fuse architecture and place, art, crafts, all the different types of media and creative from film, right down to people’s workshop experience all coming together with so many possibilities for interaction and the interaction then sparking off globally. We have the knowledge, we have the experience and, certainly in Britain, there is a world of resources in architects, engineers and urban planners all there, all waiting to disseminate that information. I think we’ll bring a new dimension to a museum, to be a live museum and to be a live world. It should be creative, learning, educational but most of all, inspirational.
Simon Elliott:
Thank you Samir. Thank you.
Samir Savant - Development Consultant, BookTrust:
Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for your time this afternoon.
So, I'm Samir Savant. I'm a development consultant fundraising specialist. I'm currently working at the Book Trust which is an early years’ literacy charity. But I have known Simon for a long time and, in fact, I spent 15 years fundraising for a range of arts and heritage organisations. It was really that perspective I wanted to bring to this meeting to talk about how I believe the Garden of Ideas will be attractive to potential funders and indeed to the artists that want to work there. So I've worked at the Royal Academy of Arts, English National Opera and the Globe Theatre, which is where I first met Simon.
You might not know that Shakespeare’s Globe gets no government funding at all, and so it has to be very entrepreneurial in its approach in order to fund its creative activity, rather like William Shakespeare himself. One of the things I admire about Garden of Ideas is that same enterprising approach. It really is helping artists to help themselves. It’s creating a platform for artists to showcase their art, you saw earlier on, in the incubators, so it will be a safe space but if artists decide to scale up their work, then they can scale up within Garden of Ideas, within a kind of safe environment which is great. That’s just a nice picture of Stephen Fry and Mark Rylance for you. That’s Stephen Fry playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Then I moved on. I was Development Director for 5 years at the Globe Theatre.
I moved on to the Development Director at the Royal College of Music. At the RCM we don’t believe that we’re training the next generation of classical musicians, we believe that we’re creating the next generation of creative entrepreneurs. And it’s this very business minded and commercial approach, which will mean that these artists are exactly the kinds of people who will want to perform at Garden of Ideas and engage.
So currently I'm at Book Trust, and I think the only thing to say about that is that we all know that early intervention in cultural activities, exactly as Jenny was saying, is really important in order to give our young people the best chance. And with Book Trust, there’s so much research with all arts, particularly with literacy that if you engage children to read at an early age, they will do well at school, across the board and they will become engaged members of society. If they don’t have that opportunity they become disengaged and that’s a terrible thing, so we need to give every young person the opportunity. I understand that the commercial surpluses from Garden of Ideas will fund outreach in education and activity, so that’s a great thing.
The final thing I want to say really is that obviously I work with a wide variety of funders, donors and sponsors over many years and they all want to support success and I think a vibrant project like the Garden of Ideas will be in a very strong position to attract a good partnership funder.
Simon Elliott:
Samir, thank you very much indeed. In fact we went to a meeting with Visa who put £56m into the Olympic Games. I spoke to them this morning. They are still waiting for us to have a confirmed site to begin a more detailed conversation. So before we've even got started, a potential major sponsor like that, in addition to the commercial element of the project, is fantastically helpful, and thank you very much for helping us set up that meeting.
I’d like to now introduce Hector Fernandez, who has spent many years, looking very solidly at the business realities of visitor destinations. Hector, can I hand over to you? Thank you.
Hector Hernandez:
I'm Hector Fernandez. I'm with Salon Hospitality Consulting. Up until now you’ve listened to all these wonderful creative people, who've been involved in these beautiful ideas, beautiful designs. We've been supporting Simon for over two years looking at the business side so we’re sort of the boring numbers people who look at the spreadsheets and the calculations etc to make sure that this is also commercially balanced. As we said earlier there are elements of it that should be commercial and need to help support it. We've been working closely with keeping Simon’s feet on the ground sometimes to make sure that this is really something viable globally. We think it’s a very, very interesting project; very different from anything we've seen. We've worked on projects all around the world, from large gaming destinations like Macau, to create projects just like that to replicate in Europe, to theme parks to hotel developments and all those elements that indirectly form part of something like this. We’re involved in the business planning side of it, the strategy side of it from a numbers perspective and the investment side of it and we’re supporting Simon from that perspective. We look forward to this project moving forward, both here as well as abroad.
Thank you.
Simon Elliott:
Thank you very much. Hector has been very modest with his experience, in that he has worked on some of the world’s largest projects. I think you were talking about the Madrid project which is £4bn pounds worth of investment.
Hector Fernandez:
£15bn
Simon Elliott:
An enormous project. Ours doesn’t cost that much, but it is expensive. So, to give an idea of scale, we've come back after the meetings were set up in Beijing & Shanghai. Our conversations are with Shendi, who are investing into Disney in Shanghai in three stages and £4m is certainly a section of the phasing and these are large figures that need a high level of skill. We are so grateful for that level of skill you are bringing to the table at this stage, before all the finance is solidly on board. Without your help we would not be in this room. Thank you very much.
Auro, I am an absolute fan. Mr Auro Foxcroft has actually done what we are trying to do. Auro, explain.
Auro Foxcroft - Owner, Village Underground:
Well there are big numbers, of fifteen billion pounds, dollars, I am not sure, euros, whatever it is and huge names in contemporary art and culture. I do something that works on the other end of the scale. We’re interested in the grass roots of art and culture in this country and internationally. I set up and founded an organisation called Village Underground. It’s a social enterprise, an eco-project and we have a site in London. There is a site in Lisbon that we recently set up & we are looking for sites in Barcelona and Berlin. We work for a kind of grass roots cultural exchange, sharing ideas, projects & artworks in the culture of different communities and societies. We work in London with around 1,500 artists every year and we play a kind of key role locally in east London, bringing lots of emerging artists’ careers to the fore. Bringing artists from all over the planet to work in London is something often bandied around in our local borough for 200 voices of Hackney, I’ll say that again. That’s something that we kind of aspire to provide for, so this international aspect is huge to what we do. I also work with an organisation called Trans Europe Halles, it’s an international network of arts centres, all multidisciplinary, all in Europe, covering around 30 countries. Trans Europe Halles is another grass roots organisation connecting the culture of Europe to local societies and local communities. That is something that Garden of Ideas will be doing and indeed, I think modern cultural destinations have to do that work very, very well in order to survive. You can see some of this from Malian in Rokia Traore; great, great musicians from the desert blues background. I started supporting Garden of Ideas because of that; because it’s an opportunity to bring the grass roots artists that we work with on a day to day basis through the infrastructure of culture in the UK, that happens in the UK, to work on the big stages. We’re kind of incubating tomorrow’s leading lights, and the people that we work with now, will quite possibly be the people that work with Garden of Ideas. So, it is great to have this conduit from the ground right up to the very top. I am really also supportive of the eco values of the Garden of Ideas as something very passionate and something that is really necessary of course in this day and age. Also, as Tamara pointed out, the kind of business credentials, the way that we have to work with grass roots, is often without any funding and we have to have social enterprise business models and we have to make these things survive on their own terms. So, for me it is a real leading light that Simon and the Garden of Ideas could create a project on that kind of scale, that self-funds and self-sustains and can lead the development of our arts and culture industry in this country and abroad in an increasing environment without funding. So it’s great that that is baked into the DNA of this project.
Simon Elliott:
Auro, thank you very much. Before we go to Katie Kopec I just wanted to ask the floor if there are any questions that anybody has so far. We have been talking non-stop and you have been sitting there, and we haven’t given you yet an opportunity to ask any questions. This is a great moment if you’ve got something that you’re keen to ask.
Question from the floor:
Are you seeing this as one location, initially in the UK, then spreading it out or a number of locations simultaneously?
Simon Elliott:
Thank you. We have been looking at a number of locations in the UK and we had an option on a site and a Chinese funder and very sadly that fell through and it’s been turned into luxury housing, the whole area; that was a 22 acre site. Fortunately, through UKTI, we've begun conversations in China. Beijing & Shanghai are some of the sites that are mentioned & these are large sites. The site in Shanghai is next to Disney & with the same funder. We don’t know what’s going to happen first. We are having a conversation with London Paramount about a £4bn project that is going to East London and it may well be that the Chinese investor puts money into that. We've presented Garden of Ideas as a contemporary platform of the very best of the British film industry and the British Film Institute are on board with that. They will know if they've got planning permission in two months’ time. So,I can’t answer your question in detail, but there are a lot of conversations. We are talking about 6 sites in China; maybe 3 or 4 around Hong Kong and Macau and we've been looking at about 3 or 4 sites in London. I’d like to do it in London first, but we must build it first where the finance is and the permissions are. Thank you.
Stephen (Audience member):
I was with Simon last week and we were in and around Hong Kong and Macau. You probably know Macau is now the gaming resort centre of the world, some seven times the turnover of Las Vegas, even since the slowdown in Macau because of the corruption. Simon had the opportunity I think, to see a lot of potential partners in Hong Kong and also in Macau. These are big players, I mean their investments are in the billions. In the next 3 to 4 years it’s about 17 to 19 billions of pounds worth of investments going into expanding these resorts. There were many discussions and I think we kissed a lot of frogs Simon. I’m not sure if you found any princes. From my side, accompanying Simon, just a few observations. There’s the idea itself of course, world-class, marvellous, great for content, great for the United Kingdom and so on. There’s the infrastructure of course, a lot of interested infrastructure companies here, who I think can give that level of creativity and have that experience worldwide to catch the eye of the investors. Of course the content is something which is a cost, but it’s an operational content. And I have no doubt that Salon have that ‘infospective’ in terms of turning it into a profitable operation. Knowing Asia reasonably well from my background of living and working there for 20yrs, basically the rule is follow the money. And I think almost every investor or partner that Simon met was looking to follow the money, and of course what they realised very quickly was, that this was an idea that didn’t have an equivalent investor or content. I think that’s the biggest drawback, and either the project is successful in the United Kingdom, where there are tangible results of P & L and profits and a reason to invest, or if Simon is taking this thing to China, Hong Kong or Macau, he will absolutely need an equity partner, not necessarily money. It can be sweat capital or whatever, but any investor in China will be extremely carefully to see, ok if it’s so good, then why isn’t someone from the UK taking advantage of the project that can be regenerative, so I am afraid I am a businessman & that’s a purely business perspective that I would like to just say.
Simon Elliott:
Thank you Stephen. That is a really helpful comment. Without that business perspective, the project can’t happen.
Now, I’d very much like to hand over to. Doug Allen. Doug Allen. He’s giving us a value that many people have seen on their television screens. He’s created the Frozen Planet photography. He’s a filmmaker, Blue Planet, Life and he has some words to say.
[Doug Allen video play is played]:
My name is Doug Allen and I’m a wildlife film maker. The Garden of Ideas for me, would be a chance to have people reconnect with the planet because I think that’s what we've lost. People don’t see themselves as part of the ecosystem any more. They somehow see themselves as separate from it and that’s where many of our problems today are stemming from. The Garden of Ideas would be this wonderful place where you could go and learn all about plants, and plants after all, are the basis of life on this earth. But imagine, in the Garden of Ideas, you could teach them everything. You could show them everything in an exciting, imaginative way; everything from the tiniest micro plankton floating in the ocean all the way through the giant kelp in the seas off California. All the way through to the hundred metre tall sequoia trees in the forest. What an amazing, imaginative journey that would be to take people on. Wouldn't it just be fantastic? The Garden of Ideas would be the vehicle for that journey and that’s why I back the concept, the idea, one hundred per cent.
Katie Kopec - Principal Adviser for Development & Regeneration, London & Partners:
London & Partners is the inward investment agency for the London Mayor. These are the areas that they cover. And particularly from a Garden of Ideas point of view, why we are excited by the opportunity is, London has secured its place on the tourism map. It is the number one international city that people come to and the numbers are increasing and we anticipate they will continue to increase. And why do they come here? They come here because of the culture; they come here because of the arts; they come here because London is what it is, this place that we love. What are we going to keep them amused with? That is where we need to invest in the future and that is why we are so supportive of trying to secure a place for Garden of Ideas. My passion is the regeneration piece of this, so I have been asked to help London & Partners with inward investment for people who want to invest in London in the Mayor’s opportunity areas. So that’s my role. But also because I am a commercial animal and I have been doing developments from King’s Cross through to Greenwich through to the Olympics and anywhere else, I know and understand what makes a place and how you make regeneration schemes work with things that don’t of themselves make money from a real estate point of view, which most cultural input doesn't until it’s operational. So how do we find somewhere where we can put something like this which has a large upfront infrastructure cost, i.e. creating it in the first place, and have some other uses which can help cross subsidise that to make it attractive to an investor? So that is the sort of discussion we have been having with Simon, and that’s what we will continue to do. It’s a challenge in the market and also in the policy context, where residential and housing is a must for London, and needs to provide 55,000 new members a year and we’re already doing that, and also jobs creation which is where we see this as a real key area.
The content is wow! I mean, look at it. And again, Simon has captivated the audience and everyone sitting here, and we can all see how it will work. It’s there and it’s our job as London & Partners and, to a degree as JLL, to try and see whether we can make it happen here in London. And we would like to make it happen here before China, but we understand completely you have to go where the money is, and indeed, it may be that the Chinese invest in London over here as a result of you taking your concept there first. So we are supporters. We can see that this can be a really key integral part of London’s offering in the future and we are just trying really hard to try and get it on the map as soon as we can.
Simon Elliott:
Thank you very much. It is a privilege that you’re here.
Sam Wanamaker who created the concept and delivered Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, worked for 28 years unfunded, unsupported. The Arts Council didn't put a penny into it. We didn't have the luxury of your support. Sadly he died just before the Shakespeare's Globe opened. It’s going to be a tourist attraction. It’s Mickey Mouse Shakespeare. It’s just going to not work. An American telling us how to do Shakespeare? Well actually it is a place of excellence. It’s brilliant, and I think we are going to have the same problem. A pleasure garden, what’s that? It’s just a theme park. It can’t be of any quality for anybody. Well I hope today I've proven that it can. And you being in the room, it is a great privilege. Thank you very much for inviting us to be here, because the next stages are going to be tough. We are so close to a potential deal, with investment with the Shendi Group, potentially a 700 acre site in Shanghai. We would love to do it in London. China doesn't want to be seen to be just made in China. They want to see stuff being made by China. And we’re working with local Universities there. We went to see the Beijing degree show. Thomas Heatherwick had the opening exhibition there and the students’ degree show was one of the best I have seen in the world. And I think if London loses out and doesn't get a Garden of Ideas, I think it will be a great loss. We created the pleasure gardens, Disney copied them. Paramount has got money and investment and is about to build a massive theme park. We are in early conversations with them, potentially to take over a large part of that site as a British platform of excellence, of creativity, of contemporary culture. It’s a great opportunity. We need your help not to lose this project. It could evaporate as quickly as it’s come. The next hour and a half we are privileged.
The Baroness Young of Hornsey OBE:
Sorry do we have time for any more questions?
Simon Elliott:
We've just got one more speaker. Yes, there is. We've got fifteen more minutes I think.
[Peter Kyle OBE - video played]:
Garden of Ideas has developed through a process of consideration, of amendment, of change and I think the Garden of Ideas project has benefited hugely from that period of reflection, so that it’s developed into the project we see today which is truly astonishing in its scope, in its breadth, in its ambition and the power to really change lives through innovation. I feel in no doubt whatsoever now, having seen the latest iterations of this project, that it is going to be a seriously important contribution to the cultural identity of wherever it is sited in the world and that will change from location to location. I think it has taken some time for the potential impact and importance of this idea, the Garden of Ideas idea, to be recognised and to be accepted for what it potentially can be. It is wonderful now to see that recognition coming through government agencies and bodies and for them to be promoting the idea of the importance of this project as well as we, who've been excited by this project for many years, have been seeking to do.
Simon Elliott:
Number 10 are running a GREAT Campaign and we've been asked to assist with that and Garden of Ideas is going to be promoted internationally. We hope that we've demonstrated how we are going to be delivering government policy. We’re not going to be employing people in the same way that traditional organisations do. We are working closely with the Eden Project. Kids Company will be advising on how young people who fall out because of. It was in the news yesterday and today that people in care tend to fail when they go into work, because they don’t have the support structures when something goes wrong at work. We’re having specialist staff who will be there to cater for those young people as they begin their career into the real world. The GREAT Creativity Campaign, we are privileged to be part of. I have mentioned some of the elements of China, please ask us later at the reception if you want to know more about that. We wanted to engage you, Ladies, Lords, cultural leaders who are in this room with this project. And we want to link with your interests, your business interests so that you can help shape this project before it’s taken route and partly set It’s designed to constantly change. We need you to be part of it. Baroness Lola Young, thank you so much for inviting us here. And Richard Parry, thank you so much for sponsoring the food and beverage, which is in the IPU room, where for an hour and a half it’s possible to have a more private one to one conversation. Are there any questions that anybody would like to ask?
The Baroness Young of Hornsey OBE:
We’ll take you down to the IPU room, so don’t worry about getting lost in the building.
Simon Elliott:
So they’re waiting.
The Baroness Young of Hornsey OBE:
How many people are able to stay on for a bit of something to eat and drink? Hopefully quite a few of you. Oh that’s great. That’s excellent.
