25 years of the Barbican…

In the 25 years since it opened, London’s Barbican Centre has gone from much reviled to nearly loved: it may not, ultimately, be the kind of place you would build if you had the chance to start again, but now that it’s here, and here to stay, both its programmers and the audiences who flock to it have learnt to make the most if it. And there’s the secret: there’s much to make of it. The layout may still be impossible to navigate – despite a £14million refurbishment of its foyer spaces that have now made it more of a Scandinavian boutique hotel than an airport terminal, but its worth the effort to penetrate the concrete jungle.

Actually, the centre is a bit of both: the arts events may be lining up from an international smorgasbord like planes coming into land at Heathrow, but instead of being a place to pass through your way to or from the city, it’s now somewhere you want to stay.

Of course, the South Bank with its seemingly organic spread of venues of different types and genres now running from the Royal Festival Hall all the way down to the Tate Modern and beyond to the Unicorn children’s theatre, More London’s outdoor Scoop space beside City Hall and the Design Museum, will always have the edge in terms of setting. But the joy – as well as difficulty – of the Barbican has been to bring so much of what the South Bank has across so many sites under one roof and one artistic director. As such, it is unique; and as Graham Sheffield – artistic director since 1995 – points out in a new publication, Barbican at 25, to mark the birthday, acknowledging the building’s problems is part of the challenge that it throws down to solve them: “We use, sometimes abuse, and confront the architecture, and we allow the arts to flow much more freely between spaces (music in the theatre, film in the concert hall, and so on). It is almost as if we square up to the building and say: Ok, you’re difficult, we are going to float the arts above and beyond your confining modernist spaces, and are going to implant an artistic ideal within the building that speaks of internationalism, diversity and excellence. And despite the physical challenges, we are going to create a superlative season of quality art, both accessible and thought-provoking. We shall seek out the new, re-imagine and reinterpret the past, and we shall unapologetically lead our audiences, using our combined knowledge of the business and the arts themselves.”

That’s quite some mission statement. As John Tusa, managing director of the centre (and soon to retire), wrote in yesterday’s Guardian listing an A-Z of arts-speak mantras, “M is for Mission. We all need one and we all need to put it into words. Doing so should clarify what an organisation is about. But if we tie ourselves in knots over whether we are an arm of social policy rather than a home for creativity, defining the mission can end up causing confusion.”

It ultimately has to be about the programming, not the policy – the proof of the pudding is in the eating. As Sheffield says in the Barbican at 25 book, “Creating a ‘dialogue’ with the audience – the modish political mantra – is all very well, but first you have to present a strong and credible programme in order to stimulate the debate. Collaboration with our key artists and partners is both vital and refreshing, as is a sense of responsibility to our audience; but, autocratic as it may sound, you must take ownership of your own programming decisions, otherwise you run the risk of losing the plot! Inevitably, a controlled and curated approach to the programme (a large proportion of which is now self- or partner-generated), means taking risks – with ideas, with artists, with the box office.”

Last night saw the Centre humming with activity as it threw a 25th birthday bash, and guests were invited to choose everything from seeing Hot Fuzz in the Barbican Cinema (the choice of the Stage news editor, Alistair Smith) to hearing an LSO concert in the Barbican Hall that included an amazing James McMillan piece and the astonishing Mitsuko Uchida performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 13 (my choice). As someone who spends most of my evenings in the theatre, there is something uniquely cleansing about an orchestral concert of this calibre: watching Uchida literally feel the music as she played was to see an artist connecting at the deepest level with her craft.

For evenings like this, the Barbican more than fulfils its unique place in London’s cultural life. Here’s the next 25….