No time to be Les Miserables

It's all a bit of a blur: will Judith Isherwood's successor share her clarity of vision?

ART and society are not easy bedfellows. The debate about how best we should fund the nation’s moral and artistic health is always a political hot potato. After the worst recession since the Second World War, the public funding of arts has never been more under the scrutiny of those who know the cost of everything but the value of nothing.

Against this backdrop, the departure of Judith Isherwood from her role as CEO of the Wales Millennium Centre should be seen as a watershed moment for the arts in Wales. Not only are we losing an administrator of considerable ability but the arts scene itself, despite its vibrancy, diversity and colour, now has to re-invigorate and push forward when all around it will be urging caution and cutbacks.

Isherwood was the director of performing arts and acting chief executive of the Sydney Opera House when she was headhunted to run the £104m arts complex in Cardiff Bay. The centre opened in 2004 to much fanfare (and  the de rigeur “Do you know how much this is costing you?” news reports) with a gala performance featuring Welsh-born opera baritone Bryn Terfel.

Ms Isherwood’s arrival added to the sense of tumult, and her appointment quickly split the so-called opinion formers. Was this a brilliant, visionary appointment of one of the world’s most able arts administrators, or was this a collective failure of both the imagination (and the extensive recruitment processes) that meant that Wales was unable to find anyone of the right calibre to run its new, national arts centre?

It was not the happiest of arrivals in the capital: budget overruns, a pretty cynical media and a curious public is not the best start to one of the largest publicly funded art centres in Wales. Notwithstanding, the construction of the WMC did reflect a changing attitude towards the arts in Wales. The Opera House project had stumbled, stumbled some more and then ultimately failed and the maelstrom of debate that swirled around the revised mandate for the WMC was reflective of the passion and drive within the arts community. Amongst the inevitable chorus of naysayers, the words “white elephant” were regular additions to newspaper and magazine reports.

So, five years later, where are we? To this casual but interested observer, matters are in rude health. When she joined back in 2003, to oversee the last elements of construction and to prepare for the opening, I remember being struck by her analogy comparing the WMC with the Sydney Opera House. Specifically the journey that it had gone through from the challenge of winning over a sceptical public to being, perhaps, the best loved arts auditorium on the planet (wonderful architecture also helps). I thought this was an overstatement but, at the very least, you couldn’t fault the ambition.

Today, a quick glance of its current roster of activities sees a good, healthy balance between obvious crowd pleasers such as Hairspray the Musical and Les Miserables, through the pop warblings of Paolo Nutini and Seasick Steve ,to the more challenging Mark Morris Dance Group. Likewise, the focus on education and participation seems to have struck a chord. Isherwood’s vision of the WMC becoming a centre of genuine artistic endeavour, but never forgetting the fact that it always needed to put “bums on seats” and be commercially viable, has meant that the arts scene in Wales now has a focal point of which it can be genuinely proud.

It is also a stage on which international artists can perform and provide a proper benchmark through which we can, meaningfully, judge the calibre of our own artists. The “armadillo” has, quite rightly, become an iconic part of the Cardiff skyline. The building’s guest appearances in Doctor Who and Torchwood added to the public awareness both in the UK and more widely (the good Doctor being one of the BBC’s biggest exports).

There is now a fantastic opportunity to enhance further the reputation of the WMC. However, with such a legacy, there is also a considerable challenge ahead for Ms Isherwood’s successor. The sheer diversity and idiosyncrasies of the arts scene in Wales means that you will never please all of the people all of the time. But this is not the point. Art should be contentious, challenging, thought provoking and life enhancing.

Isherwood proved that art and commerce can be married without taking the easy road. In an age where the vogue for nostalgia appears undiminished – Dame Vera Lynn is No1 in the album charts, Beatlemania is back, the venerable AC/DC are the biggest live rock band on the planet – we need to be careful not to take the safe route but to take the right one. Isherwood’s successor needs to continue to run the WMC as if walking a tightrope, combining artistic merit, technical excellence and commercial endeavour. It’s a tricky, tall order and one that we won’t get right all of the time. But it is absolutely critical that we do.

As we wish Ms Isherwood good luck in her new role in Melbourne, we should not bask in any reflected glory or indeed take our foot off the proverbial gas. On the contrary, we should take the opportunity to look forward to a WMC that reflects the creativity, diversity and exuberance of a nation not just at ease with itself, but one that has truly come of age.