BOROUGH OF VULTURES: £1.3m of arts funding provided by the Mayor of London was misused by Croydon’s Tory council to boost local businesses, but delivered a year-long flop, judging by official audience figures.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Lights are on, but no one’s at home: the poorly promoted finale weekend for the Borough of Culture had a budget of £85,000 – but failed to attract any crowds
Croydon’s year as the Borough of Culture is over. Waddya mean, you never even noticed it was on..?
Despite £1.3million of Mayor of London cash, plus a few generous hand-outs from the nice people at the Lottery and Arts Council, what was supposed to be a celebration of Croydon’s artistic excellence, and a leg-up for the borough’s many hard-pressed cultural groups, limped across the line before Easter.
Croydon’s year as Borough of Culture had started three months late, and it finally ran out of steam a week early, too.
The Tory-run council had tried to divert the money to boost businesses in the borough, but what they delivered was largely perceived as a cultural flop, with huge amounts of public money squandered.
Inside Croydon has obtained figures that show that many of the events staged, often by groups with little artistic background, drew pitifully small audiences.
Responsibility for that, at least in part, clearly lies with the publicity agency that landed the promotional gig, in one of the cosier of a series of cosy deals.
A sizeable chunk of the Mayor of London’s grant money, £120,000 – almost 10% of the allocated funds – was handed to White Label, a PR company that is inextricably linked to the business group Croydon BID and that oxymoron of all oxymorons, Develop Croydon.
Grey Label was awarded the contract by the council (were there any other bidders?) with the task of promoting all the events during the Borough of Culture year. They set up a less-than-reliable website, and were responsible for some signage that drew scorn from Private Eye (baffling, “pathetic” and “meaningless” were among the kinder things they had to say) and was criticised for being both passive-aggressive and, well… just plain useless.
It was several weeks after the official, albeit belated, start to the “year” of cultural events before Grey Label even managed to get any of their slightly intimidating day-glo signage in place at East Croydon Station – “This is Croydon” it said. As if alighting passengers didn’t know that already…
The final “festival” weekend came and went last month virtually unnoticed by Croydon’s residents.
According to official figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, there was a budget of £85,000 to spend on the closing event. This was, according to official records, “to deliver closing ceremony event in line with wider program [sic]. To be developed in latter half of 23/24. To deliver March 24. To include repeat performances from successful acts from the year.”
In the event, while there were a lot of dance troupes involved, and a giant papier maché puppet of Stormzy (the closest that the Borough of Culture got to the international rap star), and a bit of blatant promotion for an Indian wedding business, there was not much that took place that was recognisable as “repeat performances”. Perhaps the organisers couldn’t identify any “successful acts from the year”?
Empty streets: the drummers and dancers did their thing. But no one much was watching. The people of Croydon seemed to be saying: we have better things to do with our time
Lighting up the Clocktower was a nice touch (why didn’t they think of that sooner, or do it for longer?). But it was hardly 85 grand’s worth.
The dark and drenched evenings will have put many people off turning up on the off-chance of witnessing something worth seeing. That’s if they ever knew it was even on: Grey Label’s pre-event publicity was, as ever, woeful.
Inside Croydon’s eye-witnesses who happened across the music and dancing down Katharine Street and the High Street (our readers tend to be better informed than many) reported just handfuls of bewildered residents as the audience for this “festival”. Their pictures provide photographic evidence.
Dodgy dealing: ripping off the Ministry of Sound for a small nightclub gag was among the best that BoC could come up with…
Yet, three weeks after the event and Grey Label pressed the send button on a marketing email in which they claimed that 6,000 people turned out for the lacklustre dancing in the dark. Nowhere do they offer any suggestion of an independent or verifiable source for what otherwise seems to be made-up numbers.
The Grey Label email is not so much a blow-your-own-trumpet-when-its-far-too-late promotional effort, but has been sent out because – and we have not made this up – they are offering a free workshop later this month “exploring what’s needed to put on a successful event”.
Seriously.
As one loyal reader put it: “People who don’t know how to promote events offer event promotion class.”
… but even then, someone thought it funny to make light of one of the scourges of our borough. Or maybe it’s some kind of business venture?
Grey Label tell us that the closing events were “brought to life by 380+ artists, team members and local people…” and that “…it shone a spotlight on our borough’s proud musical past, present and future”.
Just that the spotlight didn’t shine too brightly…
“This Is Croydon will have a lasting legacy,” they promise. Or is that a threat?
The Borough of Culture’s not-so-grand finale, like so many of the events staged by Croydon, was both underwhelming and bewildering.
What had they managed to spend £85,000 on, possibly even more?
Because there was also the small matter of the £28,000 allocated to a Surrey Street Festival organised by another Croydon business – and member of the grant-allocating steering group – that never took place. There had been a suggestion that this unspent money would be diverted to the end-of-year “celebrations”.
If nothing else, the finale helped to demonstrate, yet again, that those appointed to oversee the grant applications were rarely in touch with those around the borough who, week-in and week-out, do actually deliver some high-class cultural activities. While arts groups often missed out, business interests were given preference when grants were allocated.
Croydon Council, under the supervision of cabinet member Andy Stranack and one of Fisher’s Folly’s very well-paid executives, Kristian Aspinall (“director, culture and community safety”), took the Mayor of London’s £1.3million and appointed a steering group to allocate the money to various projects.
From early on, it appeared that Croydon’s Tory-controlled council (Mayor Jason Perry is a director of Croydon BID) wanted to redirect the arts funding to be used as some kind of business seed money.
Business first: council director Kristian Aspinall speaking at the 2022 Develop Croydon conference
“This is going to be great for the people who live in Croydon, but equally we want people from outside Croydon to be coming into the borough during that year, to see what Croydon has to offer,” Aspinall said in November 2022, addressing… you’ve guessed it, the business people from Develop Croydon.
“Our single main measure of success here is the legacy it leaves,” Aspinall said then.
“And that legacy has to be around investment. It’s going to be a fantastic year, but it’s also the platform for the future of this town and the future of this borough. We will have triumphed if we get more businesses, more creative enterprises, more tourists and more people coming into the borough.”
Well, Aspinall set the metrics. Let’s see how they measured up.
Aspinall’s steering group came up with 15 “flagship” projects, nine large “Ignite Fund” schemes and agreed to grants for 17 medium Ignite Fund bids.
“The steering group act [sic] as a critical friend from the cultural sector and will ensure that the council are delivering an exciting, representative programme of events throughout the year,” according to the council.
“They will also be responsible for setting the criteria for the Ignite Fund scheme and evaluating the bids. This will help to ensure that artists and organisations of all sizes are supported to participate in This is Croydon.”
Flop: the Music Heritage Trail starts here – but only 500 people downloaded the app
The biggest grant to the flagship projects was £225,000 (17% of the entire grant from the Mayor of London) for the dire Heritage Music Trail, which also received additional Arts Council and Lottery money. Official figures showed fewer than 500 people bothered to download the no-doubt expensively created app.
That works out at £750 per download…
But figures obtained by Inside Croydon suggest that the take-up of other Borough of Culture events were often just as poor. The variation in the value of the grants, between favoured and less-favoured groups, is also worth noting.
- When the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine (not very Croydon) played the Fairfield Halls on October 18, the concert hall was barely half full – 850 people in the 1,600 capacity venue, plus 40 children in a pre-concert participation event. Borough of Culture grant: £32,500.
- BH 365 organised by the Croydon BME Forum (not known as an arts group) was staged on 13 dates across autumn 2023, it drew a total audience of 743 people with 230 participants. Borough of Culture grant: £24,000.
- Dance Festival Croydon, organised by Beeja (a private commercial company that usually gets the gig for the Croydon Mela), had 4,700 audience and 550 participants. Borough of Culture grant: £7,000.
- Phipson art exhibition and tour, showing paintings of Croydon from 150 years ago, staged by the Croydon Natural History and Scientific Society at the Clocktower in August and September, drew more than 1,000 visitors. Borough of Culture grant: £505.
- Alice In Wonderland, staged in Wandle Park over four evenings in July by CODA, the Croydon Operatic and Dramatic Association, had a cast of 18 and 474 in the audience. Borough of Culture grant: £3,350.
- Local theatre festival staged by Croydonites, from November 2 to 18, had 46 participants and 862 in the audience. Borough of Culture grant: £10,000.
- Dance and theatre in a garden, staged by Friends of Park Hill Rec over five days in August, had audience figures of 160. Borough of Culture grant: £5,100.
- Popin Pete’s Pop Shop, staged by Scanners Inc (we really have no idea what this was supposed to be) had 506 participants and 882 as an audience. Borough of Culture grant: £10,000.
- Queer Joy, staged by Bold Mellon over three weeks, from July 7 to 30, claimed to have 141 participants and 204 in its audience. Borough of Culture grant: £7,000.
There were several other events for which participation figures had not yet been submitted.
But judged by the council’s own measures – “We will have triumphed if we get more businesses, more creative enterprises, more tourists and more people coming into the borough” – it seems that Croydon’s year as the Borough of Culture, having been hi-jacked to serve business interests, ended up being an underwhelming flop.
Read more: How Croydon’s ‘Culture Club’ was turned into a business clique
Read more: £1.5m being spent on our Borough of not-very-much Culture
Read more: GLA has few checks on how £1.3m Culture grant is being spent
Read more: It’s hard to find signs of the borough’s musical heritage trail
Read more: Croydon is made a national laughing stock, Part 94. And Part 95
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
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