This article, by Peter Russell appears in the first issue of the Stirling & District Arts Forum Newsletter.
Central Region's arts office is very young, and has only months to go before disaggregation arrests its development. Its profile has been very high, subject sometimes to unwelcome attention and publicity, but keeping the arts emphatically on the agenda. Jane Spiers deserves congratulation for such a bold policy. Stirling District, on the other hand, seem to be using the unitary authority disruption to justify a policy vacuum, at least as far as public involvement in the process is concerned.
It must be fifteen years since Stirling District, in a blaze of unaccustomed brightness, launched the District Arts Council at the Mayfield Centre. I recall attending the public meeting with optimistic ideas buzzing. My friends and I were certain; the evidence was irrefutable; what Stirling needed was an arts centre. We aired our views, sure of support from officials on the platform, only to be disdainfully dismissed by Stuart McKenzie: "That's just window-dressing. Anyway, we have an arts centre. It's called the Cowane Centre." He was, of course, wrong.
Today, once again, Stirling needs an arts centre. You only have to visit East Kilbride to see how vision and commitment can produce an attractive forum for the arts, encouraging cross-fertilisation of ideas, combining studio and rehearsal spaces, recording studio, workshop space, exhibition, theatre and bar/cafe areas. It is my fervent hope that a unitary authority in Stirling, with new energy and fresh blood, can seize the opportunity, whether lottery funding is available or not, of consulting with the relevant practitioners across the board, with a view to establishing an arts centre we might be proud of.
For far too long artists have sensed a lack of will among administrators. Administration is not about the power to frustrate potential developments, but about enabling such enhancing projects as can generate civic pride. Stirling needs to lose that "Siberia" tag, along with that small town mentality which has been sense by outsiders.
As the Cowane Centre creaks towards the end of its useful existence, it is apparent that imaginative solutions to the arts umbrella already exist in Holland, France, Yorkshire and Birmingham. There are models for Stirling's Arts Centre; what we require is the will to realise this project as a millennium necessity.