SPACE Rehearsal rooms are now closed

After 5 years of trading I am really sad to write that our rehearsal rooms have closed. SPACE Blackpool CIC continues and we hope to be able to find a suitable building soon. This time with (we hope – he said with an optimism that knows few bounds) a venue and other facilities.

You can read on (although you might well be bored quite soon) or just take from this that the decision to close is totally beyond our control and it has been a terrible blow to us. We thank everyone who got involved and worked for us or who rehearsed or recorded with us and hope something we did in the last 5 years will impact on your lives in a good way.

Why do this in the first place?

SPACE was set up to give young people something positive to do. We believe offering young people the opportunity to create and collaborate in a sustainable way is just bloody obvious.

The creative arts are a great way of reaching young people and letting them come up with ideas and solutions to the problems they face and the opportunities before them. No spoon feeding. No platitudes. No agendas. No box ticking. No politics. No empire building. No faceless bureaucracy.

Just enable young people to have use of a sustainable building and allow them to create. We made it work for 5 years and we will again.

So why are we closing Cornford Road?

There are two reasons.

Firstly, our landlord wants to sell the building. So without detailing the last few months struggle we have had… in short, we haven’t got the financial and/or legal resources to fight this de facto eviction. I have had verbal threats of personal bankruptcy, threatening legal letters and it is clear we have to act now to protect SPACE Blackpool CIC as an entity. I want SPACE to continue to work to improve the lot of young people in Blackpool and any long legal fight would finish us off.

Secondly, we set SPACE up to prove that social enterprise could create sustainable opportunities for work, training and leisure for young people. We have done that for 5 years but when it all started I genuinely did not consider that my local council would be so persistently unhelpful.

I (innocently) thought they would see what we “enable” with hundreds of young people every month and work with us to make more stuff happen. Instead I’ve met scores of council officers on hundreds of occasions and have only one area of the council where you could say we have connected. There are some very good people working there who are tied down by a local government culture in Blackpool which they argue prevents them connecting properly with community groups.

The lack of any real understanding of business amongst officers of the council is regrettable (as very few have done anything else other than recieve public sector budgets or bid for euro cash and spend accordingly.) But enterprise is a crucial skill to be missing at a time when innovation is badly needed. With a £4.4 million investment in a new youth facility nearly complete I will be watching closely.

Yoof stuff

I will also be making our case for running this new £4.4 million Myplace facility. It has a venue. It has lots of other spaces we could only ever have dreamed of at Cornford Road. My offer is in front of the decision makers to work with them to get a proper business plan together. The most important thing in a business plan is ideas that will work. I have had access to some of the available documents and have so much we could input. To date the response has been limited but I remain ever hopeful.

We have proved we have the ability to run sustainable youth facilities with no help at all from the council so how come not one person wants to even consider talking to me about SPACE running the new Myplace building? We have had thousands of young people coming through our doors doing creative things and we cost nothing to the council. So what is there problem here?

Our outputs can be measured but what’s the point? I think you just get more young people doing stuff and in Blackpool on the health front there is much to do.

Not about policies shocker

Remember this is not about buildings and policies. This is about changing the woeful health and wellbeing prospects for many young people in Blackpool.

When I ask questions of council officers I am looked on as a some kind of lunatic. Like… who does this person think he is to question the money we spend and the effectiveness of our services? My colleagues and friends think I am obsessed or mental to keep doing this especially as it has cost me thousands and earns me nothing. I usually say in response that I believe the climate will change soon.

My job as a journalist is to ask questions and I will continue to do that and to try to engage in a real dialogue locally and that brings me to a positive point! Woohoo!

The Social Value Bill

I genuinely have great hopes for the Social Value Bill (as I write it is in the House of Lords.) The legislation should address some concerns about how local public services are delivered. Who can access financial information about our council and when and how community assets are used too.

It also will enable a whole new batch of social enterprises to form. In a fresh climate of local government openness and engagement (even if a bit of legal prodding is needed) those new social businesses will get a better start than SPACE Blackpool CIC has had for 5 years.

We will have to take some time to sort out what buildings are available and for one final effort for Blackpool Council to engage with us and help us find a new home. They have lots of buildings if only they would supply us the council tax payers and third sector with a list.

I wish all of you a happy and successful 2012 and thanks to those of you who have supported us. You know who you are.

On a personal note it has been a pleasure meeting and working with some of the young musicians of Blackpool and The Fylde. Their enthusiasm and spirit have been a constant source of pleasure for me and my wife Aishling. Too many names to mention but certainly Patrick has been a star since he joined us and Dean has always been there for us too. I thank you. Plus Rod, Laurson, Rob (Locals and Scraps!), Karl, Conall, Callum, Charlie, James, Henry, Dougal, Tyrone. Plus the hundreds of bands, duos, dancers, singers and others that have used our place too.

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