When Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the new Barbican Centre in 1982, she said it must be “one of the wonders of the modern world”. Besides the festivities planned for the fortnight of the Barbican’s 25th birthday celebrations (25 February – 10 March 2007), there will be twenty five milestone events held throughout 2007 – each event meant to capture the centre’s essence and characterise a year of its existence.
Opened on 3rd March 1982, the £161m Barbican took 15 years to complete and is the largest integrated arts and conference centre in Europe. Covering seven acres and occupying a former bomb site amidst thirty five acres of residential estate known as the Barbican, the Centre became listed as Grade II in 2001. The Barbican Centre’s art venues includes a concert hall, two theatres – the Barbican Theatre and the Pit, three cinemas and two art galleries. Despite being the home of the London Symphony Orchestra and regularly hosting the world’s premier orchestras, the Barbican did go through its fair share of strife. In 2001, it was voted as one of the ugliest buildings in London; in 1996 controversy struck with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) gradual departure from its circuit; and a critic quipped that its concert hall is a work in progress.
Even though the Barbican theatre was built especially for the RSC, the company headed by Adrian Noble withdrew from the Barbican in 2002. The hole left by the RSC, saw the Barbican taking an inventive new direction through the introduction of its international festival – BITE (Barbican International Theatre Event) – which eventually established the centre’s identity.
Under the visionary hands of the current managers – Artistic Director Graham Sheffield and managing director, former head of BBC World Service, Sir John Tusa (who leaves in August), the dynamic pair transformed the once unfashionable centre into a creative nexus of avant-gardism from around the world. Since its time with the RSC, the centre does not have a resident theatre company. Says Tusa in The London Theatre Guide, “I wouldn’t expect ever to have a resident partner in the theatre like the short relationship that there was with the RSC. When you look at the programming, we are very, very happy with that programming and audiences are as well. We are not yearning to go back to that at all.”
As the hub of “iconoclast, rebel, innovator, radical, nonconformist, maverick, and genius” theatre, dance and music in the UK, the BITE team, headed by Head of Theatre, Louise Jeffreys actively co-commission and co-produce work with international companies. Artists that the Barbican has presented over the years include Laurie Anderson, Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham, Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, to name just a few of the world’s leading artists.
Included in the Barbican’s 25th birthday festivities are the National Theatre of Iceland’s Peer Gynt, two Chekhov plays from Russia’s Maly Drama Theatre, performances exploring Australia’s culture and politics under Ozmosis. Other landmark events to look out for include the BBC Symphony Orchestra, The London Australian Film Festival (15-25 March) and an art exhibition titled Panic Attack: Art in the Punk Years.
Panic Attack will mark the 30th anniversary of punk becoming an international phenomenon. The exhibition will look at the spirit of iconoclasm in British and America punk art. A Barbican spokesman tells BBC, “Punk is most closely associated with music, fashion and graphics, but it can also be seen as part of a much broader cultural episode”.
As the Barbican’s owner, the City of London Corporation recently provided £14m for the redevelopment of the Centre’s foyer and public spaces. Perhaps in addressing the “ugly” issue and its labyrinthine faults, the Barbican has in the past nine years undergone a series of renovations. With the total cost at £30m, Londoners will now enjoy the Barbican with new bars, better signage and lighting and a bridge linking entrances.
In The Times recently, critic Richard Morrison rates the Barbican today as “easily outclassing the Lincoln Centre in New York for adventurous programming and sustained quality”. Under the helm of Tusa and Sheffield, rather than being a disparate collection of venues, the Barbican’s potential as a fully integrated arts centre has been fully realized.
“This place is unique,” says Sheffield to The Telegraph. “This was a visionary piece of postwar urban planning, the biggest postwar urban development in this country. And, believe me, there is no other place in Europe, the US or the Far East that contains this mix of art forms, on this scale and at this density. Unique is a much misused word, but that’s exactly what it is.”
