THE Arches has always offered a valuable place for artists to have the chance to fail. Now, the artists must see to it that The Arches does not.
When you think of The Arches, you might think of people out on late nights, of dancing, and queuing on Monday afternoon to get your jacket back after losing your ticket, wallet and perhaps also your dignity there on the weekend. It is also a cauldron for the most gloriously diverse group of artists that Glasgow has to offer.
It is not just the case that the artists use the building during the day – the artists are the building. Because for the community that works, connects and plays at The Arches, it is their home. It’s like Glasgow’s Byker Grove, but rather than being a place for disenfranchised young people led by a gruesomely mustachioed hero, it’s teeming with the best and boldest innovators of performance, who are led by a philosophy that innovation, fearlessness and even failure can all be valuable components on a journey toward something bigger.
I have been making professional theatre for about a decade now and, like any number of theatre makers in Glasgow and in fact, across Scotland, I have found The Arches to be an integral part of my development. I performed my first ever show there after graduating from drama school. It was terrible. It really was. But rather than chalk me up as a waste of time, the people there saw potential and gave me more opportunities to make new work and to share that with an audience. It is that key principle that has allowed me to be the artist that I am now and the reason that so much of the work produced in The Arches tours the world, receives countless awards and plays such a big part in Scotland’s outstanding reputation for theatre across the globe.
While the venue has been vital for giving me a platform, it has been equally important for me as an audience member.
In The Arches I have seen mind-blowing and genre-defying work from all over the world. There, I’ve experienced a play in total darkness; I’ve seen a person eat glass; I’ve seen a man catch a bullet in his teeth; I’ve been on a trapeze. The building is dedicated to presenting work from people that identify as being outside of what we would consider normative culture, and so not only has seeing work like this at The Arches changed me as an artist and as a person, but the venue is a platform that helps to expand what we consider legitimate in our culture.
That’s how important it is.
Last week’s news that the venue is to lose its club licence may not seem connected to the community of artists that use the space for the rest of the day, but it absolutely is. The building is funded in a unique way – partly by Creative Scotland and partly by the revenue from the nightclub – so while people know that the club nights themselves will simply move to another venue and the club-goers will find somewhere else to have the same kind of fun, the money that they would spend doing that is now no longer increasing the presence of Scotland’s artists on the local, national and international stage.
I know that The Arches team are incredibly dedicated. They live by their own philosophy and so will always fight to stay alive.
But as we may now be looking at the venue changing its method of funding, or rather, being denied its ability to fund itself, we must say to ourselves as the audiences who have been inspired by the work there and the artists who have found their voice there, can we really stand by and allow the building to fail now? I know that I can’t.
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