My involvement with ArtsBank ended very suddenly 6 weeks before the place opened and ironically on the day 1600 steelworkers lost their jobs.
In February, as agreed, I was putting together the basement exhibition entitled ‘Death of Steel’. It was all about the demise of Corus and its history. I planned for various steel-making film loops to be projected onto 5 steel figures that we had bought along with sound effects, photos and artwork. With 2010 being the 160th anniversary of the iron-ore discovery, my film ‘A Century in Stone’ together with ‘Made in Teesside’ banner, as flown from the Sydney Harbour Bridge, was going to go in the ‘Pancrack Cinema’ (as it was then known) on the ground floor. But this wasn’t to be.
I was simultaneously working on a feature-length documentary shot around the world about one of the biggest folk stars in the world, Teesside’s own Vin Garbutt. This project preceded the Bank and its completion in 2009 was postponed because ArtsBank was more pressing. We planned to then premiere the film at the Bank in 2010 with Vin playing live. But this also wasn’t to be.
On the last day of the blast furnace (Feb 19th - the actual ‘death of steel’) I was filming for the exhibition at the Corus gate when I recieved a call from Bryan. He launched into a sudden critique of me saying said that I didn’t work fast enough, that I was negative, nitpicky, a bad team player and then bizarrely he asked me to resign. I was dumbfounded. We had had barely had a cross word in a year and here I was being effectively sacked by mobile phone with no warning, no face-to-face meeting and certainly no directors’ board meeting. It was beyond belief and just didn’t make sense.
The Vin Garbutt film, a major piece of work, was on the way and ‘Death of Steel’ was going to be great. If attention to detail means negative and nitpicky then so be it. I wanted the best for the Bank. And although Paul and I had our disagreements as creative directors, I had split the difference of my salary with him for team spirit – something Bryan said he had never known in 40 years of business! And then the penny dropped.
Bryan accused me of still being involved in the Coatham campaign. (This was a campaign by Redcar residents against the Council selling off Majuba car park and public land to a housing developer. The Council had spent around £3m of taxpayers’ money trying to impose their dubious scheme and I made a film exposing it).
I had got the bullet just a couple of days after letting them know that a reporter from The Sun was coming up to do a story having seen the Coatham DVD. Why would this be a problem for Bryan? He had generously backed the film and Paul had been heavily involved in promoting it including trying to get it into the national press! Bryan had also stated several times that Coatham was part of what we were about and we would be making lots of statements; that we had first met at a Coatham screening; that he had put money into the DVD and that there would be no selling out.
.......................................................................(cont'd opposite)
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Sadly, this proved not to be the case and the email that followed confirmed it. He stated that due to my involvement in the campaign and The Sun investigation “any connection with that project (Coatham) is now not compatible in any way with what ArtsBank is doing. I therefore do not wish you to be involved in the Corus exhibition and we will in fact complete that ourselves”.
A resignation form arrived in the post the next day. I could not believe it. After everything he had said and all that we had achieved, it was a sickening betrayal. They wouldn’t meet me, calls and emails went unanswered, and the work I had done for ‘Death of Steel’ wasn’t wanted.
The following week, I bumped into Council Chief Exec. Amanda Skelton at a function. She asked me if I was involved with ArtsBank and told me that she had had a meeting with Paul the day before and he had invited her for a tour of the Bank.
(Communication with the Council had opened back in November when Paul took it upon himself to invite the Council leaders to The Bank for a tour. This was just a couple of weeks after 1000s of Coatham dvds, heavily critical of the council leadership, had been given out). One wonders how a Council scandal exposed in a national tabloid by an ArtsBank director (me) in the week of the meeting with the Chief Exec. would have affected ArtsBank’s new relationship with the Council and chances of Council support???
As it transpired the journalist came, wrote the story but it never appeared. A week after that, with huge irony, came the Coatham campaign’s landmark victory over the Council in the Supreme Court - and that made national news!
On April 1st, I attended ArtsBank’s opening night as an un-resigned director of the company. The place and everyone there was because of my idea BUT I wasn’t invited and my family and friends had been struck off the invitation list.
I had been totally committed to ArtsBank and thought the world of Bryan. He said that I was vital to the project being so well known and respected in Saltburn and across Teesside; and even encouraged me on several occasions to run for MP from the Bank! But suddenly I was of “no use” and what I thought was a deeply-bonded friendship was just snuffed out.
For Saltburn, Teesside, the artists and the public I hope ArtsBank truly succeeds. It is utterly tragic though that the positive vibe that we built up over a year with everyone we met, ended up tainted with treachery and as a result has upset so many people including artists exhibiting there.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all those
who have voiced their support in recent weeks
Truth, Justice & No Sell Out.
Craig Hornby, April 2010
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Media coverage of ArtsBank's opening has sparked some confusion about how the project started. Tyne Tees reported that ArtsBank was "the idea of Bryan Goodall" and the Evening Gazette (2/4/10) quoted Bryan Goodall as saying "I was looking to open a gallery / I’d been looking in the North Yorkshire area and then this building came along”.
FOR THE RECORD: The building "came along" because it was on my street. Bryan visited me several times and wanted to invest in cultural / political films about Teesside. He suggested we get premises to make the films and I put to him the concept of cinema/gallery/venue committed to Teesside's culture, talent, issues etc: He committed himself and his huge resources to make it possible.
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In ArtsBank's exhibition booklet it states that "The founders of ArtsBank are ordinary people, driven only by a shared commitment to the cause, a passion for art and an equivalent passion for the North East. Exhibitions will demonstrate engagement with current issues and our shared heritage". Gosh it could be me talking BUT why are no names mentioned??? Is it because there would be one name glaringly and embarrassingly missing??? Obviously it appears I am being airbrushed from the ArtsBank story BUT the facts have long been in the public domain. See Evening Gazette 11th Nov 2009 and the April issue of North East Life Magazine (pic above) This was written just before I got the bullet and both were heavily lifted from our first press release of Nov 2009. That's how ArtsBank started. End of. |
