Members of the Westmorland and Furness Eden locality board made up of councillors from the Eden area on Wednesday evening elected a new chair of the committee at a meeting held at Voreda House.
The members of the committee elected Cllr Lorna Baker councillor for the Eden and Lyvennet Vale ward covering and area to the Southeast of Penrith including Brougham and Temple Sowerby.
Penrith Town Councillor and Westmorland and Furness Councillor for Penrith North Cllr Mark a Rudhall was elected as vice chair to the committee.
Following the election the committee faced strong criticism during the public questions part of the meeting from Mr John Parkinson from Upfront Gallery, Who spoke to the committee pointing out the unfairness of arts funding in the Eden area compared to other areas of Westmorland and Furness and past imbalance in the Eden area by the former Eden District Council.
Mr Parkinson opened his statement saying “Upfront Arts Charity was formed in 2003 and has brought an art gallery, music venue and puppet theatre to the area. Since that date it has also provided many in school workshops throughout Cumbria.”
“When raising funding to build a new venue we were turned down by the then Eden District Council.”
“We asked for up to £19000 towards the cost of a lift, discussed at an onsite meeting”.
“We offered to establish a droving event for Penrith, for which we would provide carnival character making workshops. These would have been staged in our new flexible venue space. We had already provided a large lion for Mayday and a one hundred headed serpent, made by the community for 2000.”
“We then watched Eden Arts copy our open exhibition staging it at Rheged. This caused a massively unfair playing field for Upfront Arts as they were not funded in any way to run the open. The open at Upfront was staged and marketed for Cumbrian artists using the entry fees to generate artists prizes and to pay for the advertising of the one-month event.
“Eden District Council by funding Eden Arts were therefore funding an event which was directly in competition with an existing one.”
“Since that time EDC have gone on to provide premises for Evan Arts organisation in the form of a shop space, and have provided the organisation with regular funding. It is fine that the area gained an additional gallery to show the work of artists, however EDC never considered the idea that this would undermine existing enterprises. We are not aware of any documentation offering to give regular funding support to any other arts charity in the area?“
He then questioned the awarding to contracts to a company to deliver a report into future usage of Penrith Town Hall by the former Eden Council in 2022 and the qualifications of the firm appointed to deliver the work.
Mr Parkinson concluded his statement to councillors highlighting his views on the current imbalance in arts funding by the new council across the district and saying “We would also like more councillors to be aware of the fact that we have provide an arts venue to the area at little or no cost. At the end of February 2025, we will open a designated puppet museum at Upfront, expanding our educational and tourism offer to the area. We would like to believe that we have the full financial support and recognition for what we do from our local and county council. Arts Council England need to see that what we do is valued by the council of the area in which we are located.”
*The claims made in the statement made to the council committee by Mr Parkinson are the claims and views expressed by him in his public statement to the councillors.
A spokesperson for Westmorland and Furness Council said: “We are aware that Mr Parkinson raised some questions at this week’s Eden Locality Board meeting about arts and cultural support offered by the council.
“Mr Parkinson said that he had participated in the recent consultation on the development of the new Cultural Framework for Westmorland and Furness and was interested to understand how that work was progressing.
“The Locality Board Chair was able to report that the Cultural Framework had been approved at this week’s Cabinet meeting and thanked Mr Parkinson for his contribution to the consultation.
“Our new Strategic Lead for Culture is now preparing to contact all those who engaged in the consultation, including Mr Parkinson, to share a copy of the final report with them and outline the next steps.’
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