Encouraging art to fill the spaces left in recession-hit city’s shopping centre

Meanwhile: adverb, in the intervening time.

To Bradford residents, meanwhile is a word they’ve heard an awful lot in recent years: Leeds’s new Trinity shopping centre development carries on a pace, meanwhile, the promised Westfield retail centre in Bradford continues to stagnate.

Sheffield appears to have no end of quirky little studios that keep creatives tied to the place, meanwhile, Bradford appears to be the capital of empty shops.

However, when the word is written with a capital “M”, it has a whole new meaning for the much maligned city.

Meanwhile is the name of a scheme ringing the changes for Bradford and, argue many, not before time.

The scheme, which has also been piloted elsewhere, involves landlords of buildings and sites currently laying empty or defunct giving their spaces to arts companies at a much reduced rent.

The arts companies also receive a significant 80 per cent rebate on the usual business rates as part of the scheme, making the spaces affordable to what are, more often than not, charities.

The landlord gets a responsible tenant to look after the upkeep of their building and the arts organisations get a space – often right in the heart of a city centre – for a bargain price. What’s more, those who live and work in Bradford, who had grown used to being surrounded by empty, dilapidated buildings, get spaces that are alive and vibrant. On the face of it, everyone’s a winner.

The man helping to lead the Meanwhile scheme in Bradford is Gideon Seymour, director of arts charity Fabric.

Established in November 2001, it has more than 1,500 members, many of them artists working in and around Bradford, and runs workshops and networking events around the city.

When Seymour took over as director of Fabric in 2006 he set about reinvigorating the organisation and saw around the city a vast potential.

“There is no getting away from the fact that Bradford has more than its fair share of pawnbrokers, pound shops and empty shop units,” says Seymour. “I saw there was an opportunity to put arts and culture at the centre of the city in those empty spaces. With developments like Westfield being mothballed, it felt like something positive needed to be done in the city and as an arts charity we could see that there was a possibility of using culture to regenerate the city.”

Seymour’s positivity was channelled into a scheme that has now seen five sites around the city taken over by arts companies and artists. Not, some might argue, exactly what the city is looking for, but five arts venues in a city plagued by problems is surely better than five more empty shops.

The Meanwhile scheme emerged from a Government report in April 2009 called Looking After Our Town Centres, with contributors including retail guru Mary Portas suggesting ways that city centres, faced with businesses quitting shops as a result of the economic downturn, could be revitalised.

The report quoted Thomas Edison, saying: “Waste is worse than loss.” It is a maxim by which the Meanwhile scheme operates – a city full of empty shops is far less inviting – and therefore less likely to attract visitors, shoppers and, in turn, investment – than a city that is alive and vibrant.

It was not, however, only the economic downturn that was to blame. Outside of all cities, retail centres contributed to the downfall of the high street and, specifically in the case of Bradford, more attractive neighbours lured people away. The idea was not to simply leave the shops empty in the hope that other commercial tenants moved in, but have artistic tenants bringing the places to life.

The first Meanwhile space was taken over by Fabric in late 2009.

The Centenary Square collection of retail units built in a horseshoe shape had attracted an Indian restaurant, a Wetherspoons pub, a Starbucks and a Chinese restaurant. One of the units, however, had remained empty since it was completed. Seymour submitted a proposal through Fabric to the landlords to turn the empty space into the city’s first Meanwhile location.

In March 2010 it opened with an exhibition, funded by the Arts Council, and since then has shown the work of more than 350 artists and arts groups from Bradford and surrounding areas to more than 7,500 visitors.

Seymour says: “The great thing about it was that, because it was in the centre of town, people would wander past and come into the space to see art exhibitions. It meant we attracted an audience that would normally not traditionally visit art galleries.

“The landlords realised the unit simply wasn’t going to be rented by a commercial concern – we approached them while the work was being carried out on City Park, which meant it had a 10ft high fence outside the door.”

A pop up art space slipped straight into the building with minimal fuss and the first Meanwhile project for Bradford was off the ground.

At the same time Seymour began two far more ambitious projects. He was going to tackle the Westfield site, where an Australian firm had mothballed a proposed shopping centre. There was also a huge shop in the city centre, a stone’s throw from Centenary Square, which had at one time been a record store but had lain empty since autumn 2009.

Buoyed by the success, he appeared to be having when negotiations opened on the Centenary Square shop space, Seymour proposed to Bradford Council at a regeneration conference in September 2009 that the Westfield site be used as a Meanwhile space.

After months of meetings contracts were finally drawn up. Westfield agreed that the site could be used and transformed by Fabric. The national Meanwhile Project, funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government, granted £20,000 to the Fabric-led development and grants of £100,000 each were secured from Westfield, Bradford Council and Yorkshire Forward. The money was used to create the Bradford Urban Garden which was officially launched by the Lord Mayor in June 2010. The following year saw it hosting events, including May Day celebrations, Bradford Pride, Bradford Reggae Sunsplash and a fire festival, which attracted more than 20,000 visitors to the city.

It took almost 18 months to secure the site which was at one time record store Zavvi. On March 24, the same day that City Park was launched, the shop opened its doors to the public for the first time in two-and-a-half-years.

A grant of £30,000 had helped to refurbish two floors of the building and turn it into an art space – and 3,000 visitors went through the doors on the opening day. It now has an art shop downstairs, selling the work of local artists, and exhibition space upstairs.

While all of this is to be applauded and the efforts of the charity and its director deserve recognition, there is a question to be asked. By taking the empty buildings and using them for Meanwhile projects, isn’t Fabric playing into the hands of the council and proving the adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions? By putting something – anything – in empty buildings, or indeed building sites where the city was promised a shopping centre, is Fabric inadvertently letting the council off the hook instead of applying pressure to have those empty shops filled and a shopping centre created?

Seymour says: “The fact is that if Westfield can make more money building a new shopping centre in Abu Dhabi than Bradford, where are they going to build it? We can’t force the council to force companies to take over empty shops. We believe the arts can be a catalyst for regeneration and social change – is it better to have an empty building, or a space that is being used by artists and art companies?”

Repairing the fabric by filling shops

Pop Up Art Space, Centenary Square: Fabric has had the lease since March 2010 and since then has shown the work of more than 350 artists.

Bradford Urban Garden: Yorkshire Forward, Westfield and Bradford Council contributed funds to build the urban garden and the site also received £5,000 from Santander for a mural.

Fabric Office: Landlords Schofield Sweeney solicitors leased the ground floor of Church Bank House in Little Germany to Fabric as part of the Meanwhile project.

Joseph Brennan House: This large, six-storey 1970s office building on Sunbridge Road is in the process of becoming a Meanwhile space.

For more details visit www.fabricculture.co.uk