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Art is not hardware
The Government has announced new money to help creatives keep the high street alive. Shouldn’t we be queuing up to get in there? No way, argues Fiona Flynn.
Nobody likes boarded up shops. And like every other art student in the land, I'm always on the look-out for places to show the work I've made and am excited about. So why did my heart sink at the announcement by Communities secretary Hazel Blears to help artists and community groups take over vacant shops and keep the high street alive? The plan is to provide £3 million for local councils to provide small grants under £1,000 to anyone who can find a creative re-use for empty premises. The gist is that planning rules will be relaxed so an empty shop can be re-used in a way that might previously have gone against local rules for as long as the recession lasts. Empty shops are certainly a problem. More than 70,000 retail outlets will close this year, apparently, and according to some analysts, retail space has been a tower of capital waiting to keel over. In the last twenty years, 88 million extra square feet of retail space has appeared, but with Internet shopping and out-of-town sheds and shopping centres, the blight of empty shops on our old high streets is worryingly contagious. Imagine - all that space, just waiting to be used. But, I insist, art cannot help the high...
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