A World of Culture
The University has a positive impact on the region's culture, through staging internationally significant events - theatre, music, art, comedy, film and dance - at Warwick Arts Centre, in addition to developing a wide range of creative outreach projects in the locality. The University is also home to a significant collection of modern and contemporary art. In addition, the Modern Records Centre has an important role to play in the preservation of British history.
Warwick Arts Centre
Warwick Arts Centre is situated at the heart of the University campus and contributes significantly to the social and cultural fabric of the region, enhancing the profile and image of the area. It is one of the largest and most prestigious arts centres in the UK, attracting over 250,000 visitors a year to over 2,000 individual events, with 70% of its audience from Coventry and Warwickshire.
Programme
As the UK’s largest university-based centre of contemporary live and visual arts, the events programme is diverse and eclectic, ranging from the highest quality international theatre, prestigious orchestras and well-known comedians, to music gigs, experimental studio work and accessible work for children and families.
Warwick Arts Centre aims to be a place of creative stimulation and artistic adventure for audiences and artists alike, and it is one of a small group of significant presenters and co- producers of contemporary performing and visual arts outside London, dedicated to creating artistic partnerships, incubating ideas, and developing new work.
Venues
The Arts Centre houses four performance venues, a cinema and the Mead Gallery. The Butterworth Hall has a maximum capacity of over 2,000 with an outstanding natural acoustic. It is home to an International Concert Series and plays host to stars from the worlds of classical, popular and contemporary music. It reopened at the end of 2009 after a £7.9 million redevelopment, with many local people contributing to the fundraising efforts. Its new extension, the Helen Martin Studio, opened in 2009 as a flexible creative space, which is used as a rehearsal room, education facility and occasional venue.
The Theatre stages the best national and international plays and performances, as well as contemporary and international dance, music and comedy. The Studio presents small-scale theatre, comedy and music events, and the Cinema stages the best independent film all year round. The Mead Gallery is one of the largest exhibition spaces in the West Midlands and presents touring and newly curated exhibitions, and specially commissioned work by contemporary artists, primarily in the areas of painting, sculpture, installation and photography.
Education and Outreach
The Arts Centre’s Education Programme aims to stimulate creativity, spark imagination and broaden horizons. Projects are ambitious and create a challenge for the participating young people, instilling a sense of pride in their own achievements. Annually, up to 28,000 children from Coventry, Warwickshire and Solihull participate in activities run by the Education Department.
Recent projects have included Cov Cool Kids, a project working with many schools across the city of Coventry. Children worked in theatre, dance, music and film, alongside professional artists, in order to make new work to share with each other, their peers and their families, with the culmination of a showcase performance in the Butterworth Hall.
Boys Dancing is supported by a grant from People Dancing (part of the Culture Programme for London 2012). Almost 2,500 participants created new dance and films for their families and the public to enjoy in 2010. Due to the project’s success, Boys Dancing was extended to venues across the entire Midlands region, including The Public, West Bromwich; No. 8 Arts Centre, Pershore, and the Touchwood Shopping Centre, Solihull.
Start with Art was a partnership with The Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts. A team of visual artists worked with over 500 infant pupils from schools serving some of the most disadvantaged areas of Nuneaton, Bedworth and Chelmsley Wood. The children visited the University campus twice to enjoy the ‘Sculpture and Colour Trails’, and to create new work for two playgrounds, a sensory garden, a library and an entrance lobby.
In a University cross-departmental project, The Mural, two local schools joined forces to work with a visual artist and staff in the University’s Physics Department to create a unique mural on the hoardings around the site of the new science building.
The Coull Quartet has been Quartet-in-Residence at the University since 1977. The Quartet has performed and broadcast extensively throughout the UK, the USA and Western Europe, and has also toured China, India, the Far East, South America and Australia. In the UK the Quartet has appeared at most of the major music societies and festivals, and is frequently invited to take part in P&O Cruises' ‘Music Festivals at Sea’. The Quartet is truly embedded in University life, giving an annual series of concerts at the Arts Centre and performances around campus and the Coventry and Warwickshire area, as well as teaching many promising string players and chamber ensembles.
The University of Warwick Art Collection
The University is home to a significant collection of modern and contemporary art - around 800 pieces - comprising painting, sculpture, photography, prints and ceramics. With pieces located across the campus, both in buildings and outdoors, works of art are easily accessed by members of the public in locations that are open to everyone.
The breadth and quality of the art collection makes it a significant resource for the region, and in some areas, for the nation. New acquisitions build on and extend the strengths of the collection, and are generally by artists that have achieved a national and international profile. There is a commitment to buying works that reflect the vision of the University to be at the leading edge in all fields, and to provide a stimulating and distinctive environment for students, staff and visitors.
The education and interpretation programmes that support the collection are open to everyone and contribute to lifelong learning, as well as to the resources offered by the University to schools and colleges across the region, and to the local community. Additionally, the team at the Mead Gallery regularly offer introductory tours of key works in the collection for the public.
In 2010 the University's art collection underwent a formal assessment by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). The Council confirmed that the University meets nationally agreed standards in all areas of management and service delivery, and awarded the University's art collection the status of 'Accredited Museum'.
Modern Records Centre
The Modern Records Centre, based at the University Library, is one of the largest of its kind in the UK, holding 13km of original documents and records. It was founded in 1973 with the principal objectives of locating and preserving primary sources for modern British social, political and economic history, with special concentration on the national history of industrial relations, industrial politics and labour history.
Main archive collections at the Modern Records Centre include records of the Trade Union Congress and related organisations; records of trade associations, employers’ organisations such as the CBI and related bodies; motor and related industry records (especially through formal agreement with Rover/British Motor Industry Heritage Trust); the National Cycle Archive; records of radical British political movements; records of pressure groups and other organisations concerned with social and penal reform, human rights, disarmament, education and health; and papers of individuals containing significant information on all these holdings.
Following a £1.2 million refurbishment in 2011, the Centre is able to offer increased access to its holdings. Use of the Modern Records Centre is open to all and free of charge, and the Centre is open weekdays throughout the year.
