unity in its diversity

10/04/2003 reported by Charlotte Higgins of the Guardian

Two weeks ago it won the artworld lottery. Now Dartington has to work out what to do with the money.

Something extraordinary has happened in the Devon countryside. When Arts Council England announced its spending plan a fortnight ago, Dartington Hall Trust found its public funding increased from £70,000 to £570,000 over the next three years. While it was a good day all round for arts funding - there was an extra £75m to hand out - Dartington, in relative terms, shot off the scale. The Arts Council anticipates that Dartington, along with Aldeburgh in Suffolk and the Sage in Gateshead, will become part of a trio of "centres of excellence for music performance, production, training and professional development".

Dartington is best known for its summer schools, where musicians of all abilities gather for artistic regeneration. It also hosts a year-round programme of theatre, music and film. But, crucially, it has a huge amount of untapped potential. Next door to Dartington Hall is the Dartington College of Arts, which runs degree courses in theatre, music and choreography. In neighbouring Totnes is the King Edward VI Community College, which has just been awarded specialist performing-arts status and has 300 kids who take music lessons in school.

But there is a more urgent consideration. Though it runs a large estate, Dartington Hall Trust is not quite the epitome of plenty it looks. Income from its land has dropped and its buildings, including a theatre converted from a barn by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, are costly to maintain. Its chairman has been warning of "gentle or genteel decline".

The idea is that the new money (less than half what they pitched for, incidentally) will enable these neighbouring organisations - which between them can offer seven purpose-built performance spaces, 44 practice rooms, and on-site accommodation for 300 - to team up and become greater than the sum of their parts. A composer, say, might come to stay at Dartington to work on a piece. He or she might try it out on players in residence, or run a workshop with Arts College or King Edward VI students. When the project came to fruition, it could be performed at Dartington and then toured. It is easy to see how well this sort of idea would go down with an Arts Council obsessed by education.

The plans for Dartington are as yet vague. The people, from Gavin Henderson, director of the summer school, to King Edward VI's principal, Stephen Jones, are full of inspiration, but they risk losing focus - so many partners, so many agendas, no one unambiguously in charge. They need to figure out what it is that Dartington, and only Dartington, can offer.

The answer, it seems to me, lies partly in history and partly in geography. Dartington's role as an arts powerhouse was forged by its founders, Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, in the 1920s. He was a follower of the poet-philosopher Tagore; she, a scion of the Whitney dynasty, was blessed with millions. At Dartington they investigated novel farming methods (the estate was responsible for bringing apple juice to the British) as well as providing a bolthole for the likes of Stravinsky, the Amadeus Quartet and Ballet Jooss (experimental dance on the lawns!).

In other words, from the start Dartington was about diverse ideas - but united by a single vision. As for its geography, Dartington is a medieval, echt-Devonian house surrounded by chic, hard-edged 1930s Modern buildings. It has no gates to deter visitors - yet it is a community in itself, perched on a hill above its neighbour, Totnes. It is Janus-faced: both inward- and outward-looking, local and international, medieval and modernist. The partners need to keep Dartington's individuality at heart - then go forth and plan wonderful things.

Tony Blair tells Saga magazine: "Every so often, I feel I should graduate to classical music, properly." As we recover from our shock that Blair has actually heard of classical music, may we humbly proffer the following listening suggestions, as befit the prime minister's dignity and office? 1) Wagner's Ring. The big one, Tony. Unhappily, it was a favourite of Hitler's, but listen out for that jolly tune you might remember from the bit in Apocalypse Now with the helicopters. 2) Adams's Nixon in China, featuring Richard and Pat Nixon and Henry Kissinger. You never know, Tony, you and Cherie might make it into an opera one day. 3) Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, written in 1941 in Leningrad when the city was under siege. In the first movement you can hear tanks rolling in - a sound with which you are perhaps familiar.

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