Skip to main content

Live Music Matters? - How City of Edinburgh Council Killed the Picture House

The decision by City of Edinburgh Council to give Watford based pub chain JD Wetherspoon planning permission to convert the historic music venue and former cinema most recently known as The Picture House into a 'superpub' on Lothian Road is a huge blow to Edinburgh's live music scene. Based on CEC officers recommendations, this decision marked the end of a saga which has left a much needed mid-scale music venue boarded up sionce December 2013 after JD Wetherspoon bought it from HMV.

The decision was passed by CEC's Planning Committee's Development Management Sub Committee by six votes to four, with Councillor Eric Milligan, who is also head of the Licensing Board, abstaining. Four members of the fifteen-strong committee were absent. Given the significance of the issue, which prompted almost 13,500 people to sign a petition organised by the Save The Picture House campaign, this result was disappointing to many.

The impact of the Picture House's closure in terms of discouraging mid-scale touring bands to visit Edinburgh due to a lack of an appropriate city centre venue has been plain to see since 2013. While in its prime the Picture House could host shows by the likes of Bat For Lashes, Chic, the New York Dolls and Mudhoney most nights of the week, now the likes of Ride and Godspeed You! Black Emperor have noticeably left Edinburgh off their current tour itinerary. More significantly, perhaps, the signals that CEC's decision sends out to pub chains, property developers and hoteliers is potentially catastrophic to Edinburgh's year-round artistic life.

The recent bid by developers to convert the site of the former Old Royal High School into a five star hotel is already symptomatic of current CEC thinking, although a counter proposal by the city's St Mary's Music School for the Royal High to become its new premises has also been mooted. This week has also seen the bid by Out of the Blue Arts Trust to transform the former Boroughmuir High School into a community arts hub put under threat by property developers, Cala Homes, who want to convert this historic building into flats.

The decision regarding The Picture House site was delivered a week or so prior to the publication of the Desire Lines report, a call to arms designed in part to protect, support and enable Edinburgh's assorted arts and culture scenes in the face of such decisions. The decision comes too at a time when CEC are purporting to support a grassroots live music scene with initiatives such as the Live Music Matters forum. Out of this large scale event, attended by musicians, promoters and venue managers in November 2014, two working groups were set up.

The first, Music is Audible, is focusing on the use of CEC's current licensing condition of 'inaudibility' which requires any live amplified music to be inaudible beyond the venue itself. The second, simply called Live Music Matters, is attempting to develop music industry industry-based think-tank that looks to protect and develop live music activity in the City. Having been invited to join both groups, things are at a very early stage in terms of development. While what eventually results from them in real terms remains to be seen, however, the Picture House ruling potentially undermines both.

Despite this, Edinburgh's assorted grassroots music scenes are livelier now than for at least a decade. This welter of activity would seem to be despite, rather than because of anything CEC has done during that period. Just how lively it is might become clear following the forthcoming Edinburgh Live Music Census, which can be regarded as the first positive by-product of Live Music Matters and Music is Audible.

Initiated by the University of Edinburgh-based Live Music Exchange, the Edinburgh Live Music Census will attempt to find out just how much live musical activity is currently taking place in Edinburgh, be that in pubs, cafes or concert halls, established regular venues or pop-up grassroots art spaces. The Census will take place on the weekend of June 5th/6th, and is based on a model in Australia conducted in 2012, which led to the introduction of the Agent of Change principle. This principle is designed to protect established venues from complaints resulting from encroaching gentrification.

Both the Musicians Union and the recently established Music Venue Trust are lobbying for the Agent of Change to be introduced in the UK. If live music really matters to CEC, a clear and ongoing civic will for live music provision needs to be built into council policy. If every musician, promoter and venue manager in Edinburgh takes part in the Edinburgh Live Music Census, the Agent of Change principle might eventually become a reality. With this in place, whatever venues rise from the ashes of the Picture House debacle can be protected alongside existing spaces as vital homes for Edinburgh's music scenes which allow it to flourish.

Anyone wishing to get involved in the Edinburgh Live Music Census, contact Adam Behr at Live Music Exchange at adam.behr@ed.ac.uk, or check out the website - http://livemusicexchange.org/blog/the-edinburgh-live-music-census
 
Neil Cooper is an arts writer and critic who lives and works in Edinburgh, where he has seen property developers, pub chains and hoteliers favoured by assorted local authorities over music and arts venues for a very long time. He sits on the Music is Audible and Live Music Matters working groups, and contributed to the Desire Lines report.
 
The List, May 2015

Ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) 1. THE REZILL