Will Brenton

IMAGINE

I can’t use the word imagine these days without getting a mental image of John and Yoko in their big white bed with Alan Yentob squirming up between them like some annoying Spitting Image puppet. Maybe one day he’ll get his true wish and be invited onto ‘I’m a Celebrity’… but I digress…

The word ‘Imagine’ has those associations for my generation – but quite different ones for current and future generations. So I’d like to do a little imagining here.

Imagine a National Centre of Theatre, Books, Film and the Arts aimed specifically at Children – a South Bank for the under 12s.

Imagine a centre where the walls are made of light or images, that a simple touch can transform a room from a moving rainforest into the depths of the sea.

Imagine a performance area that is as alive as the actors. (no cheap jokes here about Hollyoaks – Ed)

Imagine a gallery where you can manipulate the art, sweep away each stage of the process by which it was painted, sculpted, built, and watch it re-assemble, change the materials and observe the consequences.

Imagine walls where you can digitally paint with your hands, import and manipulate photos, videos, and music to create your very own room sized work of art -  and then take it home in your pocket.

Imagine a performance in front of a live audience simultaneously sent to physical spaces all over the country. Not TV, but three dimensional spaces.

Imagine a performance happening in five cities at once, with a cast of five... one live actor in each venue, the others digitally projected, yet performing live.

Imagine going into the same room one day to find a single writer reading, and the next to find the assembled choirs of five continents.

Imagine a place where your opinion is sought out, valued, acted upon.

Imagine a place that challenges you, stretches you, but also allows you to laugh at fart jokes.

Imagine a network of venues that allow ballet classes in London to be actively  engaged with in Liverpool, Rock workshops in Manchester to be played along with in Exteter.

Imagine top industry practitioners being proud and flattered to be asked to take part.

Imagine watching a film your kids made just before a film Pixar made.

Imagine a place that doesn’t tell you what art is but asks you.

Imagine a place where you can see the actors putting their make up on for the show you’re about to see, and the artists carving the sculptures or editing the films or illustrating the books you’re about to enjoy.

It’s not a theatre  - a dark space, it’s not an art gallery – a light space, it’s not a reading room – an intimate space, or a library – a quiet space, or even a rock gig – a loud and joyous space…

It’s all of those things, whichever whenever it needs to be.

Is this all whimsy?

I’d like to imagine a New National Centre of the Arts for Children, that celebrates theatre, art, film making, music, carnivals, digital art and dance which has satellite venues all over the country, hell why not the world, sharing performances, exhibition’s, workshops, feedback and participation. I’d like to imagine this becoming a reality, properly realised, properly respected and funded by a fair and proportionate share of the arts funding in line with the percentage of the population we serve. I’d like to imagine it working in collaboration with all the UK’s key arts institutions.

Seem inconceivable? Too much to imagine? If we were going to create a national Institution for children there is no point simply rebuilding the infrastructures we have had in the past – we have to engineer something that tries to embrace the future. That means a new physical type of building, with totally new capabilities, new relatonships with the arts institutions in the UK and fundamentally a new understanding of how important children are in the current times and future of this country. Economically, Culturally and Spiritually.

There isn’t anything I have imagined above that isn’t technically possible NOW. In the digital age we can paper rooms with touch sensitive LED wallpaper that can show video, manipulate images, transform environments. We can replicate those images in similar rooms anywhere in the world, instantaneously. There just isn’t anyone thinking along these lines at present.

We haven’t even begun to imagine what the writers, artists and performers of the future could do with such spaces, but one thing is certain. Those future artists are children now, and we have to inspire and enable them.

As you were…….