The Newcastle City Hall Facebook page has added a new post about its future which you can find here:
|
North East Music History (NEMH) has the following comments to make about this:
Firstly, as we’ve made clear previously, the focus of our campaign is certainly not the management and staff of the venue itself. Our campaign is targeted at the people in Newcastle Council who will determine the future of the City Hall. The key decisions on this will not, alas, be left to the people who work at the venue.
The statement indicates there is now considerable speculation that the City Hall is under threat of closure. That’s true and is hardly surprising when Cllr Nick Forbes, Leader of the City Council and the man ultimately responsible for decisions on this issue, told the BBC on 27th November, “the whole site - the City Hall and Pool - doesn't have a long-term future given the current funding climate.”
Whilst NEMH welcomes the statement that the venue management has “put forward a series of proposals to enhance the financial viability of the City Hall”, we do not consider that, in itself, changes anything regarding our campaign. We don’t know the details of these proposals, we don’t yet know whether the Council is prepared to accept and implement them – and we still don’t know what the Council’s own plan is for the long term use of the site.
In short, we believe our campaign to save the City Hall as a vibrant performance venue is still very much needed. The campaign will continue and indeed will be intensified early in the New Year.
Finally, as the Newcastle City Hall post says, the venue is continuing to operate and tickets are on sale for a range of gigs in 2013. NEMH hopes you will support the venue by going to City Hall gigs and continue to support the campaign by signing the petition at www.change.org/savenewcastlecityhall , which has so far collected over 8,000 signatures online and in the street. The two things are hardly mutually exclusive!
|
