The Lighthouse faces crunch meeting

A board meeting is being held this evening (24 August) to decide the future of The Lighthouse, Scotland’s centre for architecture, design and the city.

A spokeswoman for The Lighthouse refused to comment on reports that the Glasgow arts centre could go into administration unless it can secure hundreds of thousands of pounds of funding.

It was reported that the centre, which runs as a charitable trust and employs 57 people, has accrued debts of around £220 000.

At the end of last year The Lighthouse made six redundancies and reshaped its gallery space as part of a new business plan to secure its financial future.

This was in response to a projected annual shortfall of £300 000, which came after the Six Cities Design Festival, managed by The Lighthouse, was cancelled.

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  • Maxine J Horn November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Scotland has a long heritage in creative industries from architecture, to arts & crafts and design.
    Unlike the UK it has no publicly funded Design Council.
    Three Scottish Universities have received funding for design and innovation activities within the last 12 months totalling in the region of £5million.
    The Lighthouse provides a much needed physcial space open to all creative industries, businesses and the public.
    Logic would say, which not join up the activities and utilise some of the funding awarded to Universities and other public sector activiities for design and innovation initiatives to the Lighthouse and keep it open.

    It’s a great space with many talented people making the only ‘private sector’ difference to the support of creatives industries.

    Keep it alive.

  • toolgirl November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    The problem is that these centres for architecture and design are run by people with fine arts degrees. One can afford to be all vague and artsy in that field, but when you’re trying to pull off something as demanding as design or architecture one needs a bit more precision to the efforts.

    As a 4th year design student, I did work experience at a gallery that the Lighthouse referred me to, but was appalled by the lack of vision, capabilities and understanding of basic design principals shown by the creative director and curator, to both of whom this was merely a day job to being a sculptor and painter.

    Save the Lighthouse -both Scotland AND the UK really need it- but fund it properly (you can’t have have a chief curator being paid a salary for a 3-day work week and expect to get anything of quality) and bring in new leadership!

  • alex milton November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Readers might wish to look and comment on ‘The Lighthouse—Renewed’ http:lighthouserenewed.ning.com

    A blog set up to see whether the Design, Architecture and Art communities come up with a range of constructive suggestions for the future of the Lighthouse.

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