A Dunedin city councillor has labelled the $342,000 CharcoalBlue report a waste of money as further industry consultation over a possible mid-sized theatre rumbles on.
The Dunedin City Council’s community and culture committee this week heard the next steps for the project involved establishing a performing arts round table group to continue working on the project.
This next round of consultation is coming after the CharcoalBlue report and further discussions held with performing arts groups from October to December of last year.
Cr Lee Vandervis said it was clear now that the CharcoalBlue report had been a waste of $300,000.
"It didn’t address the fundamental issue of who the performing arts venue is actually for."
He said it was an embarrassment venues such as the Fortune Theatre and Sammy’s sat vacant while the council made up its mind about what to do next.
The $17 million earmarked for a mid-sized theatre in the 10-year plan should be used immediately to either reopen the Fortune Theatre as a live-music venue or to fund an upgrade of the Mayfair Theatre.
Cr Carmen Houlahan said if the council had no plans for the Fortune Theatre or Sammy’s they should sell them and use the funds to pay for "something really good".
"Otherwise we have assets just sitting there doing nothing going to waste."
Cr Christine Garey said further consultation was important to understand what the current views of the performance arts community were.
Since the previous consultation, initiatives such as the Dunedin Fringe Arts Trust’s black box performance space had come to light, and she urged the performing arts community to continue to engage with the council.
Mayor Aaron Hawkins said the creation of the theatre was not imminent, being scheduled in the 10-year plan to be completed in 2028.
"I think sometimes we lose sight of what the actual question is, which is what does our network of facilities look like across the city that caters to different art forms and audiences of different scales."
The ongoing consultation would help the council ensure there was an adequate network of facilities to meet the different needs of the various performing arts groups.
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What an absolute waste of the rate payers money, the people responsible for this utter stupidity should be sacked immediately these people must go.
"Cr Christine Garey said further consultation was important to understand what the current views of the performance arts community were."
The "performance arts community" want places to perform what they want to perform. Many of them are maturely realistic, others are self-indulgent dreamers convinced of the brilliance of their innovative/experimental/jejune creativity.
If Cr Garey wants to belt'n'braces it with even more rates paid consultation, the people to ask now are the performance-going "community". What do people want sincerely enough to pay their own money to go to it? Can it only be done in a specially designed theatre or would they still turn up eagerly even if it had to be performed in a barn at the end of a dirt road?