For now, here are a couple of stories of people who have done remarkable things, big and small, to support Battersea Arts Centre over the last five months…

1. The Thomas’s Choral Society presents Handel’s ‘Messiah’

Early this summer, this local choral society, directed by Sam Evans, performed ‘Messiah’ at Church of the Ascension on Lavender Hill.  Dozens of Battersea residents, including our own MP Jane Ellison, took part in performing the piece, raising a tremendous £7,000 for BAC’s Phoenix Fund.  The impressiveness of the performers was only matched by the appropriateness of the venue: the Church of the Ascension was, itself, struck by a devastating fire in 1979.

2. Dungarees Coffee

Marie and Jed, the lovely duo who run this traveling coffee operation, generously donated 10% of their profits to the Phoenix Fund on the day following the fire.  We felt utterly touched by their gesture, so we reached out.  Jed said this:

“When we first walked into BAC, Marie and I were both astounded… There is an aura about it which is not achievable by just having great shows. I believe it’s the history, the staff and the customers that make it so. It’s a very special place… So for all of these reasons, we wanted to get involved in helping BAC back on its feet, if only just a little bit.”

Jed and Marie, we salute you! (Psst… check out their website here>)

3. Café Parisienne

Our beloved local café was one of the first to jump into action on the night of the fire. Kazim, the owner, took cups of tea and coffee to the fire brigade and police force on site. The next day, he provided free breakfast for BAC staff. And following that, he even let us use the downstairs seating area of the café as a makeshift office, bringing us food and drink and never letting us pay a penny. Kazim is a bit of a local legend – he did the very same for other Lavender Hill business owners when the riots hit Clapham Junction several years ago. And his generosity perfectly encapsulates the old Battersea motto: ‘Not for me, not for you, but for us.’

Top tip: Parisienne does a killer fry-up.

Again, those are a very small sampling of all the hugely significant gestures of support we’ve received.  We are still, even five months along, totally bowled over by the generosity of our community, both in Battersea and further afield.  We cannot say ‘thank you’ enough – but we will try.

When asked what quality he most admired in a theatre, the director Peter Brookreplied: ‘Combustibility’. The fire that took out the Grand Hall heart of the Battersea Arts Centre at this time last Friday joins a lineage that stretches back to Shakespeare’s Globe that succumbed to a misdirected cannon shot in 1613. For three more centuries theatres were built, and theatres burnt. Since the invention of London’s first ‘Safety Theatre’, the Palace Theatre in the late nineteenth century, performance spaces have been licensed along the same lines as hotels. They have to prove they are a safe place to sleep.

But some venues just don’t sleep and the outpouring of emotion in the wake of this latest conflagrationreassures us there is something special about BAC. We knew that, this showed that. It could not just be for the architecture, unlike Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s beautiful Glasgow School of Art, the Edwardian Baroque of BAC has no special claim to my affection. It is, if anything, too imposing for easy comfort. But then again, in my earshot,no one ever promised comfort there, it has always been about excitement, energy and engagement.A special kind of equality on walking through its portal seems guaranteed.

The unique quality of the building is its commitment to two intimate things that people still hold dear despite digital signs to the contrary.The first is an opportunity to gather in large groups and celebrate someone’s love for someone else. Not necessarily Romeo for Juliet, though a check of the marriage records might reveal several over the years, but a former Town Hall where ceremony is central to everything that happens. The second is an opportunity to gather in any and every kind of assembly known to humans, in the warren of spaces that make up the building, to share performances that change the face of British Theatre.

It was no hubris when David announced just a few weeks ago a new season of work that included a series of performances exploring national identity. For many, BAC has operated as the de facto National Theatre of the future with its diversity of programming, continuous unstinting support for the development of theatre makers through its ‘Scratch’ nights, and its revolutionary approach to refashioning itself as a public playground with Steve and the team at Haworth Tompkins.

At that same launch event Steve talked movingly about what it took to collaborate, client and practice, in a genuinely shared endeavor of architectural discovery. Following celebrated work on the Royal Court, the Young Vic and the Stirling Prize winning Liverpool Everyman, there could be no better partnership on hand to now see through that vision with renewed commitment. The Capital group will bring unrivalled energy and experience to that process too. On a night of the year when the nation was otherwise preoccupied with a rather more urgent fund raising demand, when a Cyclone was ripping through another place far from Lavender Hill, the speed with which sorrow shifted to donation on social media platforms was a measure of special respect for what BAC stands for.

And of course it stands. It was a Town Hall after all. It still is. It was never meant to be a theatre with its ephemeral touch. It is a building rooted in its neighbourhood and it would take a good deal more than a bit of combustibility to see it off. The fire brigade made sure of that, they knew they were dealing with a solid piece of work. But those foundations should now support something remarkable again. At this moment of greatest challenge those with responsibility for the building and those who bring daily life to the building will ensure that it redoubles its radical promise. This need not pay undue respect to what has been lost, but rather boldly go where a building called Battersea Arts Centre needs to go. That is up, and out, and all about, with no stinting on the materials, getting to those parts that other theatres would love to reach.

Written 4.20pm, Friday 20^th March 2015

Alan Read
Director Performance Foundation
Professor of Theatre, King’s College London
[email protected]

The front of the building is buzzing this week with Battersea’s young people who have created the Hourglass Festival. This is a week of performances, music and debate programmed by our Young Producers working with members of Homegrown, the Beatbox Academy and The Agency. The festival includes young people from Deptford’s Albany, Ipswich’s New Wolsey and Manchester’s Contact. It is a week for optimism and shaping the future. Do come and support these inspiring young creatives and help them develop their great ideas.

The Hourglass Festival is great cause for positivity. However, a quick walk round the back of the building offers a stark reminder of the scale of the challenge that faces Battersea Arts Centre in the coming years. Yesterday, the Government stepped in and offered £1million towards recovery and renovation. I would like to offer huge thanks to Battersea’s MP, Jane Ellison, who invited Sajid Javid MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, to come to Battersea last Monday, and who has fought to secure help for the organisation. I really appreciate Jane’s support. Thank you to Sajid Javid MP and George Osborne MP who have backed Battersea Arts Centre in this moment and to Arts Council England for their brilliant guidance and friendship over these past ten days.

As I said in a previous blog, this cause goes across party politics, the support we had from the local Labour party on the night of the fire was crucial. The groundswell of support for the organisation, across political divides, local and national government, across different communities, across art forms, across culture, heritage, education…the breadth of the support continues to give us resolve to rebuild Battersea Arts Centre in to an even stronger organisation, that inspires people to take creative risks and shape the future.

As the dust settles, as financial support comes in, and as the needs of the organisation and building become clearer by the day, I thought it would be useful to set out our position, especially in terms of fundraising.

Before the fire, Battersea Arts Centre had two focuses for its fundraising:

1. Annual revenue fundraising target – every year the organisation raises around £600,000 to maintain its programme of activities;
2. Remaining capital target – during this year the organisation was raising £500,000 for refurbishment of the front half of the building which was not affected by the fire and there was also money to raise through the 60 memberships left for The Great Hundred Club

After the fire, Battersea Arts Centre has two additional challenges:

3. Phoenix Fund – created in response to this emergency. We think that a £1million Phoenix Fund will enable the organisation to tackle the challenges of not having the Grand Hall for up to three years.
4. Rebuild Fund – the organisation is now looking ahead to how we rebuild the Grand Hall and what is needed in order to ensure that Battersea Arts Centre emerges from this crisis in better shape.

To date, individuals and organisations have donated £100,000 which is incredible. Our good neighbour, Battersea Power Station, has donated a further £100,000. And yesterday, the government added £1,000,000.

So how will the funds be used?

• None of the funds raised in response to the fire will go towards our annual fundraising target (1). But we do ask that Trusts, Foundations and individual donors continue to support us to maintain the organisation’s innovative programme of activities during this time;
• £500,000 of the government’s investment will meet our remaining capital target(2) so that we now just have to raise money through our 60 remaining Great Hundred memberships for the existing capital project
• The other £500,000 of the government’s investment will go towards our Phoenix Fund(3) along with the £200,000 from public donations and Battersea Power Station, totalling £700,000 for the Phoenix Fund to date. This leaves us with a further £300,000 to raise– we have a massive fundraiser happening on 18^th April at Royal Festival Hall to help us get closer to £1million.

We are currently working on the shape and scale of the Rebuild Fund. We are working very closely with our insurers and we obviously aim for the majority of the rebuild costs to be covered by insurance. Big thanks to Aviva, our insurer, and Wrightsure, our broker, who are both being brilliantly supportive in this moment. We will also look to be true to the values of Battersea in the way we go about rebuilding the Hall and want to explore how we can all work together to create something extraordinary, for everyone, out of the ashes of the fire. We will work on the plan for the rebuild over the coming month and announce plans on this site.

Thank you again to everyone who is stepping forward to support the organisation. People have been generous in commenting that we have responded well, but let me tell you, it is daily offers of support from individuals, organisations and now government, that is making this all possible. This is not just our response to a fire, this is your response, and it means we will become an even stronger organisation, thanks to you.

You can donate to the Phoenix fund here

If you would like support with any fundraising please email Rosie Spiegelhalter [email protected]

So below are 6 ways to get involved and help this phoenix rise from the ashes.

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1 – Come to Battersea Arts Centre 

We are open: buy a ticket, come to the Scratch Bar for food and drinks, for those who have under 5’s please enjoy The Bee’s Knees, carry on being creative with us, join our membership programmes including The Great Hundred Club. Or volunteer to usher our shows. We are proud to offer free membership to our Friends programme to every one of the fire fighters and police who fought the fire last Friday.

2 – Donate to the Phoenix Fund

The brilliant National Funding Scheme set up a donate page last Friday. You can also now donate through the Battersea Arts Centre website if you prefer. We have had amazing donations to this fund, every donation counts from the £1 coin I saw an 8 year old put in a bucket yesterday, to the £1,000 generous donations of other organisations, to the £100,000 donations of major companies. We also ask you to save the date for the night of Saturday 18 April when there will be a major fundraiser at a central London venue to be announced next week. You can also call our box office to donate on 020 7223 2223 or send cheques to Phoenix Fund, Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, London SW11 5TN. Also, many people are arranging their own collections, auctions, art sales, sponsored marathons and school bake sales and we’re so happy for this to happen. The incident is covered by insurance but we will go through major change over the next three years and insurance will not cover everything, so the Phoenix Fund will be our working capital to get through this and rebuild.

3 – Offering stuff

Thank you to everybody for the incredible offers of space, offices, laptops and equipment. We thought it would be useful to create a list of what we still need.

• SPACE – Do you know of a building large enough to help us recreate a Grand Hall theatre, in London, as near to Battersea as possible, available for between 6 months and 12 months?! Contact [email protected] Thanks to those who have already brilliantly offered local space including Devas, Southfields, Providence House and all the local shops and cafes for their help the weekend of the fire.
• KIT – Huge thanks to Whitelight, Mark Dakin at NT, Stage Electrics and Ivor at the Young Vic for offering so much kit and support. We are accepting offers of any lighting equipment, such as lanterns, cable, consoles; any sound equipment such as microphones, amps, speakers, cable, mixing desks; any AV equipment, such as projectors, cradles and cable; any storage equipment, such as flight cases and amp racks; any staging equipment, such as dance floor, steel deck, handrails and treads. Kit Contact [email protected]
• OFFICE EQUIPMENT – In terms of IT equipment, huge thanks to ICT for helping us get up and running again. At this point, spare laptops are appreciated because our team are working in much more mobile ways! We also need a stock of tables and chairs if anyone who is offloading some. Office Equipment Contact [email protected]
• ADVERTISING SPACE – Can you help us with free advertising space to celebrate the fact that Battersea Arts Centre is open on Lavender Hill and help us communicate where the Grand Hall shows are happening across London? Contact [email protected]

4 – Offering time

We are looking for someone, or a local committee, to help us run a poster campaign across Wandsworth to tell people that we are open and to get the Phoenix Fund out there with different groups and networks. Contact [email protected]

5 – Help us remember the Grand Hall

Today at 4.20pm, to mark the moment one week on from the start of the fire, you can tweet your memory of the Grand Hall. We will collect all the memories for when we rebuild and for our digital archive. #BACPhoenix We will soon send out a ‘Save The Date’ for an event when people can come together and remember this extraordinary public space. We will also soon begin organising visits to the Grand Hall for those that want to spend a moment with the space. If you want to visit please email [email protected]. You can also share imaginary events in Grand Hall created by Andy Field or record your memory of the Grand Hall on the Battersea Arts Centre digital archive.

6 – If you are funder…

…we have four needs at the moment:

1. Completing the fundraising target for our existing and unaffected capital project, which has £500,000 remaining. This will enable us to open more of the front of the building in early 2016;

2. Supporting our existing programmes at a time when the organisation will be stretched to the limit to deal with all the additional challenges;

3. Creating a temporary Grand Hall in which we can present all the amazing artists and shows we have booked for the coming year including those for A Nation’s Theatre;

4. Re-building the Grand Hall for the future as a space for performance, ceremony, debate, and as a home for Wandsworth’s heritage.

We hope that all the funders who have made the organisation what it is today will step forward, and we also hope that we can create new relationships to deal with all the additional challenges we now face.

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Thank you all so very much. Everyone’s support has been incredible over the last week. After dealing with the immediate aftermath and re-opening, now the hard work really begins. The way that everyone is pulling together is phenomenal, and we hope people will stick with us in the weeks and months ahead, to keep us going to give birth to an even more remarkable organisation and building. Thank you all again for your love and support.

David    
P.S. If you have already written to me then I will be going through every single email and text message early next week and responding. But if the above 6 ways to help and get involved inspires you to action, in the meantime, then that’s great!
P.P.S. Why help? What’s the plan? What are we going to do next? This is our plan…

Firstly, we will continue to:

• Present and develop amazing shows
• Provide play space for families, our Family Saturdays and shows for all the family
• Run the Scratch Bar as a great place to hang out, eat and drink
• Develop the university of creativity in partnership with QMUL, Kings College and others
• Launch our first digital commission with The Space
• Work with The Guardian on A Nation’s Theatre
• Continue our young people’s programmes including the Hourglass Festival next week, and Homegrown, The Agency, Beatbox Academy and Young Producers
• Collaborate with schools, develop our new partnership with Katherine Low Settlement and continue our Tea Dances
• Grow our relationship with Wandsworth Museum which promises to be an exciting new model for cultural and heritage organisations
• Work with our partners in Hull, Great Yarmouth, Thanet, Torbay, Gloucester and Darlington to co-create regular festivals in 2015/16. As well as sustaining this amazing consortium, we hope to establish a new Collaborative Touring Network in late 2016
• Continue our Take Out programme, which will include a nationwide tour of Little Bulb Theatre’s Orpheus this autumn and international touring for The Paper Cinema’s Odyssey
• Complete our current capital redevelopment by Spring 2016
• Plan for future weddings, beer festivals, conferences, celebrations, debates and fairs.

And soon we will be announcing three new exciting partnership projects for 2015 and 2016.

Secondly, our new challenges are to:

• Recreate our office base in another part of the building
• Relocate Grand Hall shows in the short-term to other theatres who are brilliantly offering support
• Recreate a temporary Grand Hall to host shows over the coming year
• Rebuild the Grand Hall for the future
• Reimagine our business model for Battersea Arts Centre

Tragically we lost our beloved Grand Hall in a fire that broke out at around 4.20pm last Friday.

We want to mark the moment with a massive sharing of your Grand Hall memories. Please start thinking now about what these might be.

Then at exactly 4.20pm on Friday 20^th  March, share your words, pictures, blogs or videos using #BACphoenix on Twitter.

Your memory could be about a show, a dance, a wedding, beer festival… anything!

We’ll collate these memories for when we rebuild the Grand Hall and place them into our digital archive.

Please start spreading the word about this moment and have your memories ready…

I went down to the edge of the fire site and had a proper look for the first time. Until now, I have been keeping myself focussed on the task in hand, opening the front of the building, supporting my team, getting the shows on, shaping the phoenix plan. To be honest, I have also not dared to deal with my feelings, to see the fire-site close-up. But the task-in-hand is as much about the site as anything else, so I needed to see it. As I put my boots and hard hat on, I pinched myself hard. It didn’t work.

It is an extraordinary sight. It is like the Hall has held the fire, almost protecting the rest of the building from damage. A new wave of gratitude for the fire fighters swept over me. Every time I look up to see the sun sparkling through the octagonal dome, I will think of them. I won’t say much more at this stage, other than if you, like me, have deep feelings for that space, then know this, we will breathe life in to her again, she will live to tell the story of the last week, for at least another 120 years.
_

In the morning, there was a great meeting with Haworth Tompkins, and terrific support from Wandsworth Borough Council and their safety team on site, and also from the Historic Royal Palaces salvage team. The team grappling with the issues on the site of the fire are working superbly. I have regular flashes of them on horseback, knights in shining armour.

We have loved the shows in this building this week. Caroline Horton and Derby Playhouse have been here as part of A Nation’s Theatre, as is Verity Standen who wrote a lovely blog in Guardian about making work in Bristol. The sold-out run of Fiction continues, Daniel Kitson is doing three shows a day of his new show. Gecko’s unplugged Missing went on sale at the Southbank Centre for Friday night and the free ticket were gone by the end of the day, see you there if you’re going. Next week’s comedy, including Josie Long has switched venue to the Four Thieves across the road.

On Tuesday we had the Mayor and Mayoress of Wandsworth come to see us, on their way to attend an event with the Queen. It was good of them to make time to stop off and see us. One of the best ways to support the organisation right now is to come to the building, enjoy the Scratch Bar, day or night, buy tickets for shows, use The Bee’s Knees. The building has been buzzing, and this makes a massive difference to all of us.

A clear Phoenix plan is beginning to emerge as to what happens next – and tonight we will take that to our Board. I plan to share it tomorrow on this blog. The plan involves a number of ways in which people can get involved, whether to support the organisation’s next steps, donate, or come to a number of events, including one to celebrate the history of the Grand Hall. More tomorrow. Thanks for reading these missives.
#BACPhoenix

Practical plans are starting to emerge. We are camped out in the Committee Room next to the Council Chamber. We have printed out (some are handwritten) the hundreds and hundreds of emails and text messages of support. It is providing a great way for the whole team to see the offers of support and get in touch with people direct. Tuesday was a productive day: continuing to work with our insurers through the claims process; working with our architects Haworth Tompkins and a wider team of experts who are helping us assess the fire site and work out next steps; engaging with a salvage team from Historic Royal Palaces who have brilliantly offered to help with this important side of the recovery.

The building is currently made-up of three parts. The front third is up and running, and people can support us by buying tickets to shows, coming and supporting the Scratch Bar and enjoying the Battersea buzz. The middle third is the building site for our capital project, unaffected directly by the fire, and we hope to get builders back on site as soon as we can to work towards completion on this project, as planned. And then the back third, the Grand Hall, is where we are currently planning safe and salvage works, as we step forwards towards rebuilding.

Through the immense generosity of local and London-wide venues, we are finding homes for performances that were due to be in the Grand Hall over the next few months. The local 4 Thieves, the Southbank Centre and others. We will provide a full list and details on our website as they emerge. Thank you so much to those valued colleagues. But we are also thinking beyond the immediate. It is going to take a long time – it’s not clear how long yet – to rebuild. So we are exploring the idea of creating a temporary theatre space, perhaps even one in which the infrastructure we use can then be used back in our rebuilt space. For this we need to find a big building – a warehouse, open studio or building site – ideally with a roof, and power, and the potential for us to get a license! – that we can occupy and create a temporary Grand Hall. More on this soon. If anyone knows of a possible site or building, let me know.

A few people have asked why we need a fighting fund if we are insured, it’s a perfectly reasonable question. We hope the insurance will cover most essential costs but it will never be able to cover all the immense changes that we will have to go through over the next two or three years, the investment in new ways of working. Every penny of the fighting fund that is still, thankfully, growing day by day, will go towards the recovery of the organisation so we can keep all of our activities going, we don’t want to let anyone down because of this fire, indeed it will make us stronger. It will make us fight even harder for what we believe in…for us to come together, to take creative risks and shape our future. That’s why all those babies were in the building yesterday!…because they were reminding us that we are doing this for them, this building, this community, this arts organisation, it’s theirs, and we need to make sure it is here to help them grow, to develop, to be creative.

I take my hat off to the fortitude, the inventiveness and the kindness of my team. They are above and beyond. They are, quite simply, inspirational.

Team Phoenix had several challenges for a Monday morning: to get some computers, some wifi and some office space. To recreate our software for booking spaces with sheets of A3 paper on the wall, to contact audiences with updates, to start seeking alternative spaces for the future Grand Hall programme. Gecko has also been on the phones, calling their audiences for Missing…our relationship with that extraordinary theatre company just became even stronger and deeper. We also started thinking about an event to celebrate the history of the Grand Hall, explored first thoughts on our rebuilding plan, did more work on our fundraising plan, met again with our insurance company and brokers, and explored a series of moving and heartfelt offers for support.

I am really conscious that these daily updates are only scratching the surface in terms of the offers of support we have received. It’s impossible not to well-up when thinking about the emails, texts and calls we are receiving. I am so deeply grateful. I am also really sorry that we are not getting back to everyone immediately. But we will, I promise. It will just take time. For now, thank you so much, your support means the world. Your thoughtfulness, your love for the building and the organisation, it lifts us up and makes us strong.

As ever, the building draws support from both sides of the political spectrum. On Friday night, as the fire raged, the local Labour Party opened up their Lavender Hill headquarters. My team were able to take shelter, deal with the incident and the immediate aftermath. We were given the keys to the building and asked them to post them through the letterbox whenever we finished up. I’d like to thank Will Martindale and his team; this was great support at an incredibly stressful time. Over the weekend, our local conservative MP, Jane Ellison, has been brilliant with on-site support, press interviews and inviting the Secretary of State for Culture, Sajid Javid MP, to visit yesterday morning. Thanks to Sajid and to DCMS for their concern and support. The Chair and CEO of Arts Council also attended and offered great advice, as did our lead officer from Wandsworth Borough Council. Harriet Harman MP has been on the phone to see if she can help. Whilst Battersea’s former Town Hall has always been a politicised space, it is also, crucially, a space, that doesn’t judge your politics, it invites you to express yourself, freely, a space for everyone, regardless of your background or beliefs. It just asks one thing of you… Not For Me, Not For You, But For Us.

Thank you to our good neighbours, Café Parisienne, Currells Estate Agents, thank you Joan and Pete for your donation, to the shops making collections, to the local resident who has offered to run a marathon, to the pack leader who wants the rest of her Brownie’s to do a fundraiser, to Battersea Power Station for stepping in, to all the film-makers who have offered to make films, to the offer of a rehearsal space in France, all the offers of cleaning, painting and bricklaying. Thank you to Kneehigh for their music that has made my heart soar (and sore) remembering their breath-taking shows in the Grand Hall. To all the cultural organisations who have offered kit, space, moral support. To the Arts Council for being like a rock in this situation, to Heritage Lottery, ditto, Wandsworth Council, ditto. Thank you to Steve, Imogen, Toby and the Haworth Tompkins team who have offered incredible friendship and strength. To the Leader of Wandsworth Borough Council for his email with the subject line A Big Hug. To the Foundations that have got in touch. To my Chair who has offered his expert salvage team, and to all our Trustees who are going above and beyond.

I almost don’t want to press send on this because I have failed to thank 1,000s of people and organisations who have stepped forward to offer help, to donate, and to say “we will do anything we can”. You should all be celebrated. I propose that when we rebuild we find a way of representing this incredible love, this remarkable moment in a building’s history, this chapter in a community’s story… a time when people came together for a cause that we all believe in. We must capture this moment in the fabric of the building, when we all worked together to ensure that Battersea’s former Town Hall lives on, as a public, cultural space for everyone to come together.

Links to press pieces and blogs: Lyn Gardner blog; Evening Standard article; Independent article; and if you are not on Daniel Kitson’s mailing list then ask someone who is to forward you his email from yesterday, he is a legend.

The way people have responded to this event is quite extraordinary. I’d like to thank everyone for their incredible support for Battersea Arts Centre and Battersea’s beautiful former Town Hall. The Battersea spirit, encapsulated in its mid-19th Century motto – Not For Me, Not For You, But For Us – is all around. And all those who are directly involved have been lifted up by this support. Thank you.

I am in awe of my team, the artists and fire brigade, who only 24 hours after the fire, helped to re-open the building, last night, and put on two sold out shows. It was great to have people back in the building. Whilst we have lost the Grand Hall, more than two thirds of the building is saved. It has been picked up by news reporters all over the UK, and almost all of them, have been amazing, in the way they have dealt with us.

Today and tomorrow I will start responding to the hundreds and hundreds of messages we have received. We have started to create what we are calling our “phoenix plan” to work out how we get the shows back on, make a plan for the organisation for the next 12 months and re-build the building.

I thought people might like to know more about how the fire has effected the existing capital project. It is early days and there is a huge amount to work through. But we think, at this moment, that the final phase of the capital project, due to be completed in early 2016, should be able to go ahead as planned. This is because the parts of building in which this project is happening are unaffected by the fire. This is a huge relief and means that the investment in that phase of the project is safe, good to know if you have donated to that project. In terms of the fire damage, we are talking with our insurance company, about the destruction of the Grand Hall and damage to the surrounding spaces. We will update everyone as plans evolve. The collection for the Wandsworth Museum is held offsite in a safe store.

For now, Battersea Arts Centre has lost its main space which was programmed with theatre, and we are seeking options to put those shows on, many of them part A Nation’s Theatre. We have also lost most of our technical equipment and office spaces. For the next week, we are going to camp out in the front half of the building and will create a more sustainable plan this week. The incredible generosity of people, donating to the National Funding Platform’s campaign, means we have a fighting fund to deal with the significant change we face over the coming weeks, months and year. Everyone at BAC is immensely grateful to everyone for contributing to this. Yesterday, we heard that Battersea Power Station want to make a major donation to the cause. More on this soon. Everyone is rallying around and we will get through this!

We are emailing all of our audiences and those on our mailing list today, and we will send out a latest-news release tomorrow morning to keep people up to date: this will be on the front page of our site. As well as dealing with the immediate crisis we are also starting to return to important projects and relationships. Whilst the fire is an enormous blow to the organisation and the building, we are determined to deliver all the great projects we are working on with people. Thanks again everyone for your ongoing support, more tomorrow.